Episode 3 - Robin 101
12 October 2009
Review
Synopsis: Barney is finding it hard to be a boyfriend. Ted offers to teach him Robin 101 and he reluctantly agrees. Ted uses his college classroom to impart all of his knowledge about Robin. Robin and Lily find Barney's notes and get angry. They confront Ted and Barney who both apologise. Robin forgives them and realises that Barney was doing his best to be a good boyfriend. Meanwhile Marshall tries to get rid of an old barrel but no one wants it.
The Good: At the core of How I Met Your Mother is friendship. They may annoy one another and mock one another but deep down these five people love one another. Ted wants his two friends to be happy. He doesn't mind sharing intimate insights if it will make Barney and Robin happy. Barney really cares about Robin and so is willing to overcome his humiliation of being taught by Ted. At the core of this story and the show as a whole is their enduring affection for one another. It's difficult not to like that.
It totally fits Ted's character to jump at the chance to teach and impart knowledge. It makes sense that he would ignore the betrayal of privacy in order to misguidedly help Barney out and flex his teaching muscles at the same time. All the details of the lesson are very fitting too. Ted's psychoanalysis of Robin is both condescending and pretty accurate. The writers understand Robin's character well and bring up all the salient details. Again the detail about her father is consistent (406) as well as important. To bring her personality back to parental relationships makes her seem like a real person. Little jokes like the King Penguin also make her seem more authentic and provide for a nice aside laugh.
There was a real need for this story too. Seeing Barney trying to escape Robin's room out of habit was exactly how you would expect him to behave after years of cavorting. We definitely needed to see him struggling to adapt to this unfamiliar situation. Choosing this unconventional method of learning about Robin makes sense too as he is used to cutting corners with women. It was a nice touch to have him accuse Robin of violating his privacy before he realised the hypocrisy.
The Bad: So what's wrong with this? I just want to ask you a question, did you really laugh? Did you chuckle at Robin's hockey passion being brought up? Did you guffaw at her description of rifle cleaning? I would bet good money you didn't. How I Met Your Mother has understandably drawn comparison with Friends. While it isn't fair to judge one sitcom by the success of another, this is a good way of relating why this episode could have been so much better. The characters in Friends had similarly defining features as Robin. Ross was a geeky first child, Monica the overcompensating second child. Chandler the emotionally frightened only child, Joey the spoilt, dumb womaniser and so on. But in Friends those simple character sketches were exploited to produce genuine punch lines. Sometimes they were so beautifully written that the humour flowed naturally and led to comedy greatness. Why doesn't this happen in How I Met Your Mother?
Partly it's that lack of natural flow. Robin's characteristics are brought up like a shopping list. She is Canadian. Check. She is a gun nut. Check. She is emotionally distant. Check. So often on the show one character points out the flaw of another, followed immediately by a demonstration of that flaw. It's the most simple and basic way those jokes can be told. Robin loves the Vancouver Canucks. Cue a rant about them. Yeah we get it. There's no subtlety, nothing to catch you off guard. It's not bad but it could be so much better.
We also get a brief bit of made up characterisation. So many sit coms just make up a new personality trait for a character just to get a cheap laugh. It screams of desperation and inauthenticity. So here we get Robin going demented when hungry and falling asleep on cabs. Again, no subtlety, little reality.
The lack of genuine laughs has plagued How I Met Your Mother from its inception and this is no exception. Marshall's affection for his barrel entirely fits his character, it just happens to be a very dull subplot.
Comic Highlight: A classic sit com gag that worked for a moment was Ted repeating "bowl" over and over. Robin said it was too weird to call Barney her boyfriend. Ted retorted that any word sounds weird if you say it enough. Looking down at his bowl he began repeating it becoming absorbed as Lily and Robin talked on.
How I rate your episode: There is a warmth at the heart of this show which can often compensate for some of its shortcomings. But it would take a furnace to make it a first rate sit com.
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