February 27, 2013

The Men Who Cried Wolf: Review of HIMYM's "Weekend at Barney's"

In the first post I wrote about How I Met Your Mother, I gently acknowledged that it might be time for this show to come to an end. After this week's episode, I'm not going to be so gentle. "Weekend at Barney's" was what lousy television episodes are: stale.

Simply put, we'd seen it all before. How many times has Marshall made a buffoon of himself at sophisticated events while Lily stood by loving him anyway? And Ted dating a crazy?  That's nothing new. And worst of all, this was an episode centered around yet another one of Barney's schemes. And here's the problem with that: these characters can't be trusted. When Barney burned what we now know wasn't actually the Playbook, I thought, "Great! Character development!" Nope. Just when I was beginning to trust Barney and appreciate his relationship with Robin, he cried wolf. 

And he's not the only guilty one. Ted Mosby's been crying wolf about his own story for seven and a half seasons now. Ever since the pilot episode and his first date with Robin. So when he said that Jeanette was the last girl he dated before Mother, I responded skeptically.

Let me be clear, this is not a bad show, and this was not a bad episode. The acting is always good. The writing is always funny. And if that's what you're looking for, then HIMYM is the show for you. But I believe that good TV is better than that. And this episode was just... shoddy. If the characters don't grow, and if the plots aren't new, I'm not sure I can get through another season of How I Met Your Mother

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