How I Met Your Mother: The Fortress (8x19)

So... before I start this review of How I Met Your Mother, I'm curious. Is anyone reading this? I know it's not well advertised, but it does get page views. Are those just people clicking on past? If you are reading, go ahead and leave me a review. I'd love to hear from you.

On to the show: This is a sitcom that reached its prime quite a long time ago, and probably needs to die gracefully. I know that a season 9 has been scheduled, but I'm not quite sure I'm happy about that. Regardless, it's important to look at each episode on its own merits.

This week was... well, it had some funny moments in it, but it also had a lot of problems. I'm going to start by addressing the three pretty major problems I had with it, so that I can then move on to what I liked.

Problem #1 - Ted. He's our show's protagonist, and yet he spent this entire episode with a plot line about wanting to watch a television show and pretending to be gay to get a girl. How does this advance his story or our understanding of the character? Given that he's going to meet "the one" in a few more episodes at Barney and Robin's wedding, it feels a little weird that he's sleeping around and acting like such a goof. I can only imagine how weird it would be for his kids to hear about all of these girls he slept with before meeting their mom. Because, seriously, I know Ted is no Barney, but the dude has still had a lot of sexual partners in this thing. So, I guess it's annoying to me that of the five main characters, I care about Ted the least, when it's supposed to be his story.

Problem #2 - At first I thought it was hilarious that Ted and Marshall decided to pretend to be gay after being mistaken for a couple. Ted had the accent, they had the baby, it was all good. But then Marshall got all sassy-gay-friend and it was just... I don't know, a bit insulting. There was all of the political undercurrents in this episode about homosexuality being "a choice" and about marriage simply to "prove a point." However, instead of being funny but serious, it was played entirely for laughs. This show has made a point of being serious on occasion and dealing with real issues. It was a shame they missed that opportunity here. 

Problem #3 - At the beginning of the episode, there was a rather insensitive joke about Robin not being able to have kids. I remember that being a rather heavy episode, so it was odd to see it joked about here. It wasn't at all funny to me that Barney had a system of getting rid of women after sex by locking them back behind his wall. I know that Barney's sexual history has been played for laughs a lot in this show, but now that Barney is in a committed monogamous relationship, it felt odd to see such a disgusting example of how he used to be. It's simply not funny to flat-out trivialize the sexual mistreatment of women. I'm not trying to get all political here, but really. Sometimes it gets out of hand.

And now for what was good:

The humor. Basically, I had a lot of problems with the plot, but I also thought the episode had some good laughs.

The Downton Abbey parody was hilarious, especially since I watch that show. "Woodworthy Manor," as it was called, was a very exaggerated parody, and I think it fits in nicely with the fact that Ted is telling this story several years later. He remembered a big fad and tells it to his kids, but blows it way out of proportion. The bit about the local gardening competition was actually something from Downton Abbey, so that was funny to see.

Barney's talking hologram head was great. All of the gadgets in his apartment, actually, were pretty funny, except for obviously the bed going into the wall, as I mentioned earlier. The best one was the voice-activated sprinkler system. It was a great set-up and a perfect pay-off when Marshall said to Ted "We have a baby together!" and the sprinklers started again.

This is a pretty long review for a sitcom, so I'll try and wrap it up. The actual plot between Barney and Robin had potential but I thought it failed to go through as well as it could have. I liked to see Barney actually getting angry at Robin for once, because only the reverse ever seems to happen on this show. But then, he was just totally willing to give up his apartment for her? I didn't like that. I wish he would have stuck to his guns. However, I did like that Robin changed her mind and defended the apartment in the end. The episode tag was actually a great reminder of why I think Robin and Barney make a good couple. They ejected themselves out of the apartment and then Barney gave an injured Robin a high-five and pulled her in for a kiss. I can just picture him keeping her relaxed and in good spirits as they go off to the hospital to get her wrist bandaged.

So... I had some major problems with this episode, but the jokes were mostly good.

4/10