HIMYM 8x21: Romeward Bound

Two plots this week, both terrible.

Terrible Plot Number One
The Captain's moving to Rome for a year, and he wants Lily to come with him to keep working as his art consultant. She's always wanted to live abroad, but when she calls Marshall to tell him the news, she realizes that moving to Rome would mean that he would have to give up his career.

And become a slightly racist caricature of an Italian person.

So, she calls up the Captain and turns down the job. Now unemployed, she bakes some brownies and goes to surprise Marshall at work. When she gets there, she finds that the place is nearly abandoned and that they haven't had a client in months. Garrison Cootes has disappeared to Colorado to await the apocalypse and the office is down to just Marshall and another associate named Bernard. With no work to do, they spend their days goofing off. Lily yells at him for not telling her and costing them their life in Italy, but Marshall totally wants to become a slightly racist stereotype and he runs off to try to get her another chance. He succeeds, but when the Captain offers her the job again, she still rejects it. She's scared that she'll uproot her family and then fail and lose everything.

And Marshall will become a different, slightly racist caricature of an Italian person.

When Marshall finds out, he's crushed and runs home to convince his wife to chase her dream job. He uses variations on the one phrase he can say in Italian (Come on, bro. Don't Bogart all the Funions.) to tell her that even though it's going to be scary, he believes they can do it.

Plus, he already bought a white suit and it would be a shame to have to return it.

Terrible Plot Number Two
Ted and Barney are hanging out at MacLaren's. For some reason, Barney wants to leave as soon as he gets there, but before he can, Ted spots a girl from his yoga class. Apparently, she has a ridonkulous body, so Barney resolves to stick around until he sees it. Unfortunately, for him, even though he bribes Carl (who doesn't actually appear in the episode) to turn the heat up, she just won't take off her coat.

It's still winter to her, damn it!

Lily asks him just what the hell he's doing, but Barney explains that Robin's the coolest fiancee ever, and she won't care as long as he looks and doesn't touch. When Robin shows up at the bar and gives the woman in the coat a big hug, he even thinks that she might be up for a threesome. However, it turns out that 'Liddy' is their wedding planner; Barney's even met her once before. Later, when he tells Robin what's up, even she wants to see what's under the coat.

Barney laments the fact that Marshall's not there, because he lacks the stench of desperation and could just ask Liddy to take the coat of without repercussions, unlike Ted and Barney who would get beaten down. Since he's getting married in three weeks, Robin thinks Barney should also be able to ask with impunity, so she stares him down until he does.

And it is, indeed, ridonkulous.

Barney revels in his newfound ability to say whatever gross thing he wants to women and get away with it. However, Ted cautions him that no matter how cool Robin may seem, they're getting married in three weeks, and he's not really acting like it. They have a bit of an argument, but Barney insists that he knows Robin better than Ted and that's why he's the one marrying her. He's probably right, since Robin meets him at home wearing nothing but a coat.

She won't be cool for long.

What I Liked
-Marshall dropped Italian in college because he had a conflict with being not stoned. That's the best reason to drop a class.

What I Hated
-The whole thing with The Captain only responding to nautical speech got old really fast. Having the characters repeat themselves until they remember to say 'Ahoy' instead of 'Hello' slowed an already slow episode down to a glacial pace.
-The Italian Existential Film.

Seriously?

-Ted acts like a weirdo because Liddy spoke to him. Apparently, in addition to being Lord of the Douche, Ted is also Crown Prince of Creepy Weirdonia.
-Honeywell & Cootes is nearly defunct and Garrison Cootes is hiding out in a mine shaft in Colorado. In an episode last season, Future Ted said that Marshall and Cootes would go on to save the planet. Plus, they just hired Big Dick Richie to use his manipulation and accidental pen-dropping to help them. Again, why even bother with continuity if you're going to ignore half of it?

Final Thoughts
The actress who played Liddy is named Mircea Monroe. She looks pretty good, but I'd have to say that her body is not quite ridonkulous. That's probably why they didn't actually show it in the episode. However, if you do an appropriate search, you can see her boobs.

They've really gotten a lot of use out of 'Murder Train'.

This was quite possibly the worst episode in the history of the show. Other than merely killing some time, it didn't advance the plot. We know that Ted meets the mother in the season finale. We've known for months. All we're doing now is waiting... and watching boring filler episodes.

Why even bother sending Lily and Marshall to Rome? We know they'll be back like two episodes later, just like when Lily went to San Francisco, Robin moved to Japan, and Lily and Marshall moved out to Long Island. New sets and locations are expensive, the show's ratings are diving, and the cast just renegotiated their contracts. They can't afford to do more than a couple episodes set in anything even remotely resembling Italy. Even ignoring the financial issues, there's still the fact that it's really hard to write characters into a show when they live far away from the show's main location. That's exactly why everyone moved back so quickly all those other times.

I'm hanging on until the end of the season, and maybe next season's premiere if they cop out and don't show the mother's face in the finale, but after that, I'm done. The show just isn't very good anymore, and watching it just makes me long for the good ol' days of five years ago. I could even forgive the ridiculous plots and the slow pacing if it were at least still funny. Unfortunately, it's not.