Monday, November 25, 2013

Rhyme Time (Review)

Series: How I Met Your Mother
Episode Title: "Bedtime Stories"
Episode Grade: B

One of the themes most prevalent in discussions about How I Met Your Mother's final season has been creative exhaustion. Nine seasons is just a long damn run for a sitcom, and it's easy to exhaust most of your compelling plots and character beats. How, then, would the show fare in its last season, especially with the curious choice to set it over the course of a weekend?

The answer has generally been a positive one. There has been an energy to this season that has been lacking from the last few years of the show. It's as if Carter Bays and Craig Thomas, so close to the finish line, have finally found the themes they dreamed about when they first pitched How I Met Your Mother.

That said, if anyone wants to argue that "Bedtime Stories" is an example of creative exhaustion, it would be hard to disagree. It's a classic gimmick episode, a half-hour divided into three rhyming stories, set within the framing device of Marshall trying to talk young Marvin to sleep. It's the kind of idea one can imagine being tossed out in frustration in an exhausted writer's room after several hours of futile attempts to think up new stories.

And let's be clear about what "Bedtime Stories" is and is not. It's not a meaningful or substantive episode of the show. It's not a classic half-hour of television. It's not going to stick in the memory for long.

It is a gimmick episode. But it is also fun and funny and it's evidence of a mind at work. Sometimes desperation is the spark of genius, and sometimes it's the spark of inanity. This week, however, it's the spark of a light-hearted romp that everyone involved clearly enjoyed.

Look, there's only so much you can say about "Bedtime Stories." It doesn't explore any new territory. In the first story, "Mosby at the Bat," Ted wonders whether his dinner with a beautiful young professor is a date or a business meeting. In the second story, "Robin Takes the Cake," Robin steals the wedding cake belonging to her old Canadian high school flame James Van Der Beek (back for a lovely cameo, and looking sharp), only to turn the day into something triumphant by eating the whole thing. In the third, "Barney Stinson: Player King of New York City," Barney has sex with a dumb woman.

The bigger problem is that this is even a hard episode to do the "here are some funny quotes" thing for, as the language is precise enough that it punishes those of us trying to watch live and take notes at the same time. So it's hard to point at concrete examples of why I enjoyed this episode as much as I did.

I would only say this: I kicked off this blog with a defense of Aaron Sorkin centered around the idea that I place more weight on the quality of language than most critics. It's fun for me to watch skilled writers play around with language, explore its limits and shape it into something unique or interesting.

And that's what "Bedtime Stories" is all about: a bunch of sitcom writers letting their hair down for a bit and getting back to the sheer joy of playing with words. Yes, it's basically the television equivalent of eating popcorn for dinner. But we're all allowed to indulge from time-to-time.

Notes

  • Barney's story is basically just an excuse to let Neil Patrick Harris ham it up as six different characters on the "Players' Council." Long Island Lou is a particular favorite.
  • Cobie Smoulders has that wonderfully useful television quality of looking beautiful even when she looks awful. 
  • Ted's date is played by Camille Guaty. I mention this only because I used to watch Las Vegas when I was un-employed and it was syndicated on TBS. She played a concierge named Piper in that show's final season, aka "The Tom Selleck Season." A beautiful woman, no doubt.
  • Here, she plays a physics professor who slept with Derek Jeter (Barney in a t-shirt that says "Jeter"). There's also a funny little moment where she claims that architecture is boring and Ted takes great offense. 

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