Episode 5 - Okay Awesome
25 March 2012
Synopsis: Robin meets the owner of “Okay”, an exclusive club and gets put on the guest list. Ted and Barney go with her but Marshall and Lily have a wine tasting back at their apartment. Marshall soon tires of the adult behaviour and rushes off to the club. Lily follows him angrily but feels the same as he did. Meanwhile Ted discovers that he doesn’t like clubs, Robin can’t get into the VIP room and Barney grinds against the wrong girl.
The Good: The early part of the episode was solid and the “moral” of the story was fine. But in between was a lot of comedy missteps and mistakes.
We get a good sense of who the characters are and where they are in their lives. Robin is just starting to taste fame and presumably will only rise higher from here. Lily and Marshall are doing the adult thing and getting married. But that doesn’t mean they need to start behaving like their parents just yet. Ted is realising truly who he is and that now he is ready for commitment, he can be honest with himself and let unfulfilling club nights go.
Marshall has a particularly fun moment when he accidentally insults the pregnant Claire. And trying to avoid the sit com clichés of embarrassed reactions he bravely says “Not awkward guys, not awkward unless we let is be awkward” before bolting out of there. Barney too has his fun moments. I liked him admitting that his women related schemes worked about half the time. It sets him up as a realistic figure, he’s not afraid to fail and that’s why he is successful. Grinding with his cousin is passable embarrassment humour.
In general the jokes about how loud and expensive clubs can be were pretty good. Barney and Marshall talking on the quiet beats of a song was clever and Ted yelling “I’m wetting my pants” was a nice simple joke.
The Bad: Too much happened that was unrealistic. Adding them altogether really dragged the episode down into silly territory.
Ted’s retrospective storytelling allows for some parts of the story to get overlooked. The writers need to establish that part of the show’s narrative a little better. The implication that Marshall and Lily climbed several storeys down their building is a bit weird. Rather like the previous episode, if the viewers can’t see something, the majority will just think the TV show is being lame. They won’t laugh at the implication of some daredevil climb down a building.
Same goes for Marshall coming out of the bathroom suddenly high and pain free. So he took drugs in the bathroom? That’s the obvious conclusion, yet that’s clearly not a direction the writers wanted to go in. Again as a viewer you just question the point of that entire part of the story. It also gets overlooked quite how rude and unkind it was of Marshall to leave Lily at their wine tasting. When you think about that, it’s actually a really childish and inappropriate thing to do. The writers did not think the Marshall and Lily story through at all.
The three geeks in the club line passing comment on our characters was very simplistic humour. I don’t think the show needs to scrape the barrel for jokes and caricatures like that.
Finally the yelling in the taxi cab was a joke too far. We’ve all been to clubs and concerts and had ringing in our ears afterwards. But people don’t yell that loud when sitting a foot away from each other. To actually continue shouting for five minutes made the writing look lame.
Comic Highlight: Barney entering Ted’s apartment all dressed up and simply saying “And his hair was perfect.” A quote from Werewolves of London or not it seemed like the perfect egocentric opening line from Barney.
How I rate your episode: The point of the episode was fine and helped establish where the characters are in their lives. But the humour was largely miscalculated and broad.
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