Monsters of Television

“Boutineer is French for ‘Booty is near.’“

If there’s one thing that How I Met Your Mother does well it’s delay pleasure. Sadly, sometimes the show sometimes can’t sustain the build up and the climax just kind of peters out.  It happens to the best of shows, so I’m willing forgive it every now and then. At least this time the show actually had some game compared to earlier episodes this season.

…That sound really dirty, didn’t it?

Let’s talk about narrative delay and Robin Sparkles. HIMYM is built on narrative delay: it keeps stalling the reveal of the mother, building and building, doling out little bits of information (umbrellas, ankles, buses, classroom attendance) to keep us satisfied, and still coming back for more each week. Indeed, HIMYM is like any other enigma show. It just happens to be (intentionally) funny.

“Glitter” encapsulates this whole approach within in a single episode. It gives us little bits of the over-sexed SpaceTeens throughout the course of the episode, promising something truly amazing with the song “Two Beavers (Are Better Than One).” And those little bits are funny. Sure, sex jokes can be impossibly easy…to write, but if you string together enough of them (and include Alan Thicke…hehehe…Thicke…), then you kind of can’t help but at least chuckle at the absurdity of the chain.

But all the build up leads to a very disappointing episode tag. I had been promise to see Robin Sparkles and Jessica Glitter sing “Two Beavers” by the end of the episode. Needless to say, the reunion sing-along didn’t live up to the expectations the episode primed me for. Sure, there were hockey players, a grizzly bear, a man who I can only assume was supposed to be Stephen Harper (I didn’t have to look that up either! Thanks, NPR!), and, of course, a robot (with a beer!). This is funny, but was as funny as it could’ve been had we seen the actual version.

But it gets to a more complicated issue at play in the episode which is that of Robin Sparkles. For the first two appearances, Robin Sparkles was very closely tied to Robin’s identity and her history, be it as an teen identity or as an old romance. Here, Robin Sparkles isn’t tied as strongly to Robin, which is frustrating. While Robin Sparkles’ presence in the episode creates the necessary bridge to remedy the conflict between Lily and Robin, she wasn’t essential to the conflict: any other plot device could’ve been used and the beat in the episode would’ve worked just fine.

The main fumble they make is having Lily find Jessica Glitter to resolve the issue instead of having Robin seek out Glitter. It, like the episode tag, deflates the punch of the episode for me. I understand the why behind, so as to show that Jessica, not Robin, was the one with the problem, but having Robin be anxious about the collapse of her friendship with Lily would’ve been nice to see as well. Such an angle reward may’ve rewarded Robin Sparkles’ appearance in the episode.

The rest of the episode worked okay, though was essentially a rehash of “Sandcastles in the Sand.” If you remember in that episode, Lily reverts back to her high school self when Michelle stops by (to parallel Robin’s regression around Simon). Here, we have Ted and Punchy falling back into them old selves. There’s not much of pay off to this, either, since I don’t really find the whole “Oh, so you’re okay? I thought you were the loser.” thing to be all that interesting or valuable a beat for Ted to go through.

While I laughed a good bit during the Space Teens segments (porn puns and math puns?!), the episode as whole didn’t really click. So the trend continues:  the third part of any trilogy is the weakest one. Rest in peace, Robin Sparkles.

FINAL THOUGHTS

• Nice follow through on both the slap threat and the fact that Barney uses 83 percent as his go-to made up statistic.
• Guy who played Punchy looks like an uncanny Joshua Gomez. He’s also no where nearly as funny.