Episode Title: "Last Time in New York"
Episode Grade: A-
I went on at great length last week about the emotional underpinnings of How I Met Your Mother, because I'm largely incapable of talking about anything without going on at great length. And it's that core of emotion that has enabled the show to achieve a kind of resonance that even well-crafted sitcoms lack.
But an emotionally resonant sitcom is still a sitcom, and it's fair to judge How I Met Your Mother on a comedic standard. That's largely where the show has fallen short in recent years, even while getting many of the emotional beats right.
"Last Time in New York" has some lovely moments, and we'll get to those. But above all else it is funny, a consistently entertaining half hour of television that provides reason to hope Carter Bays and Craig Thomas can make the world's most drawn-out wedding something we enjoy watching.
Writers tend to talk about "A" plots and "B" plots in episodes, but "Last Time in New York" really has two A plots. The first, which is more light-hearted, has Barney and Robin freaking out about the arrival of all their elderly relatives and the possibility that they might end up a bitter, sexless old married couple themselves.
The Barney-Robin pairing can raise a number of troublesome questions, but the chemistry between Cobie Smoulders and Neil Patrick Harris is sensational enough to quiet most of them. The two have an easy reporte built over the course of eight seasons, and it remains a pleasure just to watch the two bounce off each other and reveal just how perfectly, pervertedly compatible they are.
Barney and Robin spend most of the episode trying to find a naughty public place to have sex, but they're stymied by the hordes of elderly relatives who have descended on Farhampton (and who are inexorably drawn by uttering the words "Mandy Patinkin"). This is all pretty frivolous, and the jokes about old people trade more on hoary stereotypes than genuine wit.
But, again, it's fun. Watching Barney constantly misinterpret Robin's statements as an invitation for anal sex is fun. Watching Wayne Bradey sacrifice himself as if he's a doomed soldier in a classic war movie to the old relatives so that Barney and Robin can get away is fun. Smoulders wasn't necessarily asked to do much in the first couple seasons of the show, but she's evolved into a really outstanding comedic performer, and her work with Harris is always a highlight.
A-plot Two is Lily discovering Ted's list of things to do for the final time in New York. There's more of an emotional core to this, and not just because Ted expects to leave behind Robin and the rest of his friends. Ted's love for New York has itself been a theme running through the show's many seasons; his passion for the city's architecture, its energy and its beauty have been re-visited constantly. Sometimes it's been played for laughs, sometimes for drama, sometimes for thematic resonance, but it's always been there. And it's always been one of the better elements of Ted's character; he's hardly unique in fiction in having a passion for New York, but How I Met Your Mother's writing staff have done a remarkable job in keeping that passion from coming off as the insufferable arrogance you see from other fictional New Yorkers.
But this is also a consistently funny story. The to-do list is perfect Moseby: whether Ted is correcting the "Your a penis" graffiti on the corner (that's YOU'RE a penis, thank you very much), saying goodbye to the Empire State Building (he sometimes talks to it about life, OK?) or finally coming clean with the beautiful woman upstairs (she's an incredibly loud walker and can't play the bongos at all), the little cutaway gags developing from the list are funny.
"Last Time In New York" ends on something of a cliffhanger: Ted finds Barney to share a last glass of Scotch, only to be confronted by the fact that Barney saw him helping Robin dig in Central Park for her old locket last season. So the emotional stakes remain. But there are two syllables in "sitcom," and tonight was excellent proof that How I Met Your Mother is still aware of the second.
Notes
- The C-plot tonight is Marshall driving through a "hellish, cheese-infested wasteland" (Wisconsin) with Sherri Shepherd. Jason Segel was apparently quite reluctant to come back for a final season, and I wonder if the road trip plot is a way of working around his lack of availability, because he doesn't get much screen time tonight.
- Lily's awesome dress, which was both slutty and classy in exactly the right proportions, was ruined, which forces her to opt for her back-up dress, which is just classy.
- Marshall and Ted ruined the dress in a sword fight sparked by Ted's discovery of the old swords he and Marshall once shared. Marshall ends up raising a pretty valid point about the way Andre the Giant is disrespected in The Princess Bride.
- Of course, it turns out even Lily and Robin are unable to resist the allure of a sword fight, and they end up dueling. Lily apparently thinks Mandy Patinkin's famous line is, "My name is Rodrigo Montoya, you killed someone I love, prepare to dance."
- During the fight, Lily and Robin accidentally destroy the 30-year-old bottle of expensive scotch Marshall and Ted bought for the wedding. They replace it with cheap whiskey, chocolate syrup, ketchup and hand sanitizer. Ted can't tell the difference.
- Josh Radnor in a 1910-era bathing suit. Always comic gold.
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