Monsters of Television

“Oh, none for him. He’s stuffed.”

The gang all gussied up. And grown up.

This is weird: I don’t have a single complaint.

I’ve been abused by the show since last season, and this season hasn’t shaped up to be much better (I liked portions of “Baby Talk” but found the episode on the whole to be blah). As a result, I’m super-wary of the fact that I really enjoyed this episode. I’m worried it’s just going to punch me in the gonads and the wiener when the next new episode airs.

That’s how far the show has fallen for me: I’m worried that a good thing like this episode means I’m just setting myself up to be disappointed again.

At the same time, my relationship with the show is perhaps reflective of how the characters themselves are growing. Maybe I’m engaging in some self-rationalization here, but the as the shown has grown, I’ve become increasingly frustrated with it much in the same way Lily feels frustrated, nay, betrayed by the fact that Marshall has decided (for now) to be Corporate Marshall instead of College Marshall.

Last night, to help calm myself down after my family emergency, I popped half an AmBien and turned on “Showdown” and “Something Blue” from season 2. Admittedly, I picked two really good episodes, but as I drifted off to sleep I thought to myself how much tighter, funnier, and emotional the show used to be. Even though I knew they had broken up, I still found myself caught up in the story of how Robin and Ted broke up, and despite knowing every gag, Barney’s training for The Price is Right was hilarious.

And so as I watched Lily talk to College Marshall, I realized that old episodes are kind of like museum exhibits: they get dusted off and enjoyed when needed, but if you only look at history, you miss all the new stuff going on around you. Sure, we can learn things from history, that’s certainly true, but we’re always pushing forward, staking out new ground for ourselves, trying new things and figuring out who we are.

And televisions shows are like that. I’ve been frustrated with HIMYM for a while now because it wasn’t the show encapsulated on my DVDs or in my memories, but the show has been pushing itself in directions it needs to tell its story. It was always a show about people growing up and starting lives, and there are ups and downs in that process. Sometimes lives stall (last season) and sometimes they need a kick in the pants to get themselves going again (this episode).

So I watched with laughter and enjoyment as Barney and Robin did a silly thing (something we’ve all always wanted to do, don’t lie) to have it end up paying off emotionally (like having a marching band in the bar end up at the airport) is the kind of move this show executes really well (and it ties into that horrible episode about James’ dad and Barney’s potential emotional arc for the season).

The back-and-forth with Ted and Zoey worked okay for me (not the show’s fault I don’t particularly find Jennifer Morrison to be interesting as an actor). Zoey’s clearly not the mother, so there’s not much suspense to this relationship, but the show, I think, has shifted that game from “Is she the mother?” to “How does she help Ted meet with mother?”, which I think helps provide the series, especially at this stage in its life, with helpful boost to its Seasonal Gals’ agencies.

The conflict between Lily and Marshall was, however, clearly my favorite. It felt like a genuine frustration between the couple, even if I knew it would be resolved by the episode’s end. But as they’re growing up faster than anyone, they’re the ones most likely to start looking back. Even more though, I like that it was Lily, not Marshall, who wanted things to be where they were in college. Marshall, despite being the goofier of the two, has always come off as the more responsible, realistic of the two, and I love that that thread continues here

But it was the overall structure of the episode that pleased me. Everything was paid off, from Barney’s absurd story about the blue whale to Zoey’s voice recorder to Ted’s immaturity with words to the architectural sound effect. In an episode rife with these types of plot devices, to pay them all off in 30 minutes in an incredibly impressive feat, especially when the show seemed to have forgotten how to do that.

There are bad seasons, yes, but maybe abandoning a show when it doesn’t feel like it’s living up to that exhibit in your mind or on your shelf or on syndication isn’t always the best idea. We certainly do have better things to do with our time, and other options with how to spend it (I watched House, a show I haven’t watched in a year, instead of this episode), but maybe we owe it to the show that gave us that history to trust in its future.

FINAL THOUGHTS

• A van Smoot! AWESOME. Sandwiches as joints/bongs. AWESOME. I love call backs.
• Barney’s entire about the blue whale? Couldn’t help but think it that it all happened just as Walt, from The Squid and the Whale, arrived in the museum at the end of the film. No? No one buying that cross-over? Okay.