The Funny Stuff: HIMYM(2/25)

Well, that was disappointing.  Tonight, we get recycled plots, and a man-child masquerading as Marshall.
Let’s jump right in, shall we?
 
Lily and Marshall have a big art gallery opening, and Marshal is tres concerned about the lack of food, so he buys a gigantic bag of Skittles(“The last bag your Uncle Marshall would ever buy,” Ted intones ominously).  Marshall then proceeds to sit on several expensive pieces of art, and make terrible puns with artist’s names in the guise of ‘being outgoing.’  This plot was soooo boring.  I don’t even know what to say about it.  And then Marshall dropped his entire bag of Skittles on the floor(one Skittle at a time) during a moment of silence for the artist’s dead grandmother.  Instead of, you know, attempting to assuage the flow of Skittles, Marshall stood there as everyone in the gallery glowered at him for the entire minute it took.  It honestly feels like a character assassination, and for the writers to do that to the best character on the show is just wrong.
 
In other news, Ted and Jeanette are still together, and he put her on his RSVP to Robin and Barney’s wedding invite.  When they break up again(due to a spam e-mail from a girly-sounding spam-bot), Barney decides to help Ted find a new plus one by bringing out the Playbook.
 
“But that was destroyed eight episodes ago,” you may say!  
 
Of course, recycling plot from previous episodes(even if they are from the same season show) is now par for the course, so we get to see playbook antics again, yay.  Barney makes a command center at Ted’s house, and gives Ted an earbud so he can direct all of Ted’s words.  The plays are terrible, as usual, but when Robin comes back and finds the Playbook, Barney has to book it after her to get her back.  The second Barney takes his leave, Jeanette find Ted, and gives him a big...kiss on the lips, so he brings her back to his apartment, intent on getting back together.  It’s too bad, then, that Barney left the Playbook on Ted’s couch.  
 
Which Jeanette finds.  
 
And immediately begins trashing Ted’s apartment again.  Ted ends up on the sidewalk with the gang, and Jeanette threatening to blow up the Playbook with the fireworks she found.  Barney tells her to do it, and the whole thing goes up in flames, and Ted is ready to settle down for realsies, cause all the other times he’s settled down with a long term girlfriend were not him being an anti-commitmentaphobe.
 
Oh, and Barney got Robin back by telling her he’s a lying liar who lies, but he really REALLY loves her, so it’s cool.
 
This episode was kind of the antithesis of funny.  Even the laugh track wasn’t really into it at all.  Even if there are few laughs, a sitcom can be good if it has character development.  It’s too bad that all of the ‘character development’ this episode consisted either of regression(Marshall) or things that have happened a million times before in an ugly new wrapping(Ted, Robin and Barney).  Lily got the shaft, she had no development whatsoever, and she wasn’t even funny.  I just wish I wasn’t so invested in who the mother was, so I could drop this show like it really deserves to be dropped.
 
I got one funny line for you:
 
Ted, on one of Barney’s ‘one rules’: “Lebanese girls sprint to third base, and then stay there?”

The Funny Stuff: HIMYM(2/18)

Ahh, that was a decent episode.  It was back to classical form: cross-cutting, multiple points of view of the same story, and natural character development.  It was actually pretty incredible, considering the nothing we’ve been getting for the last couple seasons.  Let’s jump right in.

Let’s jump right in to…

Ted’s version

So Ted has a phone message from the Captain(Zoey’s ex-husband), and he immediately starts freaking out, worried that the Captain wants to kill him.  Turns out, Ted, Robin, and Lily went to an art gallery opening, where Lily is worried about embarrassing herself in such a fancy place.  Suddenly, in walks the Captain and his ‘art advisor.’  He asks what Ted and co are doing there, and very rudely interrupts Ted’s explanation to finish Ted’s sentences at every turn.  Ted head-monologues about his rudeness, and then Robin asks what an art consultant does, and Lily explains, while pointing out a painting she likes.  Ted and the Captain make eyes at each other, with the Captain basically threatening to kill Ted, but then he invites them up to his apartment to see a new painting he got.

While in the apartment, Ted plays with an expensive ashtray before the Captain comes in, extolling his love to a mysterious photo.  Ted calls him on the Zoey thing, and the Captain pulls a harpoon gun(!) on him.  Ted calms him down, and then waits until everyone left to look at the picture on the Captain’s desk: turns out it’s someone Ted has been ‘hanging out’ with.  Just then, back in the present, the Captain calls back, and asks Ted for Robin’s number.

This leads us to…

Robin’s version

Robin reminds Ted that he was COMPLETELY toasted the entire time, and is mis-remembering several things, such as…

-Lily wasn’t embarrassed for herself, she was worried Ted was going to make a fool of himself at the hors d’oeuvres table

-The Captain wasn’t rude and threatening, he was helping Ted find words and jovial

-Ted didn’t so much head monologue as say everything he was thinking in an incredibly loud voice

-The Captain hardcore hitting on, and flirting with, Robin

-Ted nearly dropping the very expensive ashtray

-The harpoon gun, which was actually a remote control

We also learn that Robin turned the Captain down gently when he invited her to his room to ‘see’ his new painting.  Robin then calls the Captain, but it turns out he actually thought Robin was Lily, so Robin give him Lily’s number, leading to…

Lily’s version

Turns out, not only was Ted toasted, Robin was smashed on scotch shots.  Lily reminds her that she is ALSO mis-remembering things, like…

-Robin was hitting on the Captain, not the other way around

-The Art consultant being a complete and utter bitch

-Lily saving the ashtray from a clumsy Robin, who really had saved it from Ted

-The picture being of a yacht(with the girl Ted was haning out with as a small ad on the bottom of the yacht picture

-Robin throwing herself at the Captain again in his bedroom

We also learn a couple more things, namely that the Captain disrespected Lily’s enjoyment of art, and she performed some ‘Aldrin Justice’ to teach him a lesson: she took that fancy ashtray.  Lily won’t take it back, but she does break down because she’s despondent that the best days of her life are behind her.  Marshall tells her to follow her dreams, and bring that ashtray back, dammit. 

Lily does, the next day, and the Captain didn’t even realize it was gone.  What he did do, though, was buy that painting Lily liked, and surprise surprise, it appreciated in value immensely.  The Captain asks Lily to be his new art adviser, and she agrees.  Hooray!

This episode wasn’t terribly funny, though it was true to HIMYM form.  I enjoyed it, but didn’t laugh very often.

I did get one funny line for you, though:

Marshal, after Lily confesses to stealing the ashtray, and Barney asks if they are gonna do it: “No, we’re gonna fight…and then maybe do it.”

The Funny Stuff: How I Met Your Mother(2/11)

So this was a rather not funny episode.  The a-plot was pointless and the b-plot was just odd, so lets jump right in, shall we?

So Ted is still dating Jeanette, and after a stupid contrivance with Marshall and Barney, has to deal with her being barricaded in his bedroom.  Ted had decided to break up with her, and she didn’t take it well.  After several attempts at getting her out of the room, including calling the police(but oops, she’s a cop!), and Ted dressing up as Boba Fett to armor himself against her attacks.  But all was for naught, when Ted decided to continue dating Jeanette, if only to get the crazy out of his system. 

This whole plot doesn’t even make any sense.  So she was crazy before she started dating Ted(see: threatening to kill a ref at a hockey game, breaking a TV with a thrown beer bottle, staling Ted for nearly a year), but somehow she passed the psych exam to become a cop?  Ted is supposedly some sort of playboy who likes hooking up with random people, but he really REALLY isn’t(see every girl he ever dated, all ending in ‘will you marry me?’).  Hopefully, this couple doesn’t last too long, cause I kind of dislike Jeanette already.

In our B-plot, Lily and Robin are taking Marvin out shopping or some such thing, when Lily realizes that Marvin’s nook is missing, probably lost the bus somewhere.  Lily runs off to grab it, leaving Robin in charge of Marvin.  Funny thing, though: Robin had never held Marvin in his 8 months of living.  When he starts fussing, a stranger walks up, and Robin has that person take care of him.  As it turns out, that person was Mike Tyson, but Robin didn’t spill the beans on that little detail until 17 years later, after slowly revealing more and more of the story as years went on.

The concept was amusing, but execution was a bit lacking.  Neither Lily or Robin looked aged at all in any of the flash forwards, and there were too many of them for the story to even be feasible in the amount of time Robin had to do all this.

All in all, a rather disappointing episode.  I really hope we start moving forward a bit more, to get people at least slightly closer to where they are supposed to be by the time this story is apparently being told.  But now we get a season 9, so it may be even longer before we even find anything out.  Here’s hoping for a courtship season, meaning Ted meets the mother at the end of this season.

I did get one funny line for you, though:

Barney on Jeanette: “Cray Cray gotta go bye bye before you get stab stabbed”

The Funny Stuff: HIMYM(2/4)

So the main plot of this episode was kind of lame, but the machination to get there?  Had me rolling.

So Ted has a meet-cute with a girl on a train, they are reading the same book, and catch each other’s eyes…and then the girl leaves.  Which doesn’t make sense for what occurs later in the episode, but whatever.  Ted tells the gang about this girl, and about his plan to find out everything he can about her so as to find her again.  Lily, after a bit of back and forth, finally convinces him NOT to seek out this girl, as that would be crazy.  Luckily for Ted, then…

The girl finds him outside his classroom building during a fire drill.  Later, Ted talks about his Dahmer-Dobler scale, and that Jeanette, his new girlfriend, clearly falls on the Dobler side of the scale.  But after a few prodding questions, it turns out not only did the girl a)start a fire to get Ted out of the building, she b)stalked him for a year to set up the initial meet-cute, and bought that book ten minutes after he did to facilitate it.  Creepy. 

But all is glossed over when it turns out Lily had her own little brush with the Dahmer-Dobler scale when she and Marshall met:  when she knocked on his door for him to fix her stereo, not only had she seen him previously, she knocked on a bunch of doors to find specifically him.  But she ‘couldn’t stand it if she didn’t try,’ so it’s totally cool.

In actual funny story, Robin is totally on board with Ted becoming a stalker, seeing as it could happen to anyone, right?  Yeah, turns out Robin totally stalked someone in her youth, and Barney is on the case!  He heads to Canada to suss out the stalkee that got Robin a 50 meter restraining order, and ends up at Tim Horton’s talking to Simon(the Beek!), learning that the whole story is on ‘Underneath the Tunes,’ Canada’s answer to ‘Behind the Music,’ and it’s…

ROBIN SPARKLES 4!!!

We get a quick recap of the saga so far, and then learn that Robin Sparkles had a secret.  It took every single famous person out of Canada to explain it, and it was awesome.  Turns out Robin Sparkles decided to go a bit darker for her next hit, and birthed grunge…in 1996.  Her song, P.S. I love you, was suitable dark, and the video had everything  a 90’s video could ask for, including a naked old guy.

As an aside, just for funsies, here’s all the people that showed up, according to IMDB: k.d. lang, Geddy Lee, Steven Page, Jason Priestley, Dave Coulier, Paul Shaffer, and Alex Trebek, all commenting on Robin Sparkles’ fall, and it was hilarious.

But at the end of the special, the big question still lingered: who was P.S. I Love You about?  Robin spilled at the end of the episode:  Paul Shaffer, of course! 

The non-Robin Sparkles portions of this episode were pretty crap.  As Ted said, everyone makes one big mistake before they meet the one, and Jeanette is his, so hopefully no more extraneous not!mothers?  We can only hope.  The Robin Sparkles stuff, on the other hand, were genius, and I was rolling the whole time.  So, passing, I suppose.

I did get a few funny lines for you:

Ted and Lily, debating Ted’s newest girl: “It’s a meet cute!” “It’s a stalker-crazy!”

Simon, on what he said to Robin when he broke up with her :Robin, can we keep dating, but I stick it to other babes?”

Narrator!Ted, after Dave Coulier did his ‘Cut!It!Out!’ schtick: “I always liked that joke.”

The Funny Stuff: All the rest(1/13-1/23)

Ok, here’s a bunch of episodes I didn’t catch in my previous write-ups!  This is MASSIVE, since I am a lazy slacker.  Sorry about that!

Happy Endings-Sunday(1/13)

Ok, apparently, this episode was meant to play last season, but was shelved for one reason or another.

Anyway, we open on a slo-mo kickball game, with most of our group shown watching some sort of play in amazement…72 hours earlier, though…

Alex lets everyone know she signed her store, and by extension, them, up for the north side kickball tournament.  Everyone is kind of…apathetic, but with a series of bribes, she gets everyone to play besides Jane.  They get a random guy named Scotty to play, and get pumped up to play kickball.

That is, until Penny and Alex find Jane getting her uniform from the rival team, which brings up some harsh childhood memories for Alex.  She remembers the time Jane stole her spotlight away at a kid’s show, when Alex was called to the stage, but Jane pushed her away and stole it.  Alex gets even more pumped to beat Jane’s new team, as we make our way to the tournament.

Unfortunately, Team Xela(pronounced Shayla), does not get off to a hot start.  They are down 3-0 and only have 3 outs left, and Dave is set to kick.  And considering he has the yips from hitting Penny last year, things do not look good.  He heads to the plate, and misses miserably.  It’s a good thing they still had two outs, and so Alex, Max, Penny and Scotty bring it home, and they win their first game, and the next two go pretty swimmingly as well.

Then, they face Jane’s team in the semi-finals.  Jane is predictably fierce, but Alex has a trick up her sleeve: a Chicago Bear goes to Brad’s gym, and he is taking Dave’s spot.  Dave is not nearly as angry as one would expect, and they get right to the game.  Once they get to the last out, Alex is up, and Jane is pitching.  Jane pulls a dirty trick, and has the kid’s show shirt on under her uniform, and completely distracts Alex as Jane throws the ball, hitting Alex in the feet, and causing an easy out.  Team Xela lost, and is super sad.

It’s a good thing, then, that Jane saw her team’s cheating ways(steel in the boots) and turned them in, getting her team disqualified.  Her friends gladly take her back, and Team Xela makes their way to the final…where they find themselves in the same position they were in in the first game, down by three, and one out left.

Max accidentally takes out Scotty, and their only recourse is the yipper Dave, who gladly takes on the challenge.  He focuses, and manages to kick the ball!...right into Penny’s face.  Again.  The other team catches the ball, and Team Xela loses.  But they get the moral victory with Dave getting over his yips, yay!

This was a fun episode, and really funny, too.  You could tell it was from season two, as the jokes were rapid fire and great, and the group didn’t split into four different groups. 

I got so many funny lines, it’s ridiculous:

Brad, on discovering a favorite store closed: “Wait, they closed All Dogs Go To Evan’s…Bakery?”

Brad, when Dave is extolling his eye black: “Melanin, baby.  It’s what makes me brown.”

Brad, in reminding Dave of his yippy nature: “Remember when you forgot the words to Gangsta’s Paradise? To this day, you can’t perform a eulogy.”

Jane, when called on her dependability: “When I send $25, I expect a letter, Adolpho.”

Brad, observing Jane on the other team: “I’m gonna hate her like five times tonight”

Max, giving his team a pep talk near the end of the first game: “Well, we had a good run.  Actually, we had no runs.”

The funny stuff: CBS Monday(12/10)

Tonight we’re back with…

How I Met Your Mother

Let’s see, where to begin, where to begin…

Lily and Marshall are trying to figure out how to house his mother, and after a few false starts(no, Lilly, she cannot stay at a hostle), they relent in letting her stay in their cramped apartment.  Mickey is still there, of course, helping with Marvin, and it is super cramped.  When Marshall’s mom gets there, she confides in Lily that she is ready to get back into the dating game, and Lily encourages her.

Ted didn’t really have a whole lot of plot tonight, but he did have a rather hilarious running gag.  In the open, he listed off a bunch of items that the gang has borrowed, and that he’s not lending anything else out until he gets it all back.  Then, though the whole of the episode, all the various items, plus a few more, show up, all labeled property of Ted Mosbey.  Of course, it was all his crazy crap too, like his red cowboy boots and a vote for Ted sweatshirt.

Lastly, Barney is officially dating Patrice, and Robin is not happy.  She spent the episode attempting to sabotage them, but Patrice was having none of it.  Robin decided she needed to go to drastic measures, and so snuck into Barney’s apartment.  She was looking for the Playbook, Barney’s trick he used to get women to sleep with him.  She found  a red button, but it was just a Bon Jovi thing.  She also found the Bro Code, but then disaster strikes:  Barney come back, and Robin has to hide in the bedroom closet so he won’t know she’s there.

The Funny Stuff: CBS Monday(12/3)

Tonight get only one show, the nearly over

How I Met Your Mother

This was yet another filler episode, and since we know this isn’t how any of our charaters end up, it was even worse than normal.

Lily and Marshal are bemoaning the fact that Lily’s dad can’t take care of Marvin for the week, and Ted, in a job lull, offers to take over.  He, of course, starts stealing firsts from Marshal and Lily, such as the first crawl.   Apparently when Lily’s dad takes care of him, Marvin is a catatonic baby, and doesn’t do anything.

They eventually throw and intervention for Ted, realizing that with the finish of the GNB building, he had a huge hole in his life, and they set him up on the headhunter interview he cancelled to take care of Marvin.  It was about as exciting as it sounds.

Meanwhile, Barney and Robin were playing this weird little game, wherein Robin attempts to woo Barney now that she’s closed the door on them being together.  But, as Lily put it, Barney locked that door, which is why Robin is obsessing.  Robin tries a myriad of ways to get him interested in her again, such as “The Robin and Lily get freaky/The Robin and Lily ‘That Bitch Brandi’ get freaky.”  In the end, Barney takes Brandi to the news room, but has a breakdown, where the awesome Patrice comforts him, and they go back to his apartment to play Crazy Eights.

Oh, and Barney loses Clarence, one of his ties, to a very serious ketchup accident, and decides to start a  running joke business: “Bro Bibs.”  Every person’s shirt style is mimicked and Lily loves the idea, and really wants in.  Watch this plot arc vanish in a matter of a week, though.

So, like I said above, very filler, and terrible behavior all around.  I mean really, Ted?  Taking Marvin to see Santa for the first time?  That is seriously cold.

I did get a few funny lines for you, though.

Lily, to Marvin: “If you ever wanna see these boobs again, crawl, you son of a me!”

Lily,  after learning about Barney’s business idea: “Bro bibs for women! Bitch bibs! Barney’ll sue us for sure, but lets do it!”

Barney, when he starts to leave with weather girl Brandi: “Someone’s about to get unseasonably banged.”

Ted and Marshal, after Ted comes to his senses, and decides to get rid of the lollipop he’s holding: “I’ll just give it to one of these kids.” “Ted, you’re half naked, and not ONE of these kids parents, don’t give them candy.”

The Funny Stuff: CBS Monday(11/26)

It’s Monday, so that means…

How I Met Your Mother

This was a decently funny episode, and had some major movement on pushing Marshal into his final arc.

We opened with Marshal sitting in front of a Judicial Review Committee, ostensibly due to his performance in court the previous week, which we all remember is the trial with the water pollution, and the ‘friend’ that stole the strategy.

He goes through the entire trial, from his friend playing the sympathy card to the  (oddly) all female jury, to his friend doing the bend(minus the snap) to show off his rear end to that same jury, as well as the judge who was really into it for some reason.  His friend brought out a crackpot expert witness, and Marshall brought out a duckie with a rash.  His friend played a video he made about the polluted lake, and Marshal asked him to take off his shirt, showing the rash his friend had due to the lake.

This won Marshal the trial, but the judge only fined the company $25,000, instead of the millions Marshal was hoping for.  That brought Marshal to chat with his friend, who decided to get back to his roots, and managed to get a job at Marshal’s firm, for reasons.  But he put a seed into Marshal’s head…

In that, Marshal decided to request a judgeship.  Oh snap.  He figured if he had that position, he could enact the change he so desired, cause that is totally what judges are for, not to determine if someone broke the law, but to create law.  Nice, show.  Hopefully they don’t really go that route, cause I would not be a happy camper.  But I am glad they finally are getting Marshal to that flashforward we saw in season two or three.  Only took four years.

In other, less interesting plot news, the rest of the gang got into a pissing match about who was the biggest badass. 

Lily said she was generally rude to everyone, browbeat Scooter, and the whole block was scared of her.

Ted said something about being locked up and yelling at a cop.

Barney was very friendly with the bailiff, and was implied to know his way around a pair of handcuffs.

Robin supposedly got drunk, had noise complaints, and threw a TV out a window as a precursor to passing out on and getting arrested for driving a zamboni.

Of course, Ted was at a Ren fest, and got put in one of those head/hand tomato throwing things, Barney was the youngest member of the magic appreciation society, and Robin got a trophy for being just the nicest hotel guest in the whole country.

Lily, on the other hand, still scares people as she walks down her block.

Anyway, the main star of the episode was Marshal, and honestly?  If this were The Marshal Show, it would probably be much better.  He really is the best character, and it’s fun watching him grow, and be funny at the same time.  The rest can one or the other, but not at the same time, and the show really suffers for it.

I did get a couple of funny lines:

Marshal, after his friend gloats he knows Marshal’s strategy: “But I still got some tricks up my sleeve that you know nothing about!” “Really?”  “No.”

Ted(I think), after Barney’s badassitude is revealed: “See ya round, baby hands!”