Episode Title: "Platonish"
Episode Grade: B+
How you feel about How I Met Your Mother's insistence on repeatedly returning to the Ted-Robin well probably informs how you feel about "Platonish" and the last few seasons of the show in general. I know there are a lot of fans who look at these storylines as tiresome and pointless, and not just because we know Ted and Robin don't end up together. You can only watch a man run headlong into a wall so many times before you want to stop, and Ted's persistent yearning for a woman he broke up with five years ago is the character at his most pathetic and least entertaining.
I get this point of view, really. I understand it. But to me, the relationship between Ted and Robin has always represented one of the show's emotional cores. This is a reflection of the strength of their bond, as shown way back in season two. Put simply, the two were good together, and How I Met Your Mother handled their break-up with a rationality and maturity that's rare for sitcom relationships.
"Platonish" starts rolling one of the significant plotlines for this final season: Ted's last, desperate, doomed attempt to win back Robin at her wedding. Its flashback structure raises some questions, and for the first time in the season The Mother is used in a less-than-optimal fashion. But taken as a whole, it's another solid entry in a season that, so far at least, has been brimming with quality.
"Platonish" isn't shy about addressing some of the complaints I mentioned in the first paragraph. The decision to structure this episode around Ted and Marshall at a Harlem Globetrotters game isn't just an excuse to give the two some hilarious dialogue ("That's not a pregnant lady, that's a basketball under his jersey! Blow the freaking whistle!"). It's about acknowledging the way Ted views himself when the context is romantic relationship; he and Marshall are rooting for the doomed Washington Generals, of course, and throughout the series Ted has often seemed like nothing so much as a fool on a doomed journey.
And Robin's a reminder of that. Even compared to being left at the altar, Robin is Ted's great romantic failure. And she's also one of his best friends, which means every day he has to see the ghost of what might have been.
So when he spends the episode insisting to Marshall that he's not interested in Robin, it's (obviously) not sincere. Instead, it's the wary pessimism of a man who's been bitten so many times by the same snake that he's afraid to take a step.
Barney? Well, Barney's a winner, of course. He spends most of the episode accepting and completing various challenges from Robin and Lily, including convincing a girl he's Ryan Gosling after plastic surgery, getting a girl's phone number while speaking like a dolphin and wooing a woman while unable to use the letter "E" (a task which clearly entertained the show's writers).
But Barney doesn't really want to "win." He wants to play. The challenge is the thing. It's noteworthy that Barney doesn't actually sleep with any of the women he talks to in "Platonish;" he just gets their numbers so he can check the challenge off the list.
That stops when he runs into his last challenge, having been dispatched by Lily and Robin to pick up diapers and a smoothie...oh, and also a woman. That woman turns out to be The Mother.
There were a lot of challenges associated with integrating The Mother into the show, and How I Met Your Mother has generally avoided them. This is mainly thanks to Cristin Milioti, who does a lot with her limited screen time. But the show's writers have also used her reasonably well, giving her chances to interact with individual characters and writing her in a way that makes her genuinely appealing.
"Platonish," however, does commit a sin that always tempts writers in this situation by making Milioti just a bit too awesome. It's a venal sin, and I don't want to overstate the extent of the problem here, but it does ring a little false when she diagnoses Barney as lovelorn and miserable after a sentence worth of interaction.
It's the conversation that ends Barney's game-playing and puts him on his collision course with Robin. Again, this is a bit much: retconning the series to give Milioti such an out-sized role in this final story strains credulity, and it's a plot point that seems to exist just to convince us that The Mother is really special.
But the show knocks its ending sequence out of the park: Ted telling Marshall that he's willing to wait for something to happen with Robin, while Barney writes out the play that will win her over.
It's a triumphant moment for Barney, of course, but to the audience, with our hindsight, it's also a brutal, devastating moment for Ted. At the moment when his former urgency and willingness to throw himself off a cliff in the name of love could actually win the day, he instead steps back, content to wait. Instead, it's Barney who exhibits the passion, dedication and urgency we've always associated with Ted.
Everything ends well for Ted, of course. We know as much. But How I Met Your Mother has always been as concerned with the pain of the journey as the triumph of the destination. Winning requires a lot of losing.
Notes
- The show has some fun playing with the fact that Marshall and Robin rarely spend much time together, as Barney imagines them unwilling to make out even if it results in the entire bar being blown up by a madman with odd demands.
- Barney, introducing himself without using the letter "E:" "My word for this guy is Barn...O."
- Bryan Cranston shows up as Ted's old douchebag boss, making the offer to move to Chicago that Ted will eventually accept. He's in a bit of a pickle, as the concave glass tower he built raised the temperature of the water in the city aquarium to 190 degrees, killing several species of rare fish.
- "Hey ref, you should check your voicemail. You've missed a lot of calls!"
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