Monsters of Television

“willem. DAFOOOOOOOOOOE!”

When did “douchey” become synonymous with “pretentious”? Did I miss that new edition of the thesaurus? “Robots Vs. Wrestlers” sets up this relationship pretty quickly, and as a result the episode engages in some not-so-subtle class conversations (you don’t get any less subtle than naming Michael York’s character Jefferson Van Smoot). But they’re not fully developed or developed in a way that makes a lot of sense. And then there’s the newest show ultimatum that doesn’t really work either. And Robin’s unmotivated return to the group at the end of the episode.

There are still a number of funny bits in “Robots Vs. Wrestlers,” but the episode as a whole is a bit of a mixed bag.

The show, again, has decided to make Ted into its butt monkey. Last week it the supposed gayness of Ted. This week it is his pretentious, nay, DOUCHEY, mentality that the show decides to emphasize for the sake of the episode’s humor. Now, Ted’s always been of a snob, but not a blow-hard one. His architecture knowledge (however culled from Wikipedia it may be by the writers), is representative of his life’s passion. Indeed, no one accuses Barney of being a douche when he talks about his various social rules or when Robin talks on and on about Canada. But then these aren’t “high-minded” things.

The show has set up Ted a pretentious poser (College Ted and his spectacles), and it’s telling that in a room full of intellectuals, Ted is able to fit in, despite still being a guy who can make penis jokes and loves Star Wars. But the show seems to forget these things in their effort for Ted to have a self-realization about being a douche while quoting Dante’s Inferno in Italian. But who knew Ted could speak Italian before this episode? No one, and that’s why this is a bit sloppy.

The episode doesn’t help the case by having Lily, Marshall, and Barney come off looking like the only likable people in the room. And their bits of business at the party are pretty funny, including Marshall’s longest mumbled comeback in the history of the world: “His wife’s a 500 year old relic who hasn’t been struck since W.S. Gilbert hit it at the London premiere of the Mikado in 1885.” And that Barney keeps striking out because they’re smarter than him or he’s too young (I knew Huffington liked ’em young and nubile!) is amusing, but might’ve played a bit more. Their sequences at the party help make Ted look all the worse for fitting in.

But then there’s the narrative laziness that comes into the episode. Lily and Marshall’s decision to not start trying to have a kid until they see Barney’s doppleganger (who cannot compare to to any of the dopplegangers thus far, or to Hippie Barney) seems oddly arbitrary and who knows when the hell they’ll see the person? And while the show has always enjoyed these types of narrative moves, this one is a pretty big one to set up, especially since it’s tied to character development and not finding out where a goat came from.

Finally, Robin’s return at the end of the episode made zero sense. We see no realization that she’s decided it’s okay to start hanging out with her two exes again. It’s lazy. My only guess is that we’ll double back at some point in the course of the next two episodes to find out that she and Ron had some occur that led her to head back to the bar and buy a round of drinks. But it’s done in such a ham-fisted way that it only reinforces how poorly this show is handling its characters this season. With two episodes left, it’ll be interesting to see if the show can bring it all together.

FINAL THOUGHTS

• I freely admit I would’ve been at home in that party, though they would’ve asked me to leave because I would’ve been yelling at Peter Bogdanovich all night (give the auteur theory a rest, okay?) and probably kicked him in the shins for The Cat’s Meow (Eddie Izzard as Chaplin? Really?).
• Radnor’s line read of “That’s my favorite madrigal!” was great.
• Given that the season finale is called Dopplegangers, I suspect we’ll see Barney’s other soon enough.
• I totally want to go to something called Robots Vs. Wrestlers. Why wouldn’t you want to go see that?