Monsters of Television

“He reaches a kind of sad clarity.”

I’m trying to be more optimistic as opposed to angry and ranty about HIMYM. I mean, I have to pace myself for the last two episodes of the season, otherwise I’ll have no more negative words left to write. But it’s really hard when, well, the show doesn’t try and endear itself to me.

I mean, certainly, there are things I should have liked and things I did like in the episode. But, as a whole, “The Perfect Cocktail” was nothing close to perfect. In fact, I feel like the show poured gin and whisky down my throat, but didn’t bother with the daiquiris to make me feel better about myself. Nor did it give me a martini to inappropriately hit on a friend.

As has been the fashion lately, the show has provided good ideas only to never fully execute their potential. Take Marshall’s struggle to find a  job. Given that this has been his arc for past couple of episodes, I would’ve liked to have seen him one-up his old boss (“He fired him when we found him clubbing a seal in his office, with an even cuter baby seal.” was perhaps my favorite line of the episode.) or done something vaguely related to GNB and his job search. Really, I’m just searching for Marshall to get a solid dramatic arc attached to his father’s death, which the show hasn’t fully followed-up on.

Instead, this all-to-abrupt feud between Barney and Marshall begins as Marshall gets roped into the sinkhole that is the Arcadian plot (kind of). The quick jokes are funny, though Barney’s assistant with images of gross thing happening to whatever Marshall is drinking or holding or eating, became stale quickly (though structurally necessary for the tag to land). A stronger connection between this feud and the attempted exploding meatball sub debacle could have at least offered a through line to everyone’s anxieties, but it wasn’t even mentioned.

So comes the big crux of the episode, which is how alcohol affects each of the characters. This, for me, was an instance of the acting elevating the material. None of the jokes were particularly funny since the punchlines (that it was a mirror or that Ted’s beatboxing only sounds good to him) were easy to see coming, but at least each of the actors make it funny (or, in the case of the absinthe, it’s a case of special effects, music, and acting).  This type of thing is what the show normally does very well, but tied up in this narrative it just didn’t click for me as much as I genuinely wanted it to.

I don’t feel like beating the dead horse of the Ted/Zoey relationship, especially since the show is well aware of the fact that even they’re repeatedly beating it (“How did things get so screwed up?” “Of course I knew the answer to that: I was dating her.”), but, guys, come on. This is terrible. I mean, Ted is an “I love you slut“, but when he announces it to Zoey after her explanation for wanting to save the Arcadian, I wanted to throw something at the television (if I had had the energy, I might’ve). There’s no reason for him to be swayed by her story (poignant though it may be).

I think my general frustration stems from the fact that this relationship has had no arc after the two got together. The arc of hating one another was there before Ted and Zoey got together, so we’re just stuck running in circles of the same thing they’ve been doing all season. And while there’s conflict to be mined from having two people with opposite points of view on things, the season hasn’t done this well or convincingly (I’m setting aside the fact that the show did this with Robin and Ted in season 2 much much better) enough to justify the amount of time and frustrations spent on it.

It’s one thing to know she’s not the mother. It’s another to not have anything for the two characters to do, to feel. There’s never been any there there to Zoey and Ted, leaving a hollow center at many of the episodes.

FINAL THOUGHTS

• The return of the cockamouse was a great addition. I just wish I hadn’t thought “It’s the cockamouse!” when it crawled on the wall. I called it.  I’m my own worst enemy when it comes to this show now, I think. Sigh.
• Weighing me down on the alcohol stuff was that Dylan Moran has done this bit too, and was significantly funnier.
• Love that Erik Satie is getting more play on TV.
• I can only assume, since the type of martini that Lily has was never specified, that it’s the vermouth that makes her hit on Robin, not the alcohol.
• “Time is music the planets make.”
• “Can you get an STD from a prostitute’s ghost?”
• “I’ll have a mojito, and you’ll have a ‘No Seat, Ho’!”
• “You’re totally 250, baby.”
• “Your crabs have super-herpes.”
• For those keeping track at home: Red wine makes Barney self-aware and sad; Marshall gets violent on gin; Lily hits on Robin when drinking martinis; absinthe causes Robin (and now Lily) to have floaty, out-of-body experiences; Marshall (and now Barney) get really into how good looking they after a couple of daiquiris; Peppermint schnapps turns Barney into Richard Dawson; Ted thinks he becomes a super-awesome beatboxer when he has bourbon; tequila shots are just never good for anyone; and beer makes people cry and forgive one another.