“How I Met Your Mother” — Spoiler Alert!
It sounds like you’re carrying gravel in a metal pail.
This one snuck up on me. The first act was very Friends ‘97, with the cast getting into some wacky and crazy situations, certain to be resolved in a cool twenty minutes. Marshall wanted to check if he passed the Bar exam, but lost his password. Ted was excited about a new girlfriend but couldn’t understand why his friends hated her. Typical sitcomy stuff, and not terribly funny. More after the jump…
But then things turned for the better — something that sadly never happens on television. Turning is always for the worse. Why is that? As soon as Marshall shattered Ted’s image of his new girl (complete with blue-index-card-through-the-window sound effects) the episode really took off as everyone in the cast began to shatter the image of everyone else.
The best of these was the realization that Lily is a “loud chewer” and the resulting comments made about it (”It sounds like a power drill in a pencil sharpener” “Are you chewing dry-wall screws?”). I don’t know if this type of gag can really be attributed to him, but it struck me as very Apatow-esque. In “40 Year Old Virgin” and “Knocked Up” many of the biggest laughs were simply a group of characters ganging up on another (”You look like Shoe-bomber Richard Reed” “Whatever Scorsese on coke”), which is precisely what happened in this episode with Lily (it also happened during the season premiere with the various states of Ted’s post-break-up-beard facial hair).
The other shattering realizations were Robin frequently misusing the word “literally” (”Don’t they teach grammar in Canada?”), Marshall decision to frequently sing about what he’s doing, Ted being the ubiquitous “correction guy” (a guy I think we all know — actually…), and Barney’s frequent use of catchphrases and high-talking. These of course culminated in a climactic moment of singing, correcting, being literal, chewing loudly and talking high (with catch-phrases) — oh, and there was a viral video about a dog pooping on a baby.
By the episode’s end I was quite pleased. While it started as Friends (or any number of friend-based sitcoms) it ended as pure How I Met Your Mother. Yay.
Tags: CBS, How I Met Your Mother
