Monsters of Television

“I don’t think you know what Spain is.”

So that episode felt relatively pointless, and I’m not entirely sure where to begin with how many kinds of frustrating the episode was.

Maybe with the quickly (semi-)resolved Lily is frustrated plot that kind of nearly recycled the season 1 finale (different motivations, but same almost result)? Or Barney’s latent emotional issues? Or with the fact that Zoey is, as we all kind of suspected, a really annoying, overly challenging person, and that Ted is going to come to completely and utterly loathe this woman (except we already knew that from a previous episode).

On the upside, Robin broke up with Scooby.

Barney’s emotional challenges are perhaps the hardest to pull off, and as a result the humor derived from them in this episode feels a little bit cheap. Instead of letting Barney have a nice emotional beat in this episode as he relates Marshall leaving GNB to go work for the NRDC to reconnecting with his father, and working through those issues a little, we get occasionally amusing histrionics from Barney (watching someone destroy a room is always funny, except when it’s sad). Topping it off is the fact that it feels like the exploding meatball sub was a perfectly good idea that wasn’t given its due, much like the laser tag tournament from earlier in the season. It’s disappointing, especially given the strength of “Legen-daddy,” that this beat would be played so fast and loose.

Ted and Zoey’s plot of constantly challenging one another, all the way down to their differing, high-minded interpretations of Tommy Boy (Ted’s reading is correct, by the way), could’ve been an interesting tension spot for the rest of the season to really run on except that we already know that they break up, and they were really horrible for one another. And now the rest of the season will be spent hammering away at how dreadful the relationship is. For me, it’s already stretching credibility that Ted and Zoey are together while Zoey is still trying to stop his building, but for the “graduation goggles” device (also known as “season finale goggles” circa  1995 until, well, has it gone out of fashion?) to swoop in and keep Zoey around longer? Blah.

But most frustrating was the Marshall and Lily story, mainly because, much like the Barney story, there’s a real chance for some actual emotional beats for these characters, and the script largely wastes them by falling back to Lily running away from a relationship problem like she did at the end of season 1, and for Lily not talking to Marshall. I like the ideas behind, particularly that Lily feels that it’s her job to support Marshall since his dad died and the stress of trying to get pregnant, but by side-stepping the conflict by A) having Lily return and B) having Marshall wise up about needing a paycheck, the episode minimizes that support has its price, and that it should be never just one person giving all the support.

I like idea that this season is about how everything new is good (potential spoilers in that article, depending on your degree of spoiler-phobia), but I don’t feel like the show hasn’t done a good job of showcasing the struggles of dealing with new jobs, new challenges in relationships, and the rest of the ups and downs of life this season. It stuck the landing on the death of Marshall’s dad. Perhaps it can stick the landing in the next couple of episodes, too?

FINAL THOUGHTS

• Robin’s fictional story her and her father about murdering a man was pretty well-delivered. We’ll add extra humor to it since her father is now Ray Wise.