Monsters of Television

“I just kept driving forward, hoping for the best.”

Oh masculinity. Always in crisis.

“Desperation Day” is solid, provides more than a few chuckles (and CBS also gave a last minute Valentine’s Day gift idea), and begins to wrap up the inital impact of Mr. Ericksen’s death. Which in turn helps Ted resolve an issue with Zoey that probably should’ve been drawn out over multiple episodes.

Oh, and Barney hits on women some more while Lily does what we’ve all done at one point or another and pretend that a body pillow is a significant other. You know, the usual stuff.

I wasn’t a fan of how the show killed off Mr. Ericksen (all too suddenly and loaded with an odd gimmick). After thinking about it some more, while I still don’t like how the show did it, I was willing to allow it to play out so long as it had an impact on these characters, that character growth came as a result of this random plot development. And now that the work has been done, the character development needs to begin.

I don’t mind seeing Marshall regress to his boyhood self to cope with his dad’s death. It works for me, and is in keeping with Marshall as an emotional character. So watching him go on “the sickest Dr. Mario run” of his life while his mother made Hot Pockets felt fairly natural for me. Yes, Marshall is often a mature guy, but he’s also prone to hunting down the best burger in New York and trimming off a massive patch of his hair, so it feels consistent.

Indeed, it’s that maturity that helps Marshall bring Ted to his senses about Zoey and thus himself. He’s able to see both his situation and Ted’s and draw the connection between running away from something that’s a not exactly easy. The difference between these two things, however, is that Marshall’s situation is decidedly sad and time to grieve and cope is expected. Ted’s story, however, is just kind of pathetic.

Part of this is the rushed nature of the storyline of how quickly Ted and Zoey intend to progress with their relationship. This could’ve created some legitimate drama for Ted and Zoey, with her being recently divorced and him being left at the altar. There’s avenues to explore here, as they navigate this stage in their lives (just as Marshall will be forced to decide what kind of parent he wants to be now that his mentor is dead) and instead the episode allows this to be resolved too quickly and neatly. Even within the episode, the plot doesn’t seem to have stakes, and I’m left wondering why I need to care beyond this being the seasonal relationship.

The rest of the episode is fairly standard Valentine’s Day sitcom-y fare. Robin protests the holiday with friends only to be left alone when her friends cave to Barney’s desperation day idea. Meanwhile, the non-romantic Barney gets suckered into a date with Robin’s other friend at a laser tag tournament. I like this development for Barney, provided there’s good enough follow-through with Nora. I’d kind of hate for the woman who smells like rain to disappear so quickly.

FINAL THOUGHTS

• Predator is a damn fine Valentine’s Day tradition.
• I had the Dr. Mario theme in my head all day today because of this.
• I’m assuming they’re conserving Jennifer Morrison for the bigger deal episodes, but if you’re going to use her for something like this, actually have it matter.