HIMYM 8x15: P.S. I Love You

Ted sees a woman on the subway who's reading the same book as him, but before he has a chance to suavely introduce himself, she gets off. So begins the saga of creepy stalker Ted. A saga that's apparently happened a few times before, so Marshall and Lily know the tell-tale signs of his insanity and make him hand over his yellow legal pad.

Fortunately for him, the young lady had a yellow legal pad of her own.

After bumping into her at the university, Ted learns that Jeanette a similar need to track down people she sees on the subway. His friends think it's a little insane, but Ted presents the Dobler-Dahmer theory which states that grand romantic gestures are okay as long as the two people are into each other. As an example, he uses the story of how Marshall asked out Lily the first time, which is really cute, but could have easily gone the other way.

An illustration of the Dobler-Dahmer theory.

Over the course of the next few days, it gradually comes out that Jeanette didn't bump into Ted by chance. She pulled the fire alarm that led him outside... or rather, she set the fire that triggered the smoke alarm that led him outside. And she wasn't reading the same book as him by coincidence, either. She's been following him around since he graced the cover of New York Magazine 18 months ago.

And he is *totally* okay with that.

But all of that only covers about 1/3 of the episode. The real story and the source of the episode's title come from Robin. As it turns out, back in her Robin Sparkles days, she was a little bit obsessed with a guy. Barney busts her chops about it and she refuses to tell him who it was, so, being Barney, he breaks into her apartment and digs through her old journals to look for clues. But, all he finds is a single phrase written over and over.

All PS and no Love makes Robin a dull girl.

So, being Barney, he jets off to Vancouver to interrogate Robin's old boyfriends, including former Mr. Teen Winnipeg, Simon Tremblay. While Simon doesn't know who Robin was stalking, he does have a lead: MuchMusic's Underneath the Tunes special on Robin Sparkles and her meltdown at the 1996 Grey Cup (Argos over the Esks, 43-37. Deal with it, Edmonton). Barney quickly tracks down a copy of the episode, and it is everything I could have ever wanted in a Canadian Behind the Music parody.

The episode features interviews with Paul Shaffer, Geddy Lee, Jason Priestly, Luc Robitaille, Chuck "Dave Thomas" Gerussi, Alex Trebek, Steven Page, k.d. lang, Dave Coulier and even a picture of Gino Vannelli. It tells the story of Robin's third song, P.S. I Love You and how she threw her life away one snowy evening in November. The stress of her "Let's go to the Mall" tour started to show in early 1996 when she politely walked out of an interview with MuchMusic. Later, she became Amy Lee from Evanescence and produced the grunge rock song P.S. I Love You under the moniker 'Robin Daggers' although her record label refused to release it. The video was much darker than her earlier work, and featured everyone's favourite 1990s trope, a shirtless old man in black and white:

Old men didn't wear shirts in the 90s/ It was a thing.

At the Grey Cup, Robin threw off the shackles of her teeny-bopper past and invented grunge. Speculation about who the song was about began immediately, and featured everyone from former CBC news anchor Knowlton Nash to cultural treasure Neil Young, but no one knew who it was about. Even Dave Coulier claims it wasn't about him; although, he says that quite a bit. However, there was one suspect whose name just kept coming up:

Ladies and gentlemen: TV's Alan Thicke!

Since Alan lives in New York, Barney heads over to his place to kick his ass and find out if the song is about him. Not necessarily in that order. However, years of dealing with Kirk Cameron's crap have turned Alan into an unstoppable killing machine, and he quickly subdues Barney with a full nelson and explains to him that PS I Love You isn't about him, and he actually always thought it was about Coulier. After taking his licks, Barney returns to Marshall and Lily's apartment and admits to Robin that anyone can get obsessed. In exchange for his admission, Robin finally explains who the song is about:

He's every young girl's dream.

What I Liked
-Creepy Marshall. It's hard to make playing the ukulele look creepy, but Jason Segel found a way.
-Barney's position on whether or not Jeanette is a stalker is based entirely on whether or not she has enormous cans. Seriously, there are worse problems to have than an attractive woman with big boobs who won't leave you alone.

They're not huge, but fortunately Abby Elliott took after her father in the boob department.

-Marshall wants to see Robin throw her life away so badly! That's horrible, but hilarious at the same time.
-Jason Priestly invented the 'Priestly' by cramming a timbit into a strawberry-vanilla doughnut. Is there nothing that man can't do?
-Robin's excited by the prospect of getting MuchMusic in New York. That is pretty exciting. Unlike MTV, it actually still has something to do with music.
-Dave Coulier does the "cut it out" thing. I've seen Coulier in a couple things this year and he's holding up pretty well.

What I Hated
-They shot more scenes with young, goth Lily. Alyson Hannigan looks very good for her age, and pretty good in general, but she's 38; she doesn't look 18 anymore. I've mentioned it before, but sticking her in that makeup makes her look like an angry biker chick. The worst part is that they reused some shots from 'How I Met Everyone Else', which aired early in season three. That was five years (five years of long sitcom hours at that) and two kids ago. The difference is striking.

The darker lighting doesn't help, either.

Not only that, but she was followed up by young, goth Robin Daggers, who was slightly out of focus and played by a younger woman who's had one less kid.

I'd let her stalk me any day.

They really need to stop doing stuff like that. It's making me sad.
-Dave Thomas' character refers to Hamilton as being "Just outside of Guelph." Man, don't name-drop just because it's funny to say "Guelph". Go with something that's actually close to Hamilton like Ancaster or Grimsby.

Final Thoughts
It may seem a little far-fetched for a young girl to be infatuated with Paul Shaffer, but you know what? I buy it. He's famous, he has style, and he's easily one of the most talented musicians working in TV today. There's a reason why so many rock stars marry models and have children younger than their grandchildren: Chicks dig musicians.

The Dobler-Dahmer theory is a good gag and goes well with the Crazy-Hot scale (which comes from 'How I Met Everyone Else' just like young, goth Lily), however I'm not sure Lloyd Dobler is the best example to use of that particular phenomenon. While Diane Court wasn't repulsed or frightened by Lloyd's grand gesture, she didn't go for it, either. He stands out in the driveway holding his boombox over his head, and she doesn't even acknowledge him. That's cold. Offhand, I can't think of a better choice, but I'm sure there must be one.

I'm a little concerned about baby Marvin. It's good that they didn't suddenly make the new baby the focus of the show, but at the same time, at least some mention of him would be nice. Marshall and Lily haven't been as connected to the rest of the group since their child was born, and I guess the writers have been having trouble working them back in, but that's no reason to pretend their baby doesn't exist like Chuck Cunningham or the other daughter on Family Matters.

Like episode six of this season of Castle, this episode was basically tailor-made for a guy like me. At least the Robin Daggers stuff was. I can't say I cared all that much about Ted's stalker. But, the writers were smart enough to limit the amount of time they spent on that so what I'm hoping will be the last journey into Robin's musical past had enough time to shine. However, I judge sitcoms at least partially on how much they make me laugh, and while this episode was funnier than HIMYM has been in a while, it still didn't have me rolling for a full twenty minutes straight. Nevertheless, it was a marked improvement over the last few episodes, and I hope it is a portent of things to come.