Episode 18 - Say Cheese
23 March 2010
Review
Synopsis: It's Lily's birthday and Marshall has made a huge effort. At the party that evening Ted brings the new girl he is dating, Amanda and Lily is mad. She points out that Ted always brings random women to their intimate gatherings ruining the evenings.
The Good: This was one of those all action episodes where the main plot kept you interested through sheer density of flashbacks and arguments. The story behind it was solid too. It entirely fits Ted's character that he would bring his latest girlfriend along to meet his best friends. Lily's controlling nature too fits the idea that she would resent this and try and stop Amanda from ruining the latest "perfect" picture. Marshall too was in an ideal role making a huge fuss over Lily and his constant attempts to get his special song off the ground were fun to watch. His made up games (115) for the occasion were fitting both to his character and as a way to expose how out of place Amanda was.
There was more good continuity with Ted's college girlfriend Karen getting a plausible cameo ruining their trip to Paris. The upbeat rap song was a nice change of musical pace to convey the nightmare for Marshall.
The arguments back and forth just about worked as a convincing debate between the characters. Ted smartly pointed out that Robin was an important exception to the rule and then trumped that with the sweet memory of him including Lily. His hopeless romanticism was really well used there to wrap things up.
Barney can usually be relied upon to make me smile and though it was brief, his outrage over the Slash (from Guns N' Roses) incident despite everyone present remembering it was solid comedy.
The Bad: As usual there's just something unconvincing about these stories. First these friends who are supposed to know each other so well manage to outrage and annoy each other pretty quickly. Second the endless flashbacks to clearly freshly made up incidents usually makes the story feel less real and doesn't add much in the way of humour. And third in this case Lily turns around on the issue a bit too quickly in the end to be entirely satisfying.
The joke about Barney always taking a good picture was so dumb but worse, so unnecessary. It seemed like an easy joke to say vain Barney always posed the same way in pictures. But to make it literally impossible for that to happen was so dumb and ridiculous. Did anyone laugh at the idea that the camera actually makes up images of him looking good and standing in a different position? It would have been so easy, surely, just to have each picture of him bending over or eating a chip actually look cool. That would have been funny and believable. I don't understand why decisions like that get made.
Similarly why does Lily have to throw "skank" and "bitch" around? It's not shocking because she has done it so many times but even now it doesn't fit her character to randomly use street lingo when she doesn't in everyday conversation. I also absolutely hated her telling Barney and Robin (in flashback) that they weren't going to last as a couple and them agreeing! That would never be said between friends no matter what the circumstances. Especially when she made such an effort to get them together (501). This show is just so wasteful for the sake of really lame, unconvincing humour.
It's a small continuity glitch but one of Ted's weeping ex-girlfriends is Natalie (104). When Ted broke up with her she beat him up badly at a restaurant. There is no way she would have been in his apartment crying about it.
Comic Highlight: The running gag that Marshall always takes bad pictures was entirely plausible. Ted's solution to tell him exactly when to open his eyes led to a really fun wide eyed goofy expression in the last shot.
How I rate your episode: This was a thumbs in the middle kind of episode. The story was mostly solid but the jokes weren't.
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