Spoilers for the "How I Met Your Mother" season four premiere coming
up just as soon as I force my wife to watch "Hoosiers" again...
Ah, my beloved "HIMYM" is back, and even a B+ episode like "Do I Know
You?" was simply de... wait for it... lightful!
The Ted and Stella story had its moments, particularly anything
involving Marshall being creepy (hiding behind the couch was a good
gag) or Ted's various interactions with 15-Year-Old Ted (high-fiving
himself, imagining the high school quarterback ganking his proposal
with a "What's up, turd?"), which continued the series' motif of "Ted
Mosby is unstuck in time." And I can certainly relate to the
existential dilemma of wanting the woman I love to love the same stuff
I love (see above "Hoosiers" reference, or my semi-successful attempt
to get her to read "Astro City").
Overall, though, it ran into a couple of problems. First, Josh Radnor
is always in danger of pu****ng Ted's neediness into unpleasant
territory, and he came right up to the line several times here.
Second, there's that matter of whether or not Stella is The Mother. I
like Sarah Chalke a lot, and think she and Radnor work well together,
but the way the show is structured makes it harder and harder to play
the Is She Or Isn't She? game with Ted's girlfriends, particularly one
where he's in this deep. I spend too much time trying to parse Future
Ted's narration and not enough on just engaging with the story.
But any episode with Barney swooning over a woman while still
retaining his essential Barney-ness is a keeper, regardless of the A-
story. Every time I feared that they were making him soft, another hot
babe would wander through his apartment while he was whining about
feelings to Lily, culminiating in the brilliant, rom-com-spoofing
"Bimbos make me want to be a better man" monologue. Neil Patrick
Harris had a lot of great moments throughout, whether it was him
swaying his legs around the kitchen like a lovestruck 12-year-old girl
or his high-pitched, indecipherable voicemail message to Robin. ("You
left a voice, but it wasn't male.")
So here's the question: where do you want this story to go? NPH and
Cobie Smulders have great chemistry, and I think the writers have
shown here that they can stay true to Barney while placing him in a
more sincere storyline, but how does this all work from Robin's end?
How does Robin get with Barney without hating herself or looking like
a fool?
Some other thoughts on "Do I Know You?":
=95 Outside of the running gags about Canada and her love of guns, the
writers don't always know what to do to make Robin funny, but her
increasing dismay at those awful news teases ("Stay tuned for the
full... scoop... Really?!?") was hilarious.
=95 Craig Thomas lied to me. No full frontal ****ity for Jason Segel, and
no crotch-grabbing for Alyson Hannigan. Sigh...
=95 They may have been neither **** nor gender-bending, but Segel and
Hannigan did some good work in sup****t of the others, before getting
the final punchline of the episode, with Lily swapping out
"rhinoceros" for "chimichanga" for her "We must have *** right now"
code word. And speaking of which, Barney's explanation of the time-to-
word ratio necessary to place booty call was the most quintessentially
"HIMYM" moment of the whole episode.
=95 Is the Carter the Great poster in Barney's apartment new? I know we
haven't been there very often, but I don't remember seeing it before.
I'd like to think that Barney was a fan of Glen David Gold's wonderful
novel "Carter Beats the Devil," but my guess is it's just a production
design hat tip to Carter Bays.
What did everybody else think?
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