Episode 14 - The Final Four
12 January 2009
Review
Synopsis: Barney discovers he is being followed around by a woman. She is warning other women he is trying to seduce about what he is really like. In order to discover her identity he runs a tournament for the women to work out who has most reason to hate him. He and Lily then track down the final four and discover that none of them is the woman. Robin suggests setting a trap but it still doesn’t catch her.
The Good: For the second episode running the show focuses on one plot only. Again we benefit from having a fully fleshed out story, where we get to see a proper beginning, middle and end. As ever theme episodes about sex play well with a certain audience and lend themselves to obvious humour.
How I Met Your Mother has always delivered mysteries pretty well and this one is intriguing. Throughout you are left to wonder who the mystery girl will be and you may even think Lily is setting him up from the start.
Barney is a good sit com actor. His delivery is confident and funny. By getting his own episode he gets loads of good scenes to play with. His evil reasons for going to the hardware and pet stores are fun, especially when the others try to guess why he went to the museum. In that scene he plays blind well, crossing his eyes and amusingly walking into a man repeatedly.
The use of Meg (from 307) as one of the final four is pretty funny. She has a very real reason to hate him but behaves consistently with what we saw of her. Lily’s disgust when he “forgives” her and starts kissing her is fun and they also get some good mileage out of the other three girls.
Setting a trap at the end is a lot of fun. Marshall’s nerves and Robin laughing while lying are both well acted. It’s an example of how well the other characters are used here. They contribute to the plot when needed and are not forced into scenes as they could have been. The fact that the story is not over by the end is really good. It saves us from feeling ripped off and implies that the story is connected to the search for Ted’s kids’ mother. By making stories like this a part of the overall arc, it makes them feel more significant.
The Bad: Why would Ted ever tell this story to his kids? Even if connected to how he met their mother, we can assume it must have been heavily edited to be even approaching appropriate.
The morality and tone of this episode are very mixed and suggest a writing team with too many voices and not enough focus.
As I have mentioned before (307), it’s difficult to laugh too much at Barney sometimes. His cruelty to women is something he enjoys and the show celebrates in many ways. They give it a very prominent role in the show as a source of humour and plots. Here we sit through the other friends arguing over one scam after another where girls were fed lies and exploited. After the tournament Marshall and Ted are feeling sad which makes sense after all the depravity. Lily of course follows him around scolding him which is also good to see.
But there are some very odd choices in the mix as well. Robin says these girls knew what they were getting into, if they were willing to do dirty things with him. But the show makes it seem that the vast majority were being deceived. If he got them to be sexually wild with him under false pretences, does that not give them the right to be angry with him? It’s a slightly odd defence.
Then there is the use of Anna (from 204), who is included for a joke about Barney screwing over Ted. It makes sense to include girls we have seen before. It gives us a stronger connection to the story but in this case it is the wrong choice. There is no reason this girl would be angrier than all the others he deceived. All he lied about were his name and job; she clearly wanted to sleep with him anyway.
When apologising to the girl at the end Barney talks about potentially selling a woman. That joke is way beyond the line. The joke implies slavery and is far too serious a remark to be in this show. His apology is hardly redemption either. It’s nice to see him say sorry for what he has done but it doesn’t make up for all the deceit. It’s also a strange apology. It’s a pretty common joke in sitcoms that drunken sex can make people forget who they have slept with. Yet Barney implies forgetting a girl he slept with is somehow worse than the horrible things he has done.
From slavery to silliness. The final scene involves a girl acting completely ditzy by believing that he is an astronaut and that an asteroid is going to hit the Earth. That is a childish joke which we aren’t meant to take seriously. We also see the group arguing over former cons of Barney’s which range from sounding stupid to sounding very cruel. The tone is consequently all over the place and the result is therefore less meaningful than it could be.
Comic Highlight: Lily meets Barney’s stalker and tries to describe her to him:
L: “She had blonde hair, boobs, kind of trashy.”
B: “Dead in the eyes with an aura of self loathing and despair?”
L: “Yes!”
B: “That’s all of them.”
How I rate your episode: Barney remains the best thing How I Met Your Mother offers. He is the only character who is consistently funny and believable. It’s ironic that he is so convincing because his affairs with women are presented in a way which isn’t meant to be taken seriously. Barney doesn’t learn his lesson and by the end is back to normal. Without true character development, fans won’t build a connection to this show beyond a casual enjoyment. So this episode remains just casually enjoyable.
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