Episode 16 - Sorry, Bro
14 September 2009
Review
Synopsis: Marshall goes into work with no pants and Barney makes fun of him. Ted gets back together with his pretentious ex-girlfriend Karen who Lily and Marshall despise.
The Good: The short synopsis belies a very packed episode. Comedies can often compensate for a lack of quality with quantity. That is more of a compliment than it sounds.
The flashback style of How I Met Your Mother can be a good thing and a bad thing for the show. This week it worked pretty well because it fleshed out a twenty minute conversation between a bunch of friends into an entertaining episode of comedy.
Take Barney’s obsession with Marshall’s pants story. There is nothing to the story. Marshall forgot his pants and Barney made fun of him for it. That’s it. Nothing more. But the writing squeezes a huge amount out of the idea. Barney builds the joke up and his genuine excitement at telling the story adds to the siren call to stay tuned to hear the punch line of the story. It’s clever writing because most viewers know that the payoff doesn’t exist, no joke can be that funny, but having hyped it so much you almost have to stick around to find out what it is. Barney’s excited giggle is terrific acting and the end result is that only school yard bully Barney really found it funny at all. His self centred attitude is a justifiable reason for the lengths he went to to build up the story. And all the while we hear Ted’s story, the pants story lingers over the conversation waiting to be told.
That sense of cramming in lots of ideas and stories works well here. Robin laughs alone at her own thought that the pants story couldn’t be funnier than a monkey in two tuxedos -“What, did he forgot he put the first one on? Stupid monkey!” Barney too loses his train of thought in convincing fashion as he heads off on a diatribe about how Ted should be more like him. Then in the midst of Ted’s story about Karen, Barney enlightens us as to the four reasons to have lunch with your ex (see Comic Highlight).
Finally Ted’s story about Karen keeps you guessing. Ted hasn’t been consistently characterised (see The Bad) and so you don’t know quite where his story will end up. Karen (Laura Prepon of That 70s Show fame) plays her role fine and she is so unkind to Ted that there is a fascination in seeing whether he will break or repeat his pattern with her. We also get one of those really amusing visual gags as Marshall appears in flashback in full Ultimate Warrior gear. And even a nice silly line from Ted “It was just that one night. And the next three after that and one morning. But at least I had pants on Marshall! Although actually I didn’t.”
The Bad: Ted was meant to be the centrepiece of How I Met Your Mother but he isn’t anymore. The story of how he met his wife has taken too long to tell and has drifted into wildly inappropriate stories that he would have no business telling his children. We only see glimpses of his career sporadically, so don’t really understand his day to day life. We know that earlier this season he had to up his maturity levels by accepting the role of father and husband with Stella. But since then we haven’t really had an update on his mental state or new attitude to relationships. Seeing him backslide into a relationship with Karen just feels unconvincing. You can make a case for why he might be feeling vulnerable and seek comfort in something familiar. But that story isn’t told here and he already hooked up with Robin (412), so you have to wonder how much comfort he needs. Normally he acts with some maturity (e.g. being a good older brother in 411) so it just doesn’t quite flow to see him about to get crushed again by a woman he knows is not trustworthy.
That’s the other problem with Karen. This episode tells her story pretty well. She always cheated on Ted rather than confront him directly. So why do we need to see more of their relationship? As she isn’t the “mother” we have to hope that her story leads to a greater focus on Ted’s search for a wife which is meant to be the core of the show.
Robin’s sleeping pill behaviour is bottom end lazy sitcom writing. The fact that Ted leaves her to lie on the kitchen floor doesn’t add to a sense of reality either.
But for me the worst thing about this episode is Alyson Hannigan’s acting. I know she can act (not just Buffy but in American Pie she was one consistent character) but here she is awful. Part of it is scripting, part of it isn’t. Her natural acting tone is to be sweet and kind. A kindergarten teacher at heart. But the writers constantly give her stupid things to say to try and make her funny. Her ghetto speak is about the least convincing thing I can imagine. “You gots to get got!” isn’t delivered in a ha ha way. She is genuinely angry and so is using that slang to try and make a serious point about how she feels. Worse than that though is her “angry” face straight out of first day drama classes or threatening to crush Ted’s skull which just sounds so ridiculous coming from her. Sometimes characters just aren’t funny but serve an important role in a show. Look at Carla in Scrubs, she doesn’t try to be funny all the time but she is a very important part of the show’s dynamic. Lily clearly can’t play angry or outraged in a convincing manner, so please stop writing her that way.
Comic Highlight: Barney runs through the reasons you might have lunch with an ex. It’s a funny little diversion but if you remember the episode “The Platinum Rule” (311 which I rated highly) then it is even better. Reason number two to have lunch with an ex is to kill them, says Barney. We flash to him on a date with Wendy the waitress who pulls a tie out of her purse to return to Barney. He thinks it is a gun and runs out of there. In “The Platinum Rule” he was convinced that she was trying to kill him because he dumped her. Then reason number three is that you actually want to return something. So we cut to Robin with Curt Irons (also from 311) and he pulls an actual gun out and points it at her. It’s such an unexpected moment and such a clever juxtaposition that it works really well. Of course gun nut Robin had genuinely left it at his place.
How I rate your episode: Despite its foolish mistakes, this is a solid episode of comedy. Quantity, not quality, but you still get enough to keep you happily occupied.
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