Episode 8 - Woooo!
12 January 2009
Review
Synopsis: Barney manages to get Ted the contract to build the new Goliath National Bank building, although Marshall has to twist his arm. Lily introduces Robin to her friend Jillian and they discover that she is a “Woo girl.” The Good: Hopefully the Goliath Building contract will drive forward some stories about the careers of the guys. The moral of the “Woo girl” story makes sense and the subtitles to their woos spell it out in an effective way. It’s nice to see Bilson working at Barney’s corporation. Using a character we have already seen makes the show seem more real (see 117 and 315). The Bad: But that is why I am so hard on How I Met Your Mother. The moral of the story is that when girls woo, it is a cry for some happiness as an escape from their day to day problems. Woo girls isn’t a made up idea, it is something that any bar-going adult can relate to. The moral is meant to make us feel sympathy for Robin and confirms that the writers intended us to take the story seriously. Well if they want us to take the story seriously and engage our emotions then they can’t write such terrible scripts. Lily and Robin are portrayed as real people and yet their conversations are littered with exaggerations and silly jokes that sound completely out of place. Marshall understanding Robin’s involved code language is an exaggeration that sounds implausible. The jokes about woo’s being like Jews or “Talk-blocking” (instead of Cock-blocking) are so jarring because they don’t sound like something Robin would naturally say. Ditto her and Lily rhyming their sentences with the word Woo. It sound incredibly forced and again nothing like how these supposedly real people would talk. Lily calling all the girls prostitutes with STDs is another example. The writers find it so hard to fit their humour into real sounding dialogue that they end up ruining every scene with this fake implausible dialogue. On the guys side things aren’t much better. The idea of drinking beer at work makes sense for Marshall and Barney’s characters. But it doesn’t make any sense that they would walk out on meetings to go do that. Again the exaggeration really hurts the show. Are we really supposed to believe that Barney (who is high up in the company and who must therefore behave professionally) or Marshall (who just started working there and so can’t afford to slack off) would really walk out on a meeting and go drinking for ten minutes or more? If we aren’t supposed to take these things seriously then the writers can’t have the moral-of-the-story bit at the end where we are supposed to care about Barney being a good friend to Ted. The ridiculous Sven collective and their dinosaur building is equally silly. Though because Barney doesn’t have a normal moral compass, his behaviour is plausible. Comic Highlight: Barney having been strapped to the mechanical bull for three hours looks tired and relieved to be released. When he learns that that is a bar record his cockiness returns “That’s right ladies!” he says as he dismounts and immediately collapses onto the floor. Of course the writers have him collapse a couple of more times to squeeze the fun out of the original fall. How I rate your episode: Uh. More of the same unfortunately. This is a show with an identity problem. The producers are seemingly incapable of being funny and serious at the same time.
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