The Crazy Ones 1x11: The Intern

What I Liked
-Zach and Lauren are "Young, hot pandas."

Only way more likely to have sex.

-Simon thought Andrew was Jewish and doesn't have time to change his plan when he finds out he's not. Curly hair + big nose doesn't necessarily equal Jewish.
-The first bad idea was Simon saying there are no bad ideas. There are a lot of bad ideas.
-Andrew drops his ice cream. It's so sad.

What I Hated
-Kelsi decides she wants the small room. Abrupt changes of heart that ruin plans have been done to death on sitcoms. TO DEATH!

Final Thoughts
I still don't know who Ashley Tisdale is. Mostly because I'm a little too old to have seen most of the things she's been in. At the end of the episode, in one of the outtakes, they show Sarah Michelle Gellar telling her to got back to the Disney hell she came from. That's cold. That's like Kendall on All My Children cold.

Although it's also been done to death, the horrible rich girl princess character in this episode didn't bother me. Whether that's more a function of the writing, acting, or directing, I may never know.

TBBT 7x11: The Cooper Extraction

Hey look, Kaley Cuoco's in her underwear.

What I Liked
-Without Sheldon, Bernadette never would've dated Howard, because he and Raj are kind of a couple. Makes sense to me.
-Everyone pees themselves in the world without Sheldon. The man is the source of bladder control for an entire universe.
-The guys all want to hear Amy's sexy story. Erotic fantasy stories are almost always more interesting than decorating a Christmas tree.
-Stuart inappropriately inserts himself in Amy's sad story.
-More Zack. Idiotic characters can be fun.

What I Hated
-Leonard says 'Welcome to the Thunderdome!' The Thunderdome has a very strict -if barbaric- set of rules, it's not some do-what-you-want devil-may-care land. Two men enter. One man leaves.

Final Thoughts
I've never seen It's a Wonderful Life. I've seen many spoofs, parodies, and ripoffs, but never the actual movie.

There are a lot of nerds out there who look like fat Leonard.

You don't want to know how many.

As far as Christmas episodes go, this one was pretty good. Not a lot of new ground was broken, but it had some good gags.

Community 4x11: Basic Human Anatomy

The Greendale gang has to figure out an idea for their final history project. Jeff's in favour of doing whatever's fastest and easiest because he'll graduate if they pass, and even Cornwallis no longer gives much of a crap about the quality of their work.

Meanwhile, it's the one year anniversary of Troy and Britta's first date, although they weren't aware of it. Annie convinces them to go back to the same restaurant (Senor Kevin's) to celebrate. Troy, however, is more enthusiastic about it being the third anniversary of the first time he and Abed watched Freaky Friday. To celebrate, he bought his buddy a six-pack of body-switching movies, and they have their own "I wish I had your life" moment, using the Freaky Friday DVD as a totem.

It was even dumber than you'd think.

It doesn't work, but the next morning, Troy decides that it did and goes to tell Abed. Since he's a good buddy, and there's nothing he loves more than committing to a bit, Abed plays along. Britta's a bit bummed that she won't get to go on her date with Troy, but Troy as Abed tells her that Troy's going through some stuff and he needs to do this bit, so Abed as Troy will go with her. The nomenclature is confusing, I agree.

Jeff is pissed off that Troy and Abed's BS is delaying their start on a passable, doable project. So, he goes in search of a DVD of Freaky Friday so the boys can switch their bodies back, and he sends Shirley and Annie off to find out how Leonard has managed to get ahead of them in the class rankings. To speed things along, he buys his own copy of the DVD and takes it to the Dean so he can tell the guys he found it.

Then the Dean does the body-switching thing, but Jeff won't play along.

At lunch, Abed as Troy is accosted by a waiter who hates Die Hard, but he's so committed to the bit that he won't break. He tells Britta that Troy talks to Abed about their relationship, and that he wonders if the fact that they didn't remember their anniversary says anything about how things are going.

Back at Greendale, Jeff is still mighty angry, and he takes Troy as Abed in search of the DVD. They start by checking with the janitors, who are inexplicably doing a murder mystery theatre show. They direct them to the lost and found, which is a huge room filled with all the crap that's been collected over the years.

Both Abed as Troy and Troy as Abed talk about how Troy feels like he and Britta are trying too hard at their relationship, and that if it were meant to be, things would be easier. Abed as Troy breaks up with Britta, and Jeff gives Troy as Abed a speech about how commitment is hard and trying to have a relationship was bold, but to truly be a man, he needs to break up with Britta in person. They go to the restaurant, where Jeff facilitates the end of the bit with some half-hearted light switch flickering, and Troy dumps Britta to her face.

Like a man.

At the same time, Annie and Shirley head to the Dean's office, where Annie creepily fawns over the Jeff-like personality he's adopted. They want Leonard's transcripts, which Craig as Jeff is more than willing to give, and which he conveniently has in a file cabinet in his office. It turns out that he got an A in a class in 1968 and has been taking every class as Pass-Fail in order to maintain his perfect GPA. They confront him, and then he gives up or quits school or something... it's not really clear. Shirley's number one again, and Annie's number two.

When the whole gang returns to the study room, they find that Pierce has gotten bored waiting for them and done the entire project by himself.

It took him about 25 minutes.

The Dean apologizes for acting like Jeff, Troy and Britta hug, and everyone goes home early.

What I Liked
-Jeff shits all over everything Troy and Abed are doing. Good, I'm glad at least one person agrees that it was bullshit. Although, writing a character who hates everything that's going on and points out how stupid it is probably wasn't the best idea.

Jeff has no patience for these shenanigans.

-This week's best line "Having Jeffrey inside of me was wrong... To have Jeffrey inside of me."-Craig. It was the best of a bad crop, though.

What I Hated
-More crap about Shirley somehow being in the running for valedictorian. It's completely ludicrous to have a character go three and a half years without showing any particular academic aptitude, only to suddenly make her a genius in the last three episodes of the series. Hell, considering the fact that both of them were temporarily expelled last season, and that they flunked a history test earlier this year, I'm surprised that either Shirley or Annie could possibly be anywhere near the top of their class. Also, they somehow know the up-to-the-minute class rankings, which doesn't even make any sense.
-Routine light switch checks. Ugh. Just ugh.
-The janitors' murder mystery show. I can forgive some of the other writers, but Jim Rash was on this show for years: he should know that doing wacky things just for wackiness' sake was never Community's thing.

Final Thoughts
Now that Chang's pretending to be Kevin, that would make him Senor Kevin, just like the restaurant. We're through the looking glass here, people.

Jim Rash wrote this episode, and it was so bad that I think they should consider taking away his Oscar.

There might have been more emotional weight to Britta and Troy's breakup if anyone had actually cared about their relationship in the first place. Aside from a few brief moments and a subplot in the Inspector Spacetime episode, there's been barely any mention of it at all. Their entire relationship has a huge mess from beginning to end. They were thrust together for no particular reason, barely spent any time doing relationship stuff (even though they were somehow together for like a year), and then broke up in one of the worst episodes in the show's history.

Come to think of it, how were Britta and Troy dating for a year? Their first date was indeed in April of 2012, but in the show's timeline, they're still in the first semester of the school year (even though Christmas was last week). The handling of their relationship was even more of a clusterfuck than I first thought.

Beyond that, I have to say that my opinion of Community these days pretty much corresponds with the way Jeff was feeling in this episode: I just want to get out as fast as possible, and doing Freaky Friday was a stupid waste of time. Seriously, they talk about Die Hard all the time, but instead they did Freaky Friday. Aside from Jim Rash, apparently, who was clamouring for that?

I'll give Rash credit for that, though. He wrote a character who was just as pissed off about what was happening as I was, so I had someone to empathize with. It was nice to have someone there to confirm my opinion. But my opinion was "This is stupid and unfunny" so that probably wasn't a good plan on his part.

This tied with Advanced Documentary Filmmaking as the least funny episode so far this season, but it didn't have anything blatantly racist, so it gets a marginally better score. Marginally.

Castle 5x11: Under the Influence

Aging pop singer Regina holds a release party for her newest album, and who should show up but Josie Lange, the latest young pop sensation. Daggers are stared. However, the next day when a corpse turns up in a dumpster it's not either songstress, but rather the DJ who was working the party.

The music industry is a cutthroat business... only she was shot.

A check of the dead girl's history finds that she has a pretty lengthy rap sheet, but cleaned up her act seven years ago. She also had a phone number written on her hand, which leads to a hotshot producer who wanted to take her to the next level, and who, coincidentally, is producing Josie Lange's new album. The producer tells Esposito that DJ Dead was getting an angry earful at the party from one Darius Carson aka MC Thug.

He's not a happy man.

Mr. Thug tells Castle and Beckett that he thought the DJ stole a diamond bracelet from him at a party he threw a week earlier, and he confronted her at the party. He has a pretty solid alibi, though, since he was upstairs getting frisky with a lady during the time of the murder.

Further investigation shows that over the past year, thefts have been reported at seven of the parties where DJ Corpse was spinning the hits. They bring in her assistant, and he tells them that sometimes she used a different guy, and the nights we worked correlate exactly with when the thefts occurred. Fingerprints from the equipment lead to Joey Malone aka Monster.

His nickname's not quite as accurate as MC Thug's.

Beckett questions Monster, but he clams up when she starts asking about the murder. Esposito's from the streets, though, and he knows that a 14-year-old isn't smart enough to run a high-end burglary scam on his own. So, he takes over and tries to get Oliver to give up his Fagin. Monster's not going to peach, though, even after Esposito shows him photos of DJ Deceased.

Joey's caseworker comes in to talk about him, and their options are limited. They can send him to temporary foster car or toss him in juvie, neither of which would engender his trust. Thus, Espo is forced to take him in for the night. Witty banter ensues, and it looks like things might work out until Joey bails out the window while Esposito's getting him a blanket. Javi's swift, though, so the next day the two of them walk into the station wearing matching bracelets.

Part of the 2013 spring collection.

Castle and Beckett pull out Joey's record, and one name sticks out. The same guy who bailed Monster out a while back also bailed out DJ Departed when she was 17. Esposito tracks him down, knees his bodyguard in the groin, then has Fagin cuff himself so he can take him in. Regular interrogation techniques don't work on him, so Espo spends a minute alone with him so he can get him to rat out the kid on video and show it to Joey. Seeing his mentor sell him out is enough to get Monster to start talking.

Oddly enough, he wasn't at the party to steal jewelry. He was there to swipe a cell phone from the record producer. Ryan and Esposito head back to the studio and find DJ Done For's blood all over a wall. The producer doesn't know what happened, though. He didn't even realize that his phone was stolen because it turned up in a bathroom at the party an hour or so after Joey boosted it. The phone wasn't the target, though. The producer uses it as an e-Key to access his studio, which is filled with valuable equipment and even more valuable unreleased audio tracks.

Including something from Joe Mantegna's favourite group, the Lone Believers.

None of the equipment is missing, but someone downloaded Josie Lange's entire album just before DJ Dumpster was killed. And who had the most to gain from Josie's album leaking on the internet? Regina, whose album was coming out on exactly the same day. Castle and Beckett bust her, then Esposito goes to see Fagin and threatens to murder him if he ever goes near Joey again.

Case closed.

What I Liked
-Esposito and Ryan are fans of Regina and Josie, respectively. It's like Tupac vs. Biggie.
-Castle knows what it's like to wake up the morning after a party without any pants. We've all been there, man.
-Joey craps all over Esposito's decor. He's right, there's no way you can get a girl if your apartment looks like that.
-Esposito describes how he caught Monster. Sometimes it's better to leave things to the imagination, and I think telling the story works in this case, while showing it probably wouldn't have had the same effect.

What I Hated
-Monster says something about Esposito not being able to make it past level one in Assassin's Creed III multiplayer. Now, I think that technically makes sense since there's a mode that has character level progression, but that's probably not what the writer meant. Apparently, no one on the writing staff has played a video game in the last decade if they think that all games still have something that can even generally be referred to as 'Level One'. And I guarantee that the kid who played Monster and at least one of the regular male actors could've corrected them, so I don't know why a line like that made it into the episode.

Final Thoughts
No Alexis this week, which is unfortunate because I think she could've provided some insight into the state of modern pop music.

The plot in this episode was a little convoluted because -just like on Hawaii Five-0- the murder was a crime of opportunity rather than a well thought out plan. On Castle it was a little bit worse, though, since the killing was done with the dead person's own gun and may have even been an accident.

What really bugged me was that Regina and Josie's albums were coming out on the same day. No one puts out a major release on the same day a competitor these days. That's why the 'summer' movie season now begins in mid-April.

All in all, I thought it was a poor episode with a killer whose motive was far too complicated.

Fringe 5x11: The Boy Must Live

Michael has shown Walter a memory of Donald/September that's hidden in his subconscious, and there's only one way to retrieve it: With the sensory deprivation tank. For the first time in the history of the show, someone other than Olivia has to get hopped up on drugs and lie in a tank of water.

Unlike Olivia, Walter goes fully nude so his body and mind can be fully unencumbered.

He only manages to dig out a vague recollection of the location of September's old apartment, and there's no guarantee that he still lives there, but Walter is optimistic. A little too optimistic, in fact. So much so that when they get to the location in New York, Peter asks him what's up. When Michael mind-melded with him, it freed his mind. No longer is he a slave to his hubris, and what's more, he's gaining the memories Walter had in Peter's original timeline.

When they get to the apartment from Walter's memory, whoever lives there has a lot of locks. Peter puts his hand on his weapon, but when the door opens, it's just Donald.

Or Hairy September if you prefer.

After a brief handshake with Michael, Donald brings the team up to speed. As punishment for his continued interference in the timeline, the Observers removed September's implant and experimented on him until he became virtually identical to ordinary humans. He chose the name Donald O'Connor after Walter took him to see Singin' in the Rain. As for the boy, all observer children are cloned and rapidly matured in pods. Michael's brain developed abnormally, and his maturation was halted. Donald hid him in the past because his studies of the past had shown him the love a father can have for a son, and Michael was cloned from his genetic material.

The plan was to send Michael to February 28, 2167, the moment when scientists first began the experimentation that would lead to humanity sacrificing emotions for intelligence. Michael is far more intelligent than the Observers can comprehend and he has emotions. If he goes to the future, then the world will never go down that path, and the Observers will never exist. It's some Terminator stuff.

Meanwhile, Windmark takes a trip to visit his boss... in the future!

It's 2609 or 1974. They both look pretty much the same.

Michael should not exist, and yet he does. Windmark's really ticked off and wants to be allowed to mess with the timeline so he can wipe out the resisters. His commander denies his request; the resisters are inconsequential, and screwing around with the timeline would alter the probability of success. Nevertheless, Windmark's mind is overwhelmed with the desire to exterminate the resistance.

When he returns to 2036, he immediately begins searching for Donald. Since he was detained at the mine in Pennsylvania 20 years ago, Donald has a chip in his head that allows the Observers to track him. Windmark and two flunkies pop into his apartment, but they're too late: Walter and Peter have removed the chip, and they're gone. Instead, they find nothing but knick-knacks and jazz recordings. And a small antimatter device that Donald uses to vapourize his whole apartment.

I don't think he'll be getting back his security deposit.

While the Loyalists begin a search, Donald takes Walter to a storage room where he's hidden some future technology they need to complete the plan. While they're there, they talk about how when September pulled Walter out of Reiden Lake, the boy he said was important wasn't Peter, it was Michael (which is probably some retcon BS), and that in order to complete the plan, Walter will have to sacrifice himself. He's a little afraid, but Donald tells him it was his idea, and that it was his way of making up for all the damage he's caused.

The tech secured, Donald takes his leave while the team and Michael start their trip back to the lab. Unfortunately, Windmark and the Loyalists have set up roadblocks all around Brooklyn, and they're surrounded. Astrid uses the resistance's network to hack the camera feeds and find them an exit, but it gets a bit dicey and they have to split up. Olivia and Michael make it onto the monorail, followed a few minutes later by Walter and Peter. But, just before the train departs, Michael walks out the door and presents himself to the Loyalists, who promptly deliver him to Windmark.

What I Liked
-Walter remembers that Peter never liked taking a dump in a public restroom. That's a good memory to have.
-Windmark's flunky starts tapping his toe to the music. Even emotionless cyborgs from the future can't resist the power of jazz.
-Donald busts Peter's chops when he says "Is that it?" to their boxes of timeline-distorting future technology. He thinks he's so big just because he destroyed a universe once, so he needs to be cut down to size every now and then.

What I Hated
-There's a bit at the beginning where Peter pulls his gun when Walter surprises him while he's lasering out the latest tape. I'm pretty sure that scene was included just to get some intense-looking shots for the preview.

Literally nothing exciting is happening in this scene.

-Olivia recoils at the sight of Walter's junk. She's seen his penis at least twice on screen, so she should be used to it by now.
-The Observers think they have a 99.9999% probability of success. That's a little extreme.

Final Thoughts
The word of the day is GRACE, and honestly, I have no idea what it means.

It's nice that they made so many callbacks to previous episodes, but it seems mighty convenient that Michael was able to restore Walter's memories of the alternate timeline. I think what probably happened is that the writers had an "Oh crap!" moment when they realized that the Walter from the first three seasons doesn't exist anymore and all those references they wanted to make were to things that had never happened.

Which brings up the whole "The Boy Must Live" thing. The line from the second season episode Peter is "The boy is important, he has to live." At the time, everyone thought that meant Peter, but in this episode we found out it really referred to Michael, which makes no sense whatsoever. That line was a response to Walter's question about why September saved them from drowning in the lake, so saying anything about Michael is kind of a non sequitur, particularly since he runs into the two of them like 20 times over the course of the series, and has ample opportunity to explain Michael's importance. Plus, midway through that episode, September has a chat with December and August where he says "Dr. Bishop was on the verge of developing a cure for the boy." Unless he goes around calling everyone under the age of 18 "the boy" it seems like the original plan was for "the boy" to be Peter.

September screwed up and prevented Walternate from discovering the cure for Peter's illness, so he had to rectify his mistake by dragging Walter and Peter out of the lake. It obviously wasn't because they needed Peter to turn on the universe-destroying machine, since the people in the alternate timeline managed to do that without him, and it clearly wasn't because they needed Peter to father Etta or to help save Michael, because last season September built a machine to erase the echoes of Peter from the universe and very nearly turned it on. So, causing Peter's death was a problem, but not because they needed Peter around for any particular reason. The whole thing just stinks of retconning.

This was the third-last episode, so I can't really review it in a vacuum; it has to be seen as a portion of the ending of the show. They're tying up loose ends, but they're doing it in a wholly unsatisfying manner, partially because those loose ends are in another timeline. Nevertheless, they are making an effort, and this episode did have a few nice bits in it. However, it seems to me that they've Lost their way.

Hawaii Five-0 3x11: Kahu

They say that in show business, you should never work with children or animals, and this episode shows us all why the first part is true. What's the Hawaiian word for annoying kid? Is there one? I'll bet the Germans have one.

Anyway, Steve takes Catherine to a romantic breakfast at the local drive-thru, and as they're sitting in his truck, some dude tries to carjack them. In broad daylight. In front of perhaps dozens of witnesses.

If you do something that stupid, you deserve an ass-whooping.

While turning in the world's dumbest carjacker at the police station, McGarrett finds the world's most annoying child. Well, maybe second most annoying after Dakota Fanning in War of the Worlds. The kid's name is Ethan and he's handcuffed to a desk because he broke a station window while trying to get the cops' attention. Apparently his dad didn't come home last night.

And who wouldn't want to come home to this?

Steve and Catherine take the kid to his dad's general store where Steve spies blood on the wall and kicks the door in. Of course, the kid (who he told to stay in the car) rushes out and starts yelling and whining. Now, part of the problem here is the dialogue, because the first things out of the kids' mouth are "Is that my dad's blood?" and "What happened to him?" He's supposed to be 13, not eight, so I think he'd be smart enough to realize that McGarrett's only been in the store for 12 seconds, and he can't do DNA analysis just by looking at something. Apparently not, though.

To get him to shut up, McGarrett gives the kids a shiny new Windows 8 phone with a direct line to Five-0 headquarters. Catherine takes him home to pack a bag while everyone else does kid-free detective work. They find a blood trail out the back of the store and a shotgun with a print on it that leads them to the first guy who didn't do it. His truck is full of blood, he's covered in it himself, and he's carrying a shovel. It doesn't look good for him until it turns out that he was just slow-roasting a pig that he shot without a licence.

A pig that explodes and sprays juice all over Chin.

At the kid's house, Catherine finds a suitcase filled with about $20,000, and at headquarters, Kono tracks down video of someone using the dad's car to drop a gunshot victim of at the ER. The guy didn't make it, and when doing the autopsy, Max finds antifreeze in his blood and ti leaves under his fingernails. Chin knows exactly what's up: The guy was a moonshiner. So, he and Danny head off to the woods to visit his uncle Choi.

Played by George Takei.

Chin's uncle's been moonshining since Chin was in diapers, and he knows all the tricks of the trade. But, he's a purist and won't mix with the bad crowd that cooks their stuff in a radiator. He knows where you can get it, though: Out of the back of the dad's store.

Back at headquarters, Catherine tries to get Ethan to give up any info he has on the dead moonshiner. The kid breaks down crying and I'm not sure if the acting was bad or if he was just supposed to be pretending to cry because it looked so fake. While Cat's out of the room getting the kid a juice, he empties her wallet and takes off.

The team tracks the cell phone Steve gave him, and they wind up at the home of Darrin Hodge, a local low-life. They grab the kid before he can climb the fence, then Steve and Danny go in. Hodge isn't there, but they do find the pig roasting guy. He told Hodge about some secret deliveries the dad was making to a reclusive rich guy, and he figured Hodge had something to do with the dad's disappearance, so he went over to his place to shotgun some info out of him.

Kono traces some of the cash from the suitcase to a bank robbery from five years go. They figure the reclusive dude is the bank robber and they use recent property purchases in the area to find out where he lives. Bad dude's not there, though, just the corpses of Hodge and one of his gang.

The bad guy shows up at Ethan's house where he and Catherine are playing cards. He has the dad as a hostage, but he swaps him for the kid because he's smaller and more annoying. He's looking for the money he paid the dad, but when he finds out it's gone, he gets a little upset. Catherine manages to hide and distract him by setting off the smoke alarm. Then she blind sides him and kicks his ass.

Her finishing move tosses him down the stairs and breaks his neck.

Steve and Danny bust in seconds later to save the day... except it doesn't really need saving. McGarrett offers the kid a job with Five-0 in ten years because apparently being shrill and annoying makes one an excellent cop.

Kamekona gives everyone a free ride on his helicopter as a Christmas gift, and McGarrett puts on a tuxedo to take Catherine to dinner.

Case Closed.

What I Liked
-McGarrett's idea of romantic music is 1980s hair metal. I'm in full agreement with that, and anyone who disagrees is a philistine.
-Steve and Catherine are arguing when they get carjacked, so he holds a finger up to silence the guy so he can continue the discussion.
-Max gets a little testy at Danny when he's giving him the rundown on the dead guy. Masi Oka gives the perfect stone-faced expression. It's hilarious.
-Alex O'Loughlin's accent really slips in one scene. He went super-Aussie, and I burst out laughing when it happened.
-Catherine's fight at the end. Usually, when they have tiny women beat up men it's totally unrealistic. But, the guy she fought was kinda small and tweaked out, so it actually made sense that her superior fighting skills would be able to defeat him.

What I Hated
-The kid. Seriously, he was so bad that I swear he must be somebody's nephew. The writing was at least partly to blame, but he certainly wasn't elevating the material.
-Steve appears out of nowhere to grab the kid after they catch up with him. He's not in the background of the previous shot, then two seconds later he's pulling the kid off a fence. He's a SEAL, not a ninja.

Final Thoughts
I'd like to see more of George Takei's moonshining uncle character. I think every show like this could use a crazy uncle who drops by from time to time.

Whoever thought putting that kid in the episode would be a good idea should be fired. Other than him, the episode was quite serviceable, but he was so bad that he tarnished the whole thing. I don't even want to write about it anymore. The kid was bad, and you should avoid watching this episode if you value your sanity.

HIMYM 8x11 and 8x12: The Final Page

Initially, this episode was actually two separate episodes rather than one 'hour-long spectacular'. But, if the producers want to make two bags of crap into one giant sack of crap, who am I to argue?

The first half was initially called 'The Silence of the Jinx'. Marshall and Barney order the same drink at the same time, and Barney is subsequently jinxed. The gang follows slightly different jinxing rules than most people I know, so Barney can only regain the ability to speak if someone who was present at the jinxing releases him. Normally, grown-ass adults wouldn't care about such things, but the last time Barney ignored a jinx was right before he got hit by the bus at the end of season three. Now the whole gang takes jinxes far too seriously, and since Barney hasn't been jinxed in years, it's time to make him pay by letting Ted talk about Buffalo Nickels.

That's exactly my reaction whenever Ted gets to talk.

Anyway, with the GNB building's opening approaching, Ted sent an invitation to the celebration to his old freshman architecture teacher, Prof. Vinick, who said that Ted's designs sucked and that he'd never be an architect. This, of course, had a profound effect on Ted and he's been obsessed with gaining the man's approval ever since. So, when the RSVP comes back as a 'No' complete with a 'I have no idea who Ted Mosby is' note, he heads back to Wesleyan with Marshall, Lily, and Barney in tow.

They're just there to watch his mental breakdown, though.

When they get there, Ted attends one of Vinick's lectures with the intention of finding a moment to jump in and tell him off. Instead, he finds himself really enjoying the lecture, and at the end he gets his old professor to take a look at his building. Vinick says it's crap and that Ted will never be an architect.

Elsewhere on campus, Marshall and Lily bump into their old acquaintance, Daryl, who's been somewhat obsessed with them ever since they played hacky sack with him once. He's even started a business selling premium hacky sacks.

Hackmigos forever we'll be.

He takes them back to his house to show them something in his dark, windowless basement. They think he's going to murder them, but instead he offers them a cheque for $100,000 for helping him come up with the idea for his very successful business. But, seeing that people he thought were his friends were kinda dicks makes him realize that he doesn't need their validation, and he tears up the cheque.

It feels oh so sweet.

Back in New York, it's employee evaluation time at World Wide News, and Robin gets to fire Patrice. But after a brief discussion, Patrice gets her to admit that she's only firing her because she's with Barney, and that's not right. Patrice is unfired, and collectively, the gang learns that they need to look out for their own happiness and not be so concerned about other people.

On the ride home, Lily and Marshall make a pit stop, and while they're gone, Barney tricks Ted into unjinxing him by showing him an engagement ring. He then immediately jinxes Ted and explains that he's going to ask Patrice to marry him because for the first time in his life he feels settled and happy. Ted gets unjinxed with the provisos that 1) He won't try to talk Barney out of it, 2) He can't tell anybody, and 3) If he breaks either of those rules, Barney gets to hit him in the nuts three times with a wiffleball bat.

This half of the episode ends with Barney jinxing Lily and Marshall, and enjoying a fart and smoke-filled return trip to Manhattan.

The reign of terror is back.

The second half was originally known as 'The Robin' although that pretty much gives away the ending to anyone who knew both the old and new titles. I was hoping I was wrong about it. I thought there was no way they could ever possibly do something so stupid. But they did. Oh, they did.

That comes at the end, though. In the beginning, as an early Christmas gift, Mickey gave Lily and Marshall 24 consecutive hours away from Marvin. In standard sitcom fashion, at first they're ecstatic, then their plans get slightly derailed, then they suffer from extreme separation issues. This despite the fact that the day before they drove to Connecticut without even giving it a second thought.

They're terrible parents.

The meat of the story, however, revolves around Ted. The GNB building is holding its opening night celebration, and since he's single, he asks Robin to come along as his date. However, he feels a bit guilty for not telling her that Barney's proposing to Patrice, so he calls Marshall down to the bar for guidance. Ted thinks Robin should have a chance to go after Barney one last time, but Marshall's Team Tedward and says that he should go after Robin instead.

Robin shows up wearing a slinky red dress, so Ted does the obvious thing and tries to convince her to go after Barney. She doesn't want to, though, and gets Ranjit to drive their limo to the GNB building. Instead, Ted tricks her and surreptitiously has Ranjit take them to the WWN building where Barney's about to propose on the roof. Robin keeps insisting that she doesn't want to go up there, but Ted just won't let up until she goes.

On the roof, she finds not Barney and Patrice, but a bunch of candles and a page from The Playbook entitled "The Robin".

There's a lot written on it, but apparently Barney used a small font so it would all fit on the bottom half of the page.

The Robin consists of sixteen simple steps that outline what Barney's actually been up to over the past six weeks. He really was in love with Robin when he helped her break up with Nick, he meant for her to reject him after they got drunk at the strip club, he enlisted Patrice's help in getting Robin back and wasn't actually dating her, and he's on the roof to propose to Robin, not Patrice.

At first, Robin reacts as any normal woman would. She's incredibly angry that he's been lying to her and manipulating her for weeks, and she's adamant that she won't ever get back together with him. Until she sees that step 16 is a proposal, which she quickly accepts.

They're perfect for each other: They're clearly both insane.

The episode ends with Ted staring out the window of the GNB building while everyone behind him enjoys the party.

What I Liked
-Sandy Rivers' rationale for firing someone is pretty good. If one of my subordinates ever gives me gonorrhea, then I'm damn sure going to fire her.
-Marshall says Daryl's basement is "gimp-storagey". That may be the only time that phrase has ever been used, and I appreciate things like that.
-Bruce Grey gets some work. It's weird how often his character has come back considering how unimportant his character is. Still, he was good on Traders, so it's nice to see him making some of that fat American sitcom money.

What I Hated
-The pit people metaphor.
-They showed more of angry biker chick Lily. They really need to stop that. It's making me sad.

The back of Seth Green's head could probably still pass for 19, though.

-Ted's song about Prof. Vinick. It was short, but stupid.
-Marshall and Lily's lullaby for Marvin. It went on forever and none of it was funny.
-Marshall and Lily kinda freak out without Marvin. They both spend every work day away from home, but for some reason, leaving for twenty seconds makes them both into idiots.
-The Robin.

Final Thoughts
Treating this all as one episode is a little unfair, since 'The Silence of the Jinx' wasn't actually all that bad. It was by no means good, but it certainly wasn't as blatantly offensive as 'The Robin'.

For the last several weeks, Barney has apparently been running a long con. But, far too much of The Robin was left up to luck, and a good portion of it was clearly written post hoc since Step Six is "Check with your doctor about possible broken ribs" after Patrice hugs him too hard in Step Five. So, it wasn't some master manipulation that Barney was running; he was basically just lying to everyone for six weeks. If Robin hadn't rejected him, it wouldn't have worked. If Robin hadn't gone nuts afterwards, it wouldn't have worked. If Ted had kept his mouth shut or Robin had put Barney's happiness ahead of her own, it wouldn't have worked. Heck, if Robin had reacted like any normal woman would have -which she initially did- it wouldn't have worked. Since the writers can make things work out for the best, they can just say 'Hey, look at what a master manipulator Barney is' but entirely too much of his plan was left to chance for it to be believable. What would have happened if Robin hadn't shown up in her underwear that one night? Would he have just played crazy eights with Patrice until 2am?

In fact, the only part that was completely believable was Robin's initial response to reading Barney's final play. They haven't dated in three years. They haven't slept together in over a year, and after that, she rejected him in favour of Dr. Kal Penn who, incidentally, asked her to marry him ten months ago. Then Barney gave up on her so Ted could profess his love without remorse. He was engaged to Quinn less than four months ago, and she just got out of a fairly serious relationship with Nick. I may be wrong here, but agreeing to marry a guy you haven't gone out with in years seems insane. Heck, asking a woman you haven't dated in years to marry you is insane, especially if your previous engagement just recently ended. Barney just split up with his fiancee because she didn't trust him, and now a woman he's been lying to for six weeks is going to marry him? That's nuts.

I've been wondering how they were going to go from where they were to where the flashforward said they needed to be, and now I have my answer: Magic. They just snapped their fingers and Robin and Barney were engaged. No need to go through all the rigmarole of turning them into people who should date each other and then into people who are ready to get engaged when you can just go *poof*?

After writing this review, I went through a few comments on other reviews, and apparently the ending had a lot of emotional resonance for people. Maybe it's because I'm a robot, but I felt nothing. Nothing but contempt for the writers.

I'm assuming that the first episode of the new year will have everyone talking about how insane it is for Barney and Robin to be engaged, which will add a little credibility back to the story, but they just pulled some sixth-season-of-Lost-level BS, and it's going to take a lot to dig the show out of that hole.