How I Met Your Mother S4E13: Three Days of Snow

“Serve the hotties first.”

This one was straight filler, all the way. Marshall and Lily, in an attempt to be more mature, start letting go of all their cute little “rituals.” Funny, I thought they learned this lesson last time they tried to be mature. The ritual in question involves airports, local microbrews, and chauffeur signs. They both agree not to take part in the ritual, and then each decides that the other will do it anyway, leading to a desperate gambit on both sides.

Meanwhile, Ted and Barney take over McLaren’s for a night, complete with a re-enactment of the behind-the-bar antics from Cocktail. Robin agrees to drive Marshall to the airport. Because if he were to drive himself, she would literally have no role in this episode. Anyway, they get buried by a snowplow, thus forcing Marshall to miss Lily’s arrival at the airport, and causing her to sit forlornly on a bench.

…Or not! HIMYM writers are quite good at subverting the viewer’s expectations. In the end, it turns out the three story lines that appeared to be simultaneous actually took place over the three days. Day One: Lily’s flight was canceled but Marshall didn’t pick up the phone because he thought it was their “ritual” lunchtime call, so he and Robin are buried in snow on their way to the airport. Day Two: Barney & Ted take over the bar and accidentally invite over an entire marching band. Day Three: Lily arrives at the airport and doesn’t find Marshall. But then a marching band appears, along with Marshall (now it makes sense), and the two kiss passionately.

So, filler. Filler that was only mildly palatable.

How I Met Your Mother S4

Apparently I am not only a bad blogger, I'm a clueless one. I had no idea I had missed three episodes of HIMYM. Whoops! So here are three brief recaps from the CBS website.



HIMYM S4E11: Little Minnesota
When Ted’s younger sister, Heather, comes to visit and decides she wants to move there, Ted worries that she’s not mature or responsible enough to survive in NYC. Being the overprotective older brother, Ted tries to keep her out of trouble, and in particular keep her away from Barney. But when Ted becomes too overbearing, Heather teaches him a lesson that gives him new respect for her. And after northern natives Marshall and Robin bond during the first frost of the year, Marshall helps Robin get through her worst bout of homesickness by introducing her to his favorite Minnesota themed bar.



HIMYM S4E10: The Fight
When the bartender at MacLaren’s gets into a fight with some patrons sitting in the gang’s favorite booth, Ted and Barney decide to back the bartender up and get into their first fight. Ted wants to prove he’s not the pathetic guy who got left at the altar and Barney wants to impress Robin, who thinks fighting is sexy. But when they step outside and find the bartender has knocked the guys out in a flurry and thinks Ted and Barney helped him do it, Ted and Barney decide to go along with the legendary story. The story of the fight makes them heroes at the bar until the guys who got beat up decide to press charges, and Ted and Barney have to decide whether or not to come clean.



HIMYM S4E9: The Naked Man
When Ted walks in to find Robin’s date sitting on the couch naked, he stumbles onto a phenomenon that revolutionizes the gang’s concepts on the art of seduction. For Ted has discovered “The Naked Man”: a move on a first date that involves waiting until the woman leaves the room and then stripping nude in hopes that when she returns, she’ll be charmed by the man’s bravado and decide to sleep with him.

HIMYM S4E8: Woooo!

Another day, another not-so-great episode of HIMYM. This one revolved around “Woo!” girls. You know, girls at the bar who go out in groups and throw their arms in the air and go “Woooo!” whenever anything happens. It had the potential to be really funny, but the jokes fell flat. And the rhyming…dear god, the rhyming.

But the worst part of the night had to be Robin claiming that all single people are secretly depressed and yearning for coupledom. Was she just trying to reassure Lily because she couldn’t woo sufficiently? Normally I would think so, but this incident paired with Robin stealing a baby sock last week had me wondering. Robin’s character has become kind of pathetic.

Meanwhile, Barney tries to steal the title of Ted’s Best Friend by hooking him up to design his firm’s new headquarters. But then he is wooed by the Swedish collective SVEN’s idea – a building shaped like a T-Rex that shoots fire from its mouth. Marshall yells at him, Barney changes his mind, and Ted’s firm gets the project. Blah.

HIMYM S4E7: Not a Father's Day

“God, it’s me, Barney. What up?”

I’m disappointed, and losing interest in this show. For me, it might be one of those that is just better on DVD. In “Not a Father’s Day,” Barney gets the news that he might become a father. Of course he dodges that bullet, so he starts a new holiday to celebrate. Meanwhile, Marshall, his terrible hair, and Lily are wooed by their next-door-neighbor’s baby and start to talk about having one of their own. Lily turns to Ted and Robin for help, and they each try to sway her (Robin’s afraid of babies, Ted loves them). In the end, Marshall and Lily decide to wait. But I bet they don’t wait long, since Alyson Hannigan is pregnant. I actually expected, after the big “let’s wait” discussion, for Lily to realize she’d missed her period, or something like that. I’m sure it will happen soon enough.

In other news, this episode finally explained how Robin moved in with Ted (first tantalizingly dangled during “The Goat” episode). Refreshingly, it was less exciting than one might have hoped. Robin, back from Japan and jobless, needs a place to live. The end. And in the blogosphere, people seem to be making a lot of the fact that Robin stole Jeremy’s sock. But the way I see it, Robin is totally lost right now. No job, no place to live (until the end), eating ice cream & beer (together) while moaning about her dismal life. So, she’s easily distracted by a tiny, adorable sock. It won’t last.

HIMYM S4E5: Shelter Island

“Namaste here any longer than I have to.”

Finally, an end to the Stella-Ted storyline. The whole thing has felt rushed and awkward from the start, and anyone with half a brain knew Stella wasn’t the mother early on. This episode could have (should have) been excellent, but instead it was just ok.

Stella’s sister, who is also getting married but is beating them to the punch, steals Stella’s dream wedding. And when the sister gets ditched by her fiancé at the last minute, Ted and Stella have a “telepathic” conversation in which Stella decides they will take over the aborted wedding, and Ted decides they will buy the sister dinner. How could this possibly end well?

The moral of the story is: never invite an ex to your wedding. Robin, working in Japan, tries to avoid coming to the wedding but Ted wheedles until she relents. Barney decides this is the perfect chance for him to sleep with Robin again after getting her drunk and preying on her insecurity as a single, dateless female. However, he and the rest of the gang are horrified to arrive at the lodge and discover it is hippie haven, with no meat or alcohol allowed. Also, Stella’s newly single sexpot sister throws herself at him. Hard. There is no way Barney will be able to resist.

Stella gets angry when she learns that Robin is coming, and demands that Ted rescind the invitation. She goes on about how things are unresolved between them, it will bring up old feelings, blah blah blah. Meanwhile, Stella’s ex Tony refuses to bring their daughter Lucy to the wedding until Ted somehow convinces them both to come. Tony & Robin show up at the same time, and Stella is pissed.

“If I had done things differently, none of this would have happened.”



Stella offers an option: she will talk to Robin, and Ted will talk to Tony. There is a shutter-flash of what would have happened, with Father Ted telling two blonde children, “And that, kids, is how I met your mother” while Stella smiles in the background. But that’s not the way it goes. It never is.

Ted tells Robin about Stella’s “no exes at the wedding” rule and Robin sounds off. She is relieved. She’s not looking forward to watching him marry someone else. Ted doesn’t understand, because there is nothing between them. “Maybe there is!” Robin responds, then amends that. “Of course there is!” She has quit her job in Japan and wants to come back to her real life. It’s all very sweet, but then Robin ruins it by saying that she thought if someday she decided she did want to get married and have children, Ted would be there. “So I’m your backup school?” he asks. She asks Ted not to get married. Ted says it’s a good thing she won’t be at the wedding, and stalks off.

Sad Robin goes to Barney’s room with a contraband bottle of scotch, asking if she can stay with him. It would be Barney’s perfect dream come true … except he has another woman in his bed. Wearily, Robin leaves.

On the ferry back to the mainland, Robin sees Stella … we cut to Ted reading a note at the lodge … we cut back to the ferry and Tony walks up behind Stella, wrapping his arms around her while Robin looks on in shock. And this, folks, is where HIMYM took it just a little too far, and their tendency to do this is one thing that really bothers me.

If the final scene had been exactly as it was, without the stupid voiceovers of Stella repeating things she’d said earlier in the episode, it would have been perfect. As it was, the writers apparently felt the need to beat the ending like a dead horse: all those things Stella said about Ted & Robin not being over each other, she was really talking about herself and Tony. Yes, it was obvious! No need to reiterate it with lame voiceovers and soft-focus floating heads!

HIMYM S4E4: Intervention

Fate decided that I would not watch HIMYM last night and I cannot handle watching it online again, so I make apologies and direct you to a number of other wonderful recaps instead…

TV Squad

Give Me My Remote

BuddyTV

HIMYM S4E3: I Heart NJ

“No snakes on that plane.”

Ted lives in New York, Stella lives in New Jersey. He feels like he spends all of his time on the train, so he invites his buddies to hang in NJ one night even though they all hate NJ – and Ted hates it most of all. Once there, he is horrified to learn that Stella expects him to move in with her once they’re married. Ted is totally immature and is SO not ready to get married. How could he possibly expect Stella to move in with him? As she points out, she has a house in NJ, her kid’s school is in NJ, her kid’s friends are in NJ, her family is in NJ, etc etc etc. They get into a big fight about it, but then he runs into her daughter, who asks him to read her a story. And naturally she woos him, and he decides to move to NJ after all.

Whatever. I’m a Sarah Chalke fan, but the Ted-Stella relationship just doesn’t work. As I said before, Ted is so immature and petty that I can’t believe Stella would actually agree to marry him. The whole proposal storyline came on way too fast – obviously on purpose, as evidenced by the “Do I Know You” episode. We are meant to believe that every event in Ted’s life eventually leads to the mother, so obviously there is a reason for all of this…I’m just getting tired of waiting.

Meanwhile, Robin quits her job at Metro News One after getting the national anchor job. Only it turns out she didn’t get the job – she got an audition. Desperate, she begs for her old job back even though Lily and Barney try to convince her she’s better than Metro News One. She goes through a bunch of rigamarole to get her job back, but then ends up quitting on air, for good. And then, in the least surprising twist ever, Robin doesn’t get the national anchor job…she gets a job as a foreign correspondent, which means she’s moving to Japan.

On a related note – there is a promo photo out there that shows Stella punching Barney, and it was touted as being related to this episode. Obviously not. Hmmmm….

HIMYM S4E2: "I will eat your hand!"

“The Best Burger In New York”

Marshall waxes poetic about the best burger in NY, which he had at a small restaurant he discovered when he first moved to the city and could never find again. Regis Philbin guest stars as a celebrity whose photo is on the wall of the restaurant. He doesn’t remember where the restaurant is either, but he attacks Barney when the poor boy approaches him to ask about it. In the end, they discover that Robin knows the burger joint, and they all experience the best burger in New York. Meanwhile, Barney tries to convince Marshall to take a job with his company’s new acquisition, Goliath National Bank. Even though Lily points out that Marshall just left a corporate job and is not about to take another. But of course, he does.

This episode was pretty pointless as far as the overall story arc goes, but it did lead to Marshall getting a job, finally. And because watching this episode on the CBS website was pure torture, I had a hard time keeping track of the best bits. Needless to say, Regis Philbin calling Marshall “Lurch” and Barney talking about how he loved the burger so much he wanted to take it home and put on some Terence Trent d’Arby for it were just two of many great moments.

HIMYM S4E1: "At what age did you get your first period?"

“Do I Know You?”

I have to say, there wasn’t much to like about this premiere. Ted asks Stella to marry him, and she accepts. Then, when he can’t offer any suggestions about a shower present, he realizes he doesn’t know anything about her (hobbies, favorite color, etc). I know their relationship was underdeveloped due to outside forces, but this seems like a pretty major warning sign that it isn’t going to last.

Ted learns that Stella has never seen Star Wars, and since it’s his favorite movie he decides that if she doesn’t like it, he can’t marry her. Stella tells him she loves it, but later she secretly admits to Marshall (who has truly terrible hair) that she hated it. Marshall asks if she can pretend to love a movie she hates for the rest of her life (“through sickness and health, til death do you part”), and she says, “I do.” So freakin’ cheesy.



Meanwhile, in more cheesiness, Barney admits to Lily that he’s in love with Robin, who looks super hot this season. But Barney’s conflicted – he wants to be with Robin, but he doesn’t want to be her boyfriend. At Lily’s prodding, Barney calls Robin to ask her out. He is so awkward that he ends up asking her when she first got her period after Lily whispers for him to ask something personal. Lily sets up a surprise date for the two of them. Robin wears a fabulous dress, and Barney is sweet and decorous. This freaks Robin out, and at the end of the night she plays “wingwoman” and hooks Barney up with their waitress. Barney tells Lily that if he has to choose between Robin and bimbos, he chooses bimbos. But once Lily storms out of his apartment in frustration, Barney flips on the TV and looks longingly at Robin reporting the news. The end.

Ted and Stella’s relationship is boring. Barney in love is funny, but a tad too pathetic. I am disappointed to say that I was completely underwhelmed by this premiere. It was basically a pointless ½ hour.