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Tuesday, February 25, 2014

How I Met Your Mother 9x18: Rally


I don't know. Maybe it was the Olympics-induced break, or the fact that this episode addressed a plot point I'd assumed the show would ignore (Barney being ridiculously hung over the day of his wedding), or the novelty of seeing the entire cast together after so much time spent fractured this season, or just the casual lesbianism, but I enjoyed it. It wasn't the funniest episode, nor the most groundbreaking or revelatory, but I chuckled a few times and didn't actively dislike the characters throughout. A little cartoon-y and over-the-top at times (as many episode this season have been), but as far as Farhampton-centric episodes go, this wasn't bad.

Other Thoughts
I appreciated that the whole "Weekend at Barney's" thing ended up being a story they told Barney and not a depiction of actual events, though once you think about it, it was kind of a dick move on Barney's part that he was so hung over he cancelled the wedding pictures. So, like, they just aren't going to have wedding pictures then?

I could have done without most of the "bacon is awesome" business (not because bacon isn't awesome, but because proclaiming it as such is such an outdated pop culture meme at this point), but Ted naively being duped into eating healthy by his mom was amusing, as was his offhand declaration later that bacon would go really well on one of his mom's LT sandwiches.

One thing NOT addressed is that Robin and Ted (and frankly, Lily and Marshall as well) have been up all night, and must be exhausted. I suppose they could be riding on adrenaline at this point (especially Robin), but still. 

Didn't Barney and Robin's dad bond over laser tag last season? I mean, ruining the wedding pictures probably still deserves a kick in the balls, but the whole "I like you now" fabrication in the Weekend at Barney's story probably should have been unnecessary.

Are we to assume from their flashforward that Robin and Barney end up with a kid (based on their casual "every time" when the baby starts crying), even though the baby in the episode belonged to the woman whose room they broke into, or was that remark just supposed to be part of the joke (ie they're so hungover they not only think the crying kid is there's but that they have a kid who cries whenever they're hungover even though they don't)? 

Reversing the Lily/Robin attraction dynamic was a nice way of (presumably) tying a bow on that running thread for the series.  

This episode revealed that Marshall's "Big Fudge" nickname (mentioned periodically in previous episodes) comes from the eight pound block of fudge he ate in twelve minutes after learning he got into law school. Tantrum has appeared before as well.

Speaking of which, I loved Marshall and Ted's "throw a tantrum" joke because it's exactly the kind of awful joke I would make. 

Future Marshall drunkenly vowing to make Batman work harder also made me chuckle.  

5 comments:

  1. So I'm watching this episode and I think about how I've had some major hangovers in the past year and there was nobody "who loved me" there the next morning to help me out. So thanks for rubbing that in, show!

    Also, Marshall wins a judicial election and the mother apparently gets a book published and it seems like everyone's dreams came true. I have feeling real life may not work out that way for everyone.

    Then I realize...I'm really a bitter, jaded person aren't I?

    Anyway, I was similarly confused by the Barney/Robin baby part. I could swear the show made it clear that Robin never had kids which would mean they didn't go the adoption route (which is fine but at least present it as an option). But that makes that part all the more confusing. It feels like foreshadowing but it didn't have to be. So...I don't know?

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  2. @Dr. Bitz: o I'm watching this episode and I think about how I've had some major hangovers in the past year and there was nobody "who loved me" there the next morning to help me out.

    I'm sorry that I have non-sitcom respect for boundaries and didn't come barging into your house on those mornings to take care of you. In the future, expect to wake up to me looming over you with a strange beverage after every night of binge drinking. :)

    Then I realize...I'm really a bitter, jaded person aren't I?

    Ha! Acknowledging it is the first step...

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  3. And really, I'm not actually saying my life stinks. I've got a pretty good life. I'm certainly doing better than some people and I'm grateful for what I have. But when you compare it against TV/Movie lives?

    I was thinking about Ted and all the experiences and accomplishments he has had (by, like, age 30!) and, frankly, even if he never finds "the one" his life is still pretty much a win. But this show seems to say that unless everything works out for Ted perfectly in the end his life is a failure. And this isn't the only show to convey that. Or, more accurately, this isn't the only show to convey how "easy" it is to accomplish life goals. I just wonder what affect this idealized image of what life should be like has on people whose lives rarely measure up? Am going to deep here? Probably.

    @Teebore: "In the future, expect to wake up to me looming over you with a strange beverage after every night of binge drinking."

    Please see that you do.

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  4. I'm with you on pretty much all of this.

    Have we seen college-age — or any other version other than baby — Marvin before? Even though it was a short little bit, I wanted to see him introduce himself to people in the dorm to see how into and/or embarrassed he was by "Wait-For-It".

    The wedding pictures could always happen after the ceremony. I wasn't even allowed to see my wife's dress before she walked down the aisle, let alone see her in it, so that's what we did, the trade-off being that we didn't get to mingle with guests before sitting down to dinner as much as we'd have liked. The whole "can't see the bride [in her dress] before the ceremony" thing is a nice tradition, although we had a family breakfast the morning of the wedding because neither of us liked the thought of not seeing each other at all the whole day until she walked down the aisle that evening.

    I suspect that the thing with the kid was just them being that drunk, because the scene in which the children Robin never had disappear at the end of that episode was so powerful, but it could and should have been made less confusing.

    "LT sandwiches" was both obvious and got a laugh out of me. So did the Tantrum gag — and I would lay excellent money on that being a thing with my cousins if it existed.

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  5. @Blam: Have we seen college-age — or any other version other than baby — Marvin before?

    I don't think so - it stuck out to me for the same reason.

    I wasn't even allowed to see my wife's dress before she walked down the aisle, let alone see her in it, so that's what we did, the trade-off being that we didn't get to mingle with guests before sitting down to dinner as much as we'd have liked.

    My wedding was the same way - mainly because I didn't want to see my wife before she walked down the aisle, to the point that I slept at my parents' house the night before (which is how I ended up on the aforementioned deflated air mattress) so that when my wife walked down the aisle, it was the first time I saw her since the Grooms Dinner the night before.

    And yeah, the downside is that you then lose that pre-dinner social hour with the guests while you're doing pictures. I'm told we had an array of appetizers at the reception before dinner, but I couldn't tell you what they were, because I can't remember what we had selected months before and we went right from pictures to dinner.

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