Monsters of Television

“Ted, let me show you my harpoon collection.”

“The Mermaid Theory” is not a bad episode, but it’s not particularly great either. If anything, it’s a lazily funny episode of HIMYM, which seems to a trend the show keeps falling into (“Glitter”, “Baby Talk”) this season. The show has ideas, but they never really reach hilarious or emotionally strong heights that the show used to be able to achieve without a hiccup.

If anything, the episode’s three-plot structure only makes clear the its failings and its strengths.

We’ll start with Lily and Barney. This isn’t the first time Future Ted has forgotten bits of a story (“How I Met Everyone Else”, all the goat stories), but unlike in previous instances, the forgotten bits don’t really contribute anything to the plot. Yes, calling the woman Blah-Blah wasn’t essential, but it tied back to Present Ted’s bad memory of Past Ted and his supposed making out with Lily in college, bringing the joke full circle. I’m not sure exactly what purpose the argument between Barney and Lily served, other than to set up the narrative tease of why Ted ends up in a fetching sea foam green dress.

Which leads us to Ted and the Captain. This story worked well enough, though that is in large part due to the Kyle MacLachlan being very game for a silly story and the cold open’s effective set up. Indeed, apart from the next section, the cold open was my favorite bit, particularly the “He hates that he loves them” response to the Jonas brothers. In regards to the actual boating itself, the episode falls back to dangerous nautical turns of phrase in the much the same way it turned to double entendres in “Glitter.” These work well, again, because of MacLachlan’s complete dedication to making them so vaguely sinister and commonplace at the same time, but they never land as well as they could simply because the reaction shots of Ted never really sell them.

Finally there’s Robin and Marshall hanging out. The concept itself is fairly sound as I can only think of one episode prior to this one (“Three Days of Snow”) where the two have a story together. There’s good comedy here, particularly the twitchy eye exchange for whatever reason really tickled my funny bone. But the plot, like the other two before, returns to what were solid ideas a while back, but are not improved upon here. The story of how mermaids came to be, complete with Harris and Segel in pirate garb, is funny for the costuming and the attempting fist-hook bump, but I think the show has gone to comically-inspired costuming well one too many times with a decent variation.

That said, the manatee costume, for sheer novelty, was pretty damn funny. It made their respective wearers look adorable and creepy at the same time, so thumbs up on that move. Likewise, the actual theory, that everyone has a set clock before they become attractive, is the kind of dating/sex/relationship thing the show does well, but I feel it gets bogged down by having it center on Robin and Marshall as opposed to on Ted and Zoey.

All in all, this is a poor man’s version of the three things that the show has done well in the past, but failed to really execute well in this episode.

FINAL THOUGHTS

• “Rule no. 1: Never use the husband’s condoms. It’s rude.” Words to live by.
• “You’re a big stupid octopus head!”
• “You’re a big stupid octopus face!”
• Myles McNutt remembered “Little Minnesota”, which is all about Robin and Marshall. I freely admit to having completely forgotten about this episode. It only adds to my point that this episode is a paler version of better HIMYM episodes. And that I am, perhaps, a pale version of a HIMYM fan.