Tuesday, November 20, 2012

HIMYM 8x07: The Stamp Tramp

Click the image to get the episode.

Three plots this week. That's one too many. But which one? I'll let you decide. Hint: It's the one with Ted.

In the first plot, Marshall bumps into his old law school friend, Big Dick Richie in front of his office. Brad tells him that he's been down on his luck lately, and Marshall offers to get him an interview at Honeywell & Cootes. The gang thinks this is a bad idea because Marshall gives his stamp of approval to everything, and it's harming his credibility at the firm.

Giving your boss food poisoning rarely helps your reputation at work.

But, Marshall's from St. Cloud Minnesota, where they believe in people, so he continues to believe in Brad. Unfortunately, at the interview, he offers legal insights he got from his psychic, cuts a big fart, and insults Mr. Honeywell's diminutive stature. He doesn't get the job, and Marshall's credibility is severely damaged to the point where he gets taken off a big case. Lily helps him rebuild it over time with popcorn, lies, and Ted's unintentionally hilarious video diaries. It works, and Marshall's back in his boss' good graces until they get to court and find out that Brad is on the opposing legal team and was just pretending to be down on his luck so he could get in the building and conduct some espionage. Now, if Marshall doesn't win, he's fired.

Lawyered.

In the second plot, the gang tells Ted that he's never put his stamp of approval on anything without first having it mentioned to him by someone else. He sets out to prove them all wrong by digging out his old college video diaries. But, all they do is prove that he's been a douche for a long, long time.

Douchemaster General.

In the third plot, since Barney broke up with Quinn, she's gone back to stripping, so he needs to find a new strip club. He's notoriously free with his cash, so all the local clubs start trying to recruit him. To help field the offers, he hires Robin as his strip club agent. At first she does well, but she soon starts accepting bribes and tries to sign Barney to geriatric strip club Golden Oldies. He's forced to fire her and make the decision on his own.

He's taking his talents to Mouth Beach.

In order to apologize, Robin offers to buy Barney his first lap dance at the new club. They get pretty wasted and as they're walking home, he kisses her. She kisses him back, but quickly has second thoughts and shoves him away.

I've gotten the dodge, but never the push off.

What I Liked
-Seven years is like 69 in perv years. Yeah, it is.
-Barney does an impression of Ted that sounds like Keanu Reeves. I see what he did there.
-Lily, Robin, and Barney set up a spit-take so they can act surprised when Ted tells them he was Dr. X.

I still don't believe it.

-On his video diary, Ted's friends are eating a fat sandwich. That's the kind of continuity we can all enjoy.
-Ted actually recognizes that he's a douche. That's good. The first step is admitting that you have a problem. The second step is to maybe stop being such a douche.
-Brad calls Honeywell a leprechaun. I called a girl a munchkin once in high school. It was equally hilarious.

What I Hated
-They feel the need to remind us that Ted was King Douche of Douche Mountain even when he was in college. We know that. He didn't grow out of it.
-The big reveal of Ted's plot is supposedly that he was the first one to put his stamp of approval on Lily and Marshall's relationship. Except we already knew that because he was the one who had her pose in their first roommate photo. It's still really weird, but it's not new.

Final Thoughts
I've decided that every week from now on I'll come up with a new theory as to who the mother is. Mother theory #1: They'll bring back Lyndsy Fonesca, slap on some makeup, and have her play her own mother.

This episode hit 13 on the Laugh-o-Meter, which is a little better than HIMYM has been doing lately. The were a few jokes related to LeBron James' he Decision TV special, but that was a few years ago, now, so they kinda fell flat. They've got their finger on the pulse of pop culture over at HIMYM.

They're really trying to force the Barney-Robin relationship. It just doesn't make sense, though. They were a terrible couple, and the show went out of its way to show what a terrible couple they were. Their relationship nearly killed both of them. The writers are trying a slow build by jamming some stuff in the last minutes of the show, but it really just seems tacked on to me. Like they know they need to get the two of them together somehow, but can't think of any logical way to do it, so they slap something onto the end of an otherwise unrelated story.

I've been wondering what happened to Brad. The last time he was on the show was three years ago. Each member of the gang started the show with a bunch of other friends, but as time went on, they've all disappeared. Even Wendy the Waitress and Carl are gone.

Right now, it seems like they've lost their way on How I Met Your Mother, and they're just running out the clock. Ted isn't even making an active attempt to find a wife anymore, and the entire narrative structure has broken down. Future Ted is now telling his kids the story of a bunch of things his friends did. Personally, I'm fine with that because his friends are far more interesting than he is, but it seems like it would be the kind of thing that would bug his children. The show's not Lost or anything like that, but there are still questions to answer, and probably only seventeen episodes left. I don't want to get to the end and find out they've been dead all season and the kids are part of some weird afterlife they created for themselves.

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