How I Met Your Mother - Trilogy Time

I was half-watching How I Met Your Mother last night - because How I Met Your Mother merits no more than half-watching these days. Thankfully my sister, who was watching with me and paying slightly more attention to the episode, kept me straight on the time shifts. Overall, it was a weak episode - essentially an episode of How I Met Your Mother about how much How I Met Your Mother likes to play with time shifts - but not uneventful and surprisingly hopeful.

I've long assumed that the future wedding at which future Ted meets the future mother of his children is the nuptials of Barney and Robin. In fact, we know that Barney is the groom and Ted is his best man. But last night made me question that assumption.

Barney and Quinn work. The idea of Barney falling in love with a stripper is a bit clunky - it takes the lovable absurdity of his character a step too far - but Quinn's personality meshes so well with Barney's that it fails to distract me from enjoying their on-screen chemistry. I'm even starting to believe we might be saved from a dreaded Barney-Robin rekindling. Here's to hoping...

How I Met Your Mother - The Exploding Meatball Sub

I continue to watch How I Met Your Mother purely to marvel at how bad a television show it has become. Ten minutes in, "The Exploding Meatball Sub" is kinda disappointing me in that it's not altogether awful. Don't get me wrong, the Ted-Zoe relationship is agonizingly bad TV, Barney is merely a bit part in this episode (so far) after the writers initiated pertinent story arcs for his character in recent episodes, and the notion of Marshall and Lilly as the perfect couple* is disgraceful. But Robin's actually had some likable moments, Marshall quitting his job story arc shows some promise, and it appears we may thankfully be nearing the end of Zoe's role on the show.

Despite the annoyance of Lilly's meltdown and impromptu trip to Spain, it does raise valuable themes in the episode. Marshall quitting his job is not exactly responsible behavior for a grown man wanting to start a family. Simultaneously, he does need to be happy (or at least should be) if he's going to start a family, and it's good to see Marshall reconcile these points by the end. On the other hand, Ted having relationship goggles for Zoe brings the show back down to its usual level of crappiness in the end.

*Lilly's character was cute in the early seasons because of her naivety and humorous mix of innocence and raunchiness. Now she's an insufferable know-it-all who treats Marshall like a pet dog, not a husband.

I think I reached the point with HIMYM tonight where the show is just not bad enough. It's still trying to be meaningful and real, but I fear it's gone too far in the wrong direction to pull off those traits now or in the future. Instead, HIMYM may be better served by going for the so-bad-it's-good effect.