HIMYM 8x23: Something Old

Last week, this show had one unifying plot. This week it has three. If you're a regular reader, you should be able to guess which episode I liked more.

Plot Why?
Lily and Marshall are moving to Italy for a year, and they need to decide what to take with them. Rather than putting their excess stuff in a storage facility, or erecting a shed on their property on Long Island where their house used to be, they decide that everything that doesn't make the trip across the Atlantic will go in The Bermuda Triangle. What's The Bermuda Triangle? Glad you asked. The Bermuda Triangle is a spot out in front of Lily and Marshall(and formerly Ted)'s apartment building where you can place an item you no longer want and it will be snatched up within seconds. It was last mentioned in season five, I believe. Anyway, since they're having trouble deciding what should go where, they call in a neutral third party.

The Lord of the Douche!

Ted considers himself a legend of packing because once he went to Spain and carried all his stuff around in a fanny pack. However, he makes some very odd choices, culminating with his decision to send an old beanbag chair with them to Italy. When they question his wisdom, it starts a small argument, which only ends when they send him out to buy fanny packs so they can secretly put the chair in The Bermuda Triangle while he's gone. He sees through their charade just in time and rushes back to sit in the chair so no one can haul it away. Then he explains that he has an emotional attachment to it because it's the first thing they bought when they moved to New York and if Marshall and Lily can get rid of it, maybe they can get rid of him, too. They tell him he's crazy, give him a moment alone with the chair, then he gets up and heads to a job interview. The chair disappears almost immediately.

Plot Huh?
Barney and Robin's dad have been bonding. Barney's like the son he never had, and Robin's dad is like the father Barney never had until he finally met his father like two years ago and it turned out to be John Lithgow. To celebrate their new bond, they play laser tag. Things go well at first, but eventually their egos clash and they become embroiled in a team laser tag battle to the... in-game death.

Barney takes the game a little too seriously.

Robin Sr.'s leadership style fails to inspire his men, and they desert him, leaving him to go it alone against Barney's crack squad of ravenous monsters. Eventually, Barney gets the drop on him and plans to execute him with his own gun. But when he tells Barney how proud he is of his ruthlessness, Barney's heart melts and they team up once again to annihilate the kids.

Apparently there is no loyalty on the field of laser battle.

Plot Seriously?
In 1994, Robin and her father visited New York for the first time. While they were there, she buried a locket somewhere in Central Park, vowing that she would return one day to reclaim it and make it the 'something old' at her wedding. Now, almost 20 years later, she's getting married, and it's time to dig it up. Her father agreed to help her, but instead he heads off for "Plot Huh?" leaving her to do it on her own.

She's a digging machine.

After hours of fruitless digging, she calls Barney, but he's busy in Plot Huh, too, and when he asks her if it's urgent, she says it's not. Then she calls Ted, who's just finishing up Plot Why. She tells him it's not really important that he come, either, but he knows that as Robin code for 'OMG, this is so important, come now!' and heads to Central Park to find her. With his help, she finds the box the locket was in and tells him that she's been having doubts about marrying Barney, and the locket is a sign that the universe thinks they should get married. But, when she opens the box, the locket's gone... then it starts to pour rain all over them. She thinks it's a sign that the universe wants her to call off the wedding. Ted tries to talk her out of it and gives a speech about how they already know what they really want and they shouldn't let the universe talk them out of it. She holds his hand, and the camera pans out in a lame attempt to add drama.

It doesn't work.

What I Liked
-In Spain, Ted was known as El Ganso con la Riñonera, which loosely translates as 'the douche with the fanny pack'.

Even the Spanish know Ted sucks.

-"We get it, ya pack a lot in your fanny." That certainly was obvious, yet delightful.
What I Hated
-Ray Wise as Robin's father. He's less a distant father who always wanted a son, and more a creepy weirdo.
-Robin Sr.'s nickname for Barney is B-Dog. That sounds so wrong coming out of Ray Wise's mouth. So very, very wrong.
-Marshall and Lily's weird King Kong sex game. We didn't need to see that.

Final Thoughts
I keep saying it, and it every episode he shows up in just offers more proof: Eric Braeden was a better Robin Scherbatsky Sr. than Ray Wise.

After last week, I had hope that the show had finally turned a corner and was going to start getting better. All the useless filler crap they had to do because they showed the ending first and didn't know what to do to get there was finished and they could move the plot forward in a meaningful way. Then in the very next episode they decided to go back to the whole Ted-Robin thing.

I just don't understand why they bothered to try to create that sort of love-triangle tension when it makes no damn sense. Of course, Barney and Robin's relationship doesn't make any sense to begin with, so I can understand why she might be having doubts about it. But logic has no place on this show, especially since we already know the future.

We know Ted and Robin don't wind up together. We've known that since the very first episode. We also know that she marries Barney because ten episodes ago they did a flashforward that showed her dancing with her father at her wedding wearing a big-ass rock on her left ring finger. You can't create dramatic tension when the audience already knows the outcome.

Beyond that, this episode was just stupid. Barney doesn't need a father figure; he met his dad two years ago and he and Robin spent Thanksgiving at his house. Marshall and Lily don't need to throw out most of their stuff, or even really take that much stuff to Italy; they're going for a year, not permanently. And against all previous notions of her character, suddenly Robin believes in signs. Robin, who doesn't believe in ghosts or bigfoot suddenly believes in signs from the universe. This is so dumb that even the writers recognized it and had Ted tell her how dumb it was. What's worse is that the sign itself was stupid. Apparently, someone dug up a box with a locket in it, took the locket, then reburied the box. That makes absolutely no sense. No one on the planet would do that.

I've been reading rumours that next season will take place entirely during Barney and Robin's wedding, and judging by the synopsis of next week's season finale -which seems to indicate that the entirety of the episode takes place before the wedding- that might very well be true. Although, I expect that in reality it'll probably only take up the first two or three episodes, the fact that it even seems plausible to me shows just how far this show has fallen.