Monsters of Television

“So unobservant.”

I, along with many others, have been pummeling How I Met Your Mother for the past 10 episodes due to their mishandling over the Barney/Robin break-up. No fall out, barely an acknowledgement of it. Barney went back to being Barney and Robin went back to thinking she was the prettiest girl in the room and being a bit oblivious.

It turns out that we, the audience, were the oblivious ones (along with Ted, Marshall, and Barney). Robin was going through a mourning period off-screen for months now (four to be exact), and it all came to a head after Barney compared a random hook-up as a “younger Robin” with bigger, shapelier breasts.

Now I have to get vomit stains out of the inside of my stormtrooper helmet (sadly that’s not the first time I’ve typed that sentence).

The narrative structure of HIMYM allows for the show to engage in this kind of doubling-back, addressing things as they become important. Consider the Ted/Robin break-up from season 2 and its ramifications in season 3. Acknowledgment of the break-up in season 2 occurs slowly (the show even hints that they break up before Barney’s brother get married in “Singles Stamina”), but within the context of Lily and Marshall’s wedding that feels organic and appropriate (they didn’t want to ruin the wedding). Through the start of season 3, we’re given a variety of fall-outs, from Gael to Ted’s excessive attempts to hook up with women to the Slapsgiving resolution that reinstates their friendship.

The Barney/Robin break-up was handled with less finesse (fatsuits are lazy writing), and a too quick a return (by which I mean, in the same episode as the break-up) to the status quo of a shallow, womanizing Barney. Is it funnier? Yes. But did it fully acknowledge the dramatic scope that we’ve come to expect from the show? No.

It’s a struggle I’ve been having with the show recently. HIMYM embraces conventions of the sitcom, but it’s a sitcom that challenges other conventions to create a show unlike the other multi-camera sitcoms on CBS’s line-up. So when the show fell into a sitcom trap of everything being reset fairly quickly to serve the need for funny instead of the need for character, I honestly felt that the show had left behind what set it apart from the other “traditional” sitcoms, which was merging comedy and character together in smart, dramatic ways.

With “Of Course,” we have the show acknowledging their mishandling of the break-up (I don’t think they expected the outcry about it, at least from critics) by retconning Robin’s behavior as signs of her trouble with the break-up. The problem with the retcon is that it is rather flimsily executed through a brief montage (since it hadn’t been built into earlier episodes, like the Ted/Robin break-up) and that we need Lily to tell us this information. That Lily, the worst secret keeper in the universe, managed to sit on this bit of gossip is inconsistent with her character.

That it took Ted’s super date to cause Robin to go off the rails enough for everyone to notice was a bit weird. She must know that the super date is just a means to an end to land Anita in bed, and not a grand move to show a girl how special she really is (which, if this date is so super, why is Ted still single?). That Barney gives Robin and Don the super date doesn’t fully absolve him of his jackassery (vomiting in his stormtrooper helmet is actually a bigger step forward for him, I think), but I think it’s a decent first step.

The problem, of course (unintentional name drop of the episode; it’s a writing tic), is whether or not the show will follow through with this. Barney rejecting Anita was another step forward, but it’s whether or not the show will allow Barney some real introspection, and perhaps a modicum of change, or just go back to him being Barney.

FINAL THOUGHTS

• “You dumb slut” is going to get some phone calls from Atlanta’s Rocky Horror Picture Show talk-back troupe. It’s one of their catch-phrases, and I’m sure they have a Media Commons protection on it.
• Ted’s “Super Date Song” was very cool. Radnor shouldn’t sing too often, but the song worked well enough that it didn’t matter in the long run.
• Poor Mike the Cameraman. First abused by Robin and now Anita. The man needs to suit up.
• Line of the night: “And frankly I’m still angry at the Empire.”
• Ahem. “Bang, bang, bangety bang. Bang, bang, bang bangety bang.” That is all.