Game of Thrones 8x04: The Last of The Starks

It's the day after the night, and it's time to burn the dead and get drunk. Daenerys legitimizes Gendry and makes him Lord of Storm's End, so he immediately runs off to profess his love for Arya and propose to her. She turns him down, 'cause the sex was good, but he's no Podrick. Tormund downs enough liquid courage to finally make his move on Brienne, but Jaime's pretty thirsty, too, so he bangs the first lady knight, and Tormund settles for a Northern girl.

After the celebration, Daenerys literally begs Jon not to tell anyone he's the rightful heir to the Iron Throne, but he feels like he has to tell the Stark girls for some reason. Even though he swears her to secrecy, Sansa immediately blabs to Tyrion and starts scheming a way to get her ex-half-brother on the throne.

Daenerys, the dragons, and a small force head to Dragonstone via ship, but are ambushed by a small group of Euron's ships armed with dragon-killing ballistae. They kill Rhaegal, sink all her ships, and capture Missandei. The Dragon Queen is rightly pissed off since now she has no one left to announce her as Khaleesi and breaker of chains and whatnot, so she just wants to burn King's Landing to the ground. Tyrion tries to convince her not to do it, but she's not having it, so Varys thinks that she might not be the best person to rule the Seven Kingdoms after all. The gang heads out for a quick parley with Cersei, who has lined the walls of the city with ballistae as well. Qyburn comes out to deliver terms, but since he's not empowered to negotiate, Tyrion talks directly with his sister... who predictably ignores everything he has to say and has The Mountain chop Missandei's head off. Daenerys is super, crazy mad.


What I Liked
-"Now, which one of you cowards shit in my pants?" I'm really gonna miss Tormund.
-Everyone gets lucky. The North has been at war for so long and through so many different conflicts that I'd say at minimum, a solid 25% of its total male population has been killed. The Northern ladies probably haven't gotten laid on a regular basis since Ned Stark was alive.
-Varys still serves the realm above all else. He may be the last major character with any sense.

What I Hated
-Gendry asks Arya to marry him. That must have been some awesome sex because the two of them barely know each other and he's in love with her.
-Jon sends Ghost to live on a farm. I know CGI direwolves are expensive, but this is just ridiculous. Most people wouldn't get rid of a beloved pet without saying goodbye, and a "Good boy, Ghost, go with Tormund," would've been a hell of a lot better than the brief, sort of, but not really sad look we got.
-Euron Greyjoy's cloaking device returns. The whole sequence where Daenerys arrives at Dragonstone is stupid as hell.
-Tyrion still thinks he can convince his sister to do anything. He used to be a smart guy, but apparently Cersei has some kind of energy field around her that turns him into a total moron.
-Cersei still thinks she can rule the Seven Kingdoms. Her allies currently consist of Euron's fleet, whatever Lannisters might be left, Qyburn, and The Mountain. The Golden Company doesn't count because they're only hanging around because she paid them. Everyone else hates her. Her army certainly isn't large enough to intimidate people into following her, and she has no legal claim to the throne, so I'm not sure what she expects the outcome of all of this to be.


Final Thoughts
I understand why they needed to eliminate one of the dragons as well as another solid chunk of Daenerys' army, but they did it very, very poorly. Apparently scouts just aren't a thing in Westeros, but cloaking devices are. Also, Euron's forces scored three direct hits the very first time they ever fired at a flying target, but didn't think to shoot the other dragon, then machine-gunned all the enemy ships using some kind of off-camera quick-reload mechanism.

Still no word on Lord Royce or what Bran was doing in episode three. I swear if some deus ex machina force of Crannogmen or something rides to the rescue at the end of the next episode, I'll lose my shit.

I enjoyed this episode more than the previous one, but it still wasn't good. Turning Daenerys into a power-mad, vengeful lunatic seems like way too much of a departure. Her entire motivation is a bit messed up at this point. All that stuff about wanting to free the people and break the wheel has gone out the window, and now she just wants to kill Cersei so she can become Queen of Westeros. It doesn't matter to her that Jon has a better claim and he'd be a kind and just King, she wants to rule. She wants to rule shitty Westeros where winter lasts for years instead of installing her nephew as ruler and then heading back to Essos to be Queen of the big chunk of land she conquered over there. Her family could rule on both sides of the sea, but that makes too much sense, so she's probably gonna burn it all down and be queen of the ashes.

Game of Thrones 8x03: The Long Night

War has come to Winterfell... again. I swear this is the last time. There's a big fight, the living are eventually all but defeated, but Bran sits motionless for hours, which manages to bait the Night King into coming after him. When all seems lost and the last male Stark is about to get the chop, Arya leaps out of nowhere and stabs ol' frosty in the chest, and all the dead drop dead-er.

What I Liked
-The shot of the dragons flying above the clouds is fantastic.

What I Hated
-The night is dark and full of dark. Also, there's more dark with a side of dark. It was partially the fault of the compression on the stream from the HBO website, but even on cable it was pretty dark and I had to crank up the brightness on my TV to see anything.
-Even with enough brightness, the action is really hard to follow. People and zombies die, we know that much, but who, when, and how is nearly impossible to discern.
-Arya plays a quick game of The Last of Us. The whole situation in the library was ridiculous. There's a massive battle raging all over, but somehow ten wights sneak inside and Arya evades them by hiding behind bookcases and under a table in almost total silence.
-Everyone's battle tactics. We don't know much about the Night King, so he may just be some goof with magic powers who doesn't know anything, but there must have been at least one halfway competent commander on the side of the living who could've helped them plan things out a bit better.
-Beric basically dies the same way as Hodor. The major purpose of two characters' lives was to slightly delay some zombies. That's how you know the writers have run out of material.

Final Thoughts
There really isn't a lot to say about the plot of this episode, because it basically has no plot. It's essentially one long battle with very little time devoted to actual story advancement. Which is not to say that the story doesn't advance. A whole crapton of people die, including Edd, Lyanna Mormont, Beric Dondarrion, Theon, Jorah, the Night King, Melisandre, all the undead, all the Dothraki, most of the Unsullied, and most of the rest of the army of the living. When the battle's finally over, all those people's storylines are pretty much wrapped up... 'cause they're dead. It's kinda like how they wrapped up the whole Faith Militant thing at the end of season six: And then they all died. The end.

Where the hell was Lord Royce? What was Bran doing all episode? Is there anyone even left alive in the North at this point?

We'll have to wait for the next episode to find out, but it really seems like literally all the Dothraki in Westeros are now dead, and that was a fairly substantial portion of their total number. Thanks to Daenerys, an entire civilization has been nearly annihilated. A super-rapey, murdery civilization, but a civilization nonetheless.

I have no problem with Arya killing the Night King, I just wish there had been a bit more build up to it. He chucks an off-balance javelin or two, but at no point does he even draw his sword, and that's just disappointing. You want your big evil to do at least a little fighting to justify their big evilness.

So, we probably know about as much about the white walkers as we ever will (at least until that prequel series starts or Martin finishes another book), which isn't a whole heck of a lot. Their sole motivation seems to be "Kill all humans!" although that seems a bit self-defeating, since their method of reproducing involves human babies. Unfortunately, they needed to wrap up their part of the story since it was made abundantly clear that Cersei was never going to give a shit about them. 100,000 zombies could've laid siege to King's Landing and she still would've cared more about killing Tyrion. That's the problem with having so many dangling plot threads in the last season: sometimes you have to snip them off in an unsatisfying manner.

HIMYM 8x24: Something New

Marshall has apparently neglected to tell his mother that he, Lily, and Marvin are moving to Rome for a year. So, when Judy calls and Lily accidentally spills the beans, Marshall and Marvin fly out to Minnesota for a week to calm her down.

With her two favourite guys away, Lily has time to get blotto down at the bar with Ted. However, Ted's heading up to Westchester to put the finishing touches on that house he's been remodelling for three years. Lily's really excited to see the place, but when they get there, she quickly finds out that Ted's selling it.

Using the cheapest sign he could find.

When she asks him why he's giving the house up so soon after finishing it, Ted tells her that he's giving up on New York and moving to Chicago. Marshall and Lily are going to Rome, Robin and Barney are getting married, and after eight years of looking, he hasn't been able to find a woman he can love in New York; he's leaving right after the wedding. Lily wonders why he's in such a rush, and quickly realizes that it's because he thinks the love of his life is about to marry his best friend. Ted tells the story of the end of last week's episode and how he spent hours digging up Central Park, looking for the locket, just for the chance to see Robin smile. That's kind of a douchey way to feel about your best friend's fiancee. Unfortunately, Lily knows exactly where the locket is.

Four seasons ago when Ted was engaged to Stella, Robin got super drunk and dragged Lily out to Central Park in the middle of the night to dig up the locket... and rebury the box it was in, apparently. Afterwards, they went back to the apartment where Robin tried to get Lily to help her conceal the locket in her butt. Instead, they put it in a race car pencil box(which, incidentally is visible behind the son in 2030).

Then Robin asked her to help hide the pencil box in her butt.

After that, Lily thinks she took the pencil box to Japan. However, Ted knows that it's actually been on his desk for the past five years. Lily warns him to be careful, but he's elated and thinks that the locket will be the best wedding present ever.

In Minnesota, Judy is jokingly threatening to either stop them from going to Rome altogether or to tag along. That's not the biggest threat to their trip, though. Marshall gets a call from the New York Judiciary Committee, and they want him to be a judge.

Meanwhile, Robin and Barney go to dinner, where they meet a pretentious, bitchy couple while they're waiting at the bar.

Hi!

After having an annoying disagreement with the couple over the sight and smell of a couple cigars they plan to smoke after dinner, Barney and Robin decide that they've just met their arch-nemeses, and must destroy them. This becomes doubly urgent when the couple steals their favourite table. Some astute observation shows that the guy's not quite as into the relationship as the girl, so Robin sticks her engagement ring in some Champagne and has it delivered to them, mirroring what happened to her and Ted back in season two. Only this time the woman's way into, and they man tries to back out.

And their enemies are vanquished.

In the end, things actually work out for the annoying couple and they realize they really do want to get married.

A few days later it's the Friday before the wedding. Robin and Barney hop in Ranjeev's limo, Ted and Lily drive a wood-panelled station wagon for some reason, Marshall and the baby grab a flight back from Minnesota, a woman carrying a guitar and a yellow umbrella takes the train to Farhampton.

But the producers dick us around and don't show her face.

Oh wait, never mind.

Finally. Meet Cristin Milioti, the girl with the yellow umbrella, and presumably the mother.

What I Liked
-Barney and Robin saw two bums making love over a sandwich. Why pay for theatre tickets when you can watch that kind of show for free?
-Marshall's older brother Marcus has returned from Carnalism II to make puns about hitting his baby brother in the balls.

"Do you like crushed nuts?"

"Do you want me to grab your bag?"

-Drunk Robin keeps asking Lily to help her put things in her butt. Sometimes the simplest jokes are the best jokes.
-They actually showed the mother's face. Now, I'm going to assume that the girl with the umbrella is actually the mother. The credits listed her as 'the girl with the yellow umbrella' but I don't think the producers would be dumb enough to pull a fake out like that. It's not like they need the money, but their careers would take a pretty serious hit after the massive public backlash that would ensue. So, credit goes to them for not making us wait until next season.

What I Hated
-The annoying couple. Congratulations, HIMYM writers, you managed to create someone even worse than Ted. Casey Wilson and Keegan-Michael Key were listed as 'Special Guest Stars', which is weird because their resumes aren't that impressive.

Final Thoughts
Despite a complete lack of carpentry skills and the fact that he hasn't actually spoken about it in three years, Ted somehow managed to fix up the house. Then he immediately decided to put it on the market. Why did they even bother with that? We know that he can't sell the place because it's the house where Future Ted is telling the story of how he met his kids' mother. Heck, they mentioned that in this very episode. It's just another example of the writers trying to build drama, but failing miserably because we already know what happens.

Speaking of which, apparently the faux drama at the end of last week's episode ended five seconds later when Ted buggered off.

I'm not going to watch this show next season. We know who the mother is, and that's all I needed. It's not nearly good enough anymore to justify watching it. The plots are illogical, the lead character is a douche, and at least a few episodes next season will be spent just on Barney and Robin's wedding, which we first found out about in the first episode of season seven. Two years is a long-ass time to tease something that, quite frankly, isn't that interesting or important in the context of the show. Of course, the producers of HIMYM are masters at drawing things out, having taken eight seasons and 184 episodes to show the mother, who Ted hasn't even actually met yet.

There's one thing that would've made me keep watching, and quite frankly, I would've followed the producers to the ends of the Earth if it were true. If they had actually cast Cristin Milioti several seasons ago and used her for all the brief glimpses of the mother we've seen over the years, I would sing this show's praises until the day I died. They didn't, though. I don't even think they used the same actress in the season premiere.

As for this episode specifically, it wasn't insultingly awful, but it was a bit disconnected and Robin and Barney's plot was both aggravating and completely superfluous. It also had one really stupid and annoying plot point regarding the locket. So, Robin was so drunk that she forgot she dug it up; I can believe that. What I cannot believe is that there was a strange locket in a box on Ted's desk, and he didn't ask Robin or Lily about it for five years. It's not like it was hidden in a back storage room somewhere or in the bottom of a file cabinet, it was on his desk, holding pencils that he presumably uses every day for work. But apparently he didn't open it for half a decade because when Robin told him about the locket in the park, he didn't immediately say "Oh, it's in a box on my desk. It has been for years." The whole thing makes absolutely no sense and is just more "My, aren't we clever" masturbatory writing. No, Carter Bays and Craig Thomas, you're not all that clever. It would be clever if the locket actually had been in that box for the previous five years, but until a week ago, the locket didn't even exist. On the show, Robin got drunk five years ago and put the locket in a box on Ted's desk. In reality, the writers came up with that idea like two months ago. It's not clever, it's just dumb. Which is an apt description of the show as a whole these days.

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.

HIMYM 8x22: The Bro Mitzvah

Barney and Robin's wedding is only a few weeks away, which means it's time for Barney's surprise bachelor party! Ted and Marshall throw a bag over his head, toss him in the back of a van and take him to a crappy hotel just outside Atlantic City. At first, Barney's a little concerned by how the evening his going, but the guys remind him that he has a gambling problem, and that back when he was engaged to Quinn, he told them exactly what he wanted for his bachelor party

As outlined in the ancient wisdom of the Brorah.

Unfortunately for Barney, they get everything wrong. For "mind-blowing entertainment" they bring in a clown, their "fear for our lives" experience is watching An Inconvenient Truth, they get the wrong Karate Kid (Barney inexplicably thinks the star of that film is William Zabka), and the stripper turns out to be a very sad Quinn.

A lap dance is always better when the stripper is crying.

After all that, Barney calls it and they start the long drive home. However, on the way, Ralph Macchio talks some smack about how Barney's a loser for having a bachelor party a stone's throw away from AC and not gambling. Naturally, Barney can't let the villain from The Karate Kid get the better of him, so he pulls a U-turn on the highway and it's time to gamble. He quickly loses $85,000... and Marshall to some Chinese gangsters.

When they get back to New York so Barney can raise the cash to buy back Marshall, Robin's pissed because running off with the guys meant that she had to spend the night alone with Barney's mother. She's even more pissed when she finds out that Quinn was the stripper. She chucks her engagement ring on the ground and storms off... only to reveal that it was all a ruse.

Pulling a ruse while in uniform disgraces the naughty police force.

Future Ted then tells us what really happened. Since every night of Barney's life is awesome, instead of giving him the best time of his life, Robin planned the worst night of his life. Everyone was in on it: the guys, Quinn, Ralph Macchio, the Chinese gangsters, even Barney's mother.

For the finale, the gangsters chop Marshall's hand off and drag Barney up to his apartment where everyone is waiting to surprise him. They've checked off everything on the list in the most twisted way possible, and he loved it. Except, they got the wrong Karate Kid. Or did they? The clown removes his make-up to reveal that he was William Zabka all along!

The real Karate Kid.

What I Liked
-Various Jewish-themed bro puns. I wasn't offended at all, and that's what really matters.
-"Shut it, Ralph Macchio!" I think we've all wanted to say that at one time or another.
-They stuck in one clean shot of the Brorah so we could all read it.

Thanks, HIMYM producers!

What I Hated
-Lily's weird, creepy obsession with Ralph Macchio. That was just unnecessary and gross.

Although, with a little make-up and the right lighting, I'd still buy him as a teenager.

-It was all a ruse, and for some reason, Barney really liked it.

Final Thoughts
I'm getting reeeeeeeeeeeeeealy tired of TV shows doing episodes where people run some horrible scam to fool their loved ones and get away with it. I'm fairly willing to suspend disbelief, but they just strain credulity. Aside from a 'The Game' situation, no one, anywhere likes to have a horrible time. People like good times with booze, games, strippers, and William Zabka. Even if it's not the best night ever, that's still better than having your friends lie to you and taking a four-hour round trip to Atlantic City.

They didn't even actually check off everything on Barney's list. Robin mentioned that Barney's mother was telling crazy sex stories, but that didn't really happen, and there was no Broment, since everything was a ruse. You can't say 'oh my, look how clever we are' when a cursory examination shows that you weren't actually all that clever. I mean, you can, but it's kinda dumb.

That being said, this was still a better episode than the last ten or so. It was funnier, it had Ralph Macchio, and it didn't make me want to punch Ted in the face. That's worthy of some faint praise.

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.

HIMYM 8x20: The Time Travelers

At long last, Future Ted is finally creeping up on the point in the story where he actually meets his kids' mother. But there's one thing standing in the way of their meeting: Robots vs. Wrestlers!

Which I suppose may technically be two things.

Barney drops by the bar with two tickets to Robots vs. Wrestlers: Legends and he wants Ted to be his +1. Unfortunately, Ted has a big lecture to give in the morning and he's not sure he should go out. So, in order to convince him, Barney calls upon the most convoluted narrative device in the history of television.

In order to get Ted to go out, he needs to prove that RvW:L will be a life-changing event. Unfortunately, there's no way to see into the future, so Present Barney can't make a good case. However, he can summon 20 Years from Now Barney to tell Ted just how legendary the night was. Future Barney's not wholly convincing, either, so he summons 20 Years from Now Ted to make the pitch to his past self.

We know Future Ted is a phony because he doesn't sound like Bob Saget.

20 Years from Now Ted says that going to RvW:L will make this night the single greatest night of his life, and that's enough for Present Ted. All four of them are about to head out when they're stopped by someone they didn't expect: 20 Hours from Now Ted.

The Ted of Tomorrow admits that Robots vs. Wrestlers is awesome, but while he was there he drank way too much, dove into the ring and sprained his wrist, and smoked half a pack of cigarettes. Also, he hurled like the time his mom bought beef at the Price Club. Upon hearing that his night was pretty awesome Present Ted is prepared to go just as long as he doesn't drink too much. The other Teds and the Barneys agree that you don't need alcohol to have a good time, but if you're going to Robots vs. Wrestlers, you still kinda need to get wasted. That seems to be enough to convince Present Ted because when they come back to this plot a bit later, he has inexplicably decided to go. They all get up to leave when they're stopped by yet another unexpected guest: 20 Minutes from Now Barney.

He's awfully smug for a guy with a big spaghetti stain on his shirt.

Present Barney laughs at this new Barney for spilling food on himself, then digs into the plate of spaghetti that Carl brings him. Nineteen minutes later, Present Barney has a big spaghetti stain, 20 Minutes from Now Barney has acid reflux from eating Italian food in an Irish pub, and the reason he came back to stop them walks through the door.

It's the coat check girl from Season 1, Episode 5: Okay Awesome. Remember her?

Ted consults with the group, and they all agree he should go talk to her, but before he can approach her, he's pulled into a booth by two people: Two separate versions of 20 Months from Now Coat Check Girl. They convince him that no matter what happens, either he'll get sick of her, or she'll get sick of him, because that's what always happens in his relationships.

Meanwhile, Marshall has invented a drink that he calls the 'Minnesota Tidal Wave' however, Robin's been ordering it so often that Carl has placed it on the MacLaren's menu and named it after her.

Now she has a play and a drink named after her.

Marshall is understandably upset that his creation got the Flaming Moe treatment, so he challenges Robin to a dance-off. They're about to hit the floor when Lily stops him because his dancer's hip has been acting up lately and their doctor wants him to lay off for a while.

With dance-based vengeance impossible, Marshall does the next best thing and writes Robin's phone number on the men's room wall. It doesn't work out terribly well for him since women can enter the men's room with impunity, but men can't go in the ladies' room. After scratching her name off the wall, Robin heads into the women's bathroom to do some writing of her own. Marshall sucks it up and busts through the door to see what it was, and it's not at all what he thought it would be.

It's not bawdy and it's really long.

Robin has left him a message about how sorry she is that she stole his drink and how it all goes back to her childhood and how her father treated her like a cat, but it's all a ruse. The last sentence exposes the whole thing as a lie she made up so Marshall would spend a long time in the bathroom and then have to hide in a stall when a woman comes in. And hide he does.

He waits until he thinks the coast is clear to emerge, but really there are somehow like seven girls in the bathroom. They all flee in terror, and Carl chastises Marshall for being creepy and even uses his name as shorthand for a dude creeping in the bathroom. While Marshall's glad that something is finally named after him, he's also kinda upset at the presumption that he was being creepy, so he resolves to call the next person he sees making a prejudicial assumption a 'Real Carl...' Unfortunately, he doesn't know Carl's last name, and even though he offers to name every drink in the bar after him if he can think of it, Marshall still has no idea what it could be.

Not pictured: Mr. Carl S. Jr.

Defeated, Marshall slinks back to the table. His wife has his back, though, and puts his jam on the jukebox so he can throw caution to the wind and dance it out with Ms. Sparkles.

While the dance-off is going down, Ted finally decides that he's not going to go to Robots vs. Wrestlers, and instead he's just going to go home. He expects Present Barney to try to change his mind, but instead he tells him that the whole 'Minnesota Tidal Wave' thing happened five years ago and everything else was just in his imagination. He's been alone the whole time, trying to decide if he should go by himself.

*Bwaaaaaaaaammmmmm*

Future Ted tells his kids that if he could go back to that night, he wouldn't go to Robots vs. Wrestlers. Instead, he'd go home and look at all his old stuff, visit Marshall and Lily and play with baby Marvin, and visit Robin and Barney and help settle whatever argument they were having. But first he'd run over to their mother's apartment and tell her that he loves her.

And get punched in the face by her boyfriend, Lou Ferrigno Jr.

What I Liked
-Future Ted trolls Present Ted by pretending that he's still not married. In the future he's still a douche, but he's a funnier douche.
-All the Teds and Barneys sing 'For the Longest Time' together. I wasn't a big fan of the multiples as a narrative device, but I recognize how tough it must have been to sync up their singing.

Plus, I kinda like that song.

What I Hated
-Marshall takes forever to read the message on the wall. It may have looked like a lot, but it was literally 185 words long, and should've taken him all of twenty seconds to read.
-The continuity is all messed up. Supposedly the 'Minnesota Tidal Wave' thing happened five years ago, but the gang didn't know about Marshall's dancer's hip until The Possimpible, which was only four years ago. Lily's hair is red in the episode, but five years ago it was brown. And most importantly, at the end of the season five episode 'Robots vs. Wrestlers' Future Ted says the following:

Kids, I'd love to tell you that over the years we didn't all drift apart a little at one time or another. You don't mean for it to happen, but it does. But no matter what, to this day, come hell or high water, we still all get together every year for Robots vs. Wrestlers.

What the hell is the point of having continuity if you're just going to ignore it or screw it up? Up until this season, this show's been very, very good at referencing things that happened in earlier episodes, but this year they've been screwing it up royally. Sure, they brought back Jayma Mays and Joe Manganiello, but the actors are probably the least important part of continuity.

Final Thoughts
This has to be the most confusing story in the history of the world at this point. Not only is Future Ted telling his kids the story of the eight years in his life before he met their mother, he's also telling them about things his friends did, things he doesn't know about, stories he told other people, and now things that he imagined. Future teenagers must have a lot more patience than today's teens.

I won't call it a complete waste of an episode, because things did happen on the show. However, from the point of view of the story it was a complete waste. It was literally an episode about how Ted went to the bar alone and drank one beer. We've had a firm date for when he finally meets the mother for a while now, and now the writers have to kill time until then. No progress or even fake progress can occur because we all know that it won't matter.

The characters aren't driving the plot anymore because Ted has resolved to stop dating, and the narrative's not driving the plot anymore because it already has an ending, so we just have to wait and watch the show spin its wheels until it gets there.