Episode 19 - Mary the Paralegal
25 March 2012
Synopsis: Robin has been nominated for a Local Area Media Award and the whole gang attends to support her. But she and Ted haven’t spoken since he left her apartment in the previous episode. Barney suggests Ted bring a prostitute to make Robin jealous. He rushes off home and returns with a woman from his building, Mary, “the paralegal.” When Robin arrives with Sandy Rivers as her date, Ted agrees to take Mary and they keep it quiet that she is a prostitute. Robin antagonises Ted in her acceptance speech and he decides to spend the night with Mary in the hotel after Barney rents them a room. In the end Ted can’t go through with it and tells Mary. Who reveals that she isn’t a prostitute, Barney set the whole thing up to amuse himself.
The Good: Yet another clever episode from the How I Met Your Mother team and this one has more jokes than the previous batch of episode.
The central hook is of course the characters reacting to having a prostitute in their midst. Marshall and Lily both wiping their mouths after realising that they have been in contact with Mary was pretty funny. As was the hasty reactions of all the guys to Mary’s “lie” about being a paralegal. The writers were clever with their misdirection, making sure that at no point the twist became obvious (e.g. her innocuous comment about this being one of the nicer hotels she had been in). I particularly liked her response to Ted’s question of whether she had ever slept with Barney – “there’s not enough money in the world.” Then once Mary revealed the truth, Ted patronisingly assured her that “No, you’re a hooker” – so convinced was he by Barney’s deception.
The fact that Barney had no point other than to amuse himself was nice. It fit his character well that he would just do it because Ted was so against it. And Barney even managed a good point about Ted’s approach to meeting women and how easy it was when he just assumed that a woman would sleep with him. In general Barney was fun to watch (see Comic Highlight), as ever. The way Marshall “lawyered” his made up statistics was a nice bit of banter too. Speaking of Marshall, I liked the reference to him taking the job at Barney’s office as it still wasn’t clear if that was his final decision. Ted’s revenge on Barney was a fitting way to end the story and renormalise relations between them.
Sandy Rivers was better this week, still pretty implausible but less so. Robin’s desire to make Ted jealous gave the plot a purpose in the wider scheme of things and the awards show setting was a nice change of pace.
The Bad: However Robin deliberately excluding Ted from her speech seemed unnecessarily rude on her part. I think in real life that would have led to a lot more tension amongst those at the table. And Lily suddenly realising that Mary was a prostitute because Marshall said it in his head was just stupid. He could easily have blurted it out by accident.
Comic Highlight: Ted reveals that it has been 57 days since he last had sex. Barney calmly asks if he can have a sip of Ted’s water. Then he spits it out as if shocked and exclaims “Fifty seven days!”
How I rate your episode: Another clever keep-them-guessing storyline. How I Met Your Mother seems to do these really well. What was pleasing here were the jokes, which have been thin on the ground in many other episodes.
Feedback
Add your comments on this episode below. They may be included in the weekly podcasts.
)