How Your Mother Got Her Band (Review)

Series: How I Met Your Mother
Episode Title: "Bass Player Wanted"
Episode Grade: B+

It's easy when talking about How I Met Your Mother to focus on love and romance. The show has long had a strong, confident voice on those topics, and those are obviously the show's driving themes.

But How I Met Your Mother is also, to a very real extent, about friendship. The platonic relationships between these five people have carried the show when its broader romance arc lurched and started started straining under the weight of eight seasons. Put simply, it's been fun to watch these guys hang out, and that was always enough to see the show throw the darkness.

"Bass Player Wanted" is essentially a celebration of these friendships, a chance for How I Met Your Mother to toast its characters and their relationships with each other. So, yeah, it's a little easy and self-congratulatory at points, but the show has earned that at this point in its life.

Plus, we get a nifty little storyline for The Mother!

"Bass Player" revolves around the antics of guest star Andrew Rannells, who I've never heard of before in my life but who apparently does quite a lot of voice work for cartoons. Rannells plays Darren, who The Mother labels a "fire-starter" for his ability to ingratiate himself with a couple friends, find out their deepest secrets, then immediately spill them and ruin the friendships. He's also the lead singer of The Mother's band, which comes up later.

We know all of this because The Mother, in one of those bullshit plot devices we're willing to forgive a beloved show in its ninth and final season, drives by Marshall trying to walk the five miles to the Farhampton Inn and picks him up.

The early scenes where Darren manages to utterly charm Robin and Lilly and then Ted and Barney are charming for the contemptuous ease of his approach; Robin is immediately won over when Darren recognizes how "hilarious and adorable" she and Lily are. Barney and Ted, meanwhile, lose their objectivity when Darren breaks out a story about losing his mother in a hunting trip that was inspired by Bambi (he later tells the bartender that his mother was eaten by a barracuda, which The Mother angrily points out is just from Finding Nemo).

There's an element of the 80's sitcom to the resulting conflicts: the friends all have their little spats over relatively minor issues (Robin sort of sides with Marshall in the whole "Judge vs. Italy" debate, but mainly because she's afraid of losing her best friend, while Barney is outraged to learn that Ted is moving to Chicago and hasn't told anyone besides Lily), there's a commercial break, a couple friends make big gestures and all is forgiven and everything is fine.

But again, this is the kind of thing you can get away with when you have nine seasons of character equity build up. We understand the depth of the connection these friends have with each other, and at this late point in the show's run we're willing to accept a certain amount of short-hand from characters we've grown to know so well.

And besides, the big gestures are pretty cute and character appropriate. Robin holds the arms of Lily's "Marsh-pillow" so Lily can beat it up, and Ted steals an extraordinarily expensive bottle of scotch for Barney, who notes approvingly that it could have gotten Ted thrown in jail (Barney thinks going to jail for your best friend is "living the dream").

And hey, The Mother! Cristin Milioti has integrated into the show really well, and "Bass Player Wanted" actually gives her a little plot of her own. It doesn't really add up to much; she used to be the lead singer of her band "Super Freakonomics" (she started it with a bunch of her business school friends), only to be gradually pushed out by Darren. She's trying to work up the courage to confront him, but simply can't.

This is all pretty feather-light stuff, though it gets a reasonably funny conclusion when Darren accidentally breaks the $600 bottle of scotch Ted stole for Barney (the third such bottle to get broken over the weekend) and gets punched out as a result. But Milioti does a really good, really funny job of selling the character's righteous, utterly impotent rage, and, not to overshare, I can certainly appreciate a character struggling with confrontation.

As I've written before, I'm acutely vulnerable to the "awwww...." moments, and How I Met Your Mother has always specialized in them. But it has worked for them over nine years of excellent character work and solid writing that establishes the gang as a group of people worth watching and rooting for. I'm OK with a little bit of reflection in this final season.

Notes:

• I am a little worried about Ted's eventual breakdown, which we've been lead to think occurs as a result of a final, failed attempt to win Robin back. Ted and Barney share a nice moment where Barney recognizes that Ted has trouble hanging around Robin and doesn't say anything, and this season has done such a nice job exploring the bond between Robin and Barney. It would be a shame to lose some of that for the sake of cheap drama.
• Marshall realizes he's hallucinating on the walk to the inn because he saw Bigfoot smoking by the side of the road, and everyone realizes Bigfoot quit smoking years ago.
• The Mother is wearing driving gloves, which is a wonderful little callback to the first episode of the season.
• Barney just wants Marshall to be a judge so he can get all of his public urination citations dismissed. Robin seems really, really proud of all those citations.
• Milioti does a nice job selling a bit where she pretends to be a psychic who knows all of Marshall's history before revealing that she met Lily on the train.
• Barney doesn't think Chicago is a real place. It's just a style of pizza. "You can't live in a pizza, Ted!"

And My Partner, Silly Funshow (Review)

Series: Psych
Episode Title: "Psych: The Musical"
Episode Grade: A-

A show has to reach a certain point and achieve a certain position in order to justify a musical episode. It takes a secure position and a heaping helping of confidence to successfully sell your network on such a risky and potentially silly experiment. That or a complete lack of ideas.

Fortunately, it's the former with Psych.

There's something rather extraordinary about the fact that Psych has been on the air for seven years and has reached a point where it can pull off a musical episode. This is a series that, at its most self-important and self-serious, is about as substantial as a bowl of sugary cereal. It's a silly, frankly stupid affair that mines a formula established in its earliest episode and relies on a lead performance that is always just this side of insufferable.

It's also one of the most consistently entertaining shows on television, and it has more than earned the indulgence of a musical episode.

And here's the best part: the musical episode is really good. It's a little bloated, to be sure; Psych rarely has enough material to really justify its one-hour runtime, and two hours is a bit much for a show with so little ambition. The case of the week (kind of a misnomer, as the show hasn't aired an episode since May) is one of the more compelling investigations I can remember, but it's wrapped up in a fairly standard and boring fashion, as the culprits turn out to be a couple dudes we barely spoke to earlier in the episode.

But damn, this was fun. Everyone involved with the production clearly had a blast, and it's also obvious that the show's writers are passionate fans of musicals. The songs are clever, catchy, well-crafted numbers, and, perhaps most impressively, the episode is confident enough to let large stretches of time pass without a forced musical number.

Psych episodes derive a lot of their quality from the strength of their guest stars, and tonight's as a good one in Rent's Anthony Rapp, bringing a little bit of professionalism to the show as "Z," a playwright locked up in a mental institution after he apparently set a fire in his old playhouse upon learning that his beloved Jack the Ripper play would die an early death.

When Z, seven years after his imprisonment, escapes from his institution and the director of a new, purportedly unique Ripper musical ends up dead, the Santa Barbara police department swings into action, aided by our old friends Shawn and Gus.

As I said earlier, this is actually pretty enjoyable stuff. The investigation itself is basically a jumbo-sized version of the usual procedural work we see on Psych; there are a lot of red herrings, Shawn and Lassiter (an always-delightful Timothy Omundson) disagree on most things, Shawn fingers a suspect who ends up dying in the middle of the investigation, etc.

Still, this is a big, sprawling affair, and I found myself enjoying all the little twists more than I usually do. A lot of this can be chalked up to Ally Sheedy, making her fourth (and, sadly, final) appearance as "Yang," the serial killer from an earlier story arc. Sheedy has always brought a really impressive, deranged charisma to her role, and it was clever plotting to tie her into the big event.

Yang even gets a death that is, of all things, heroic and more than a little heartbreaking. There's a surprisingly touching little musical number with Jimmi Simpson's Mary Lightly, who shows up to welcome Yang into the afterlife. She's probably going to Hell, but Mary will ask around, see if he can get Heaven to lighten up and let her in. He's not optimistic.

It would be silly and pointless to run through all the developments in the case, most of which, again, hit the expected Psych beats. Z, it turns out, didn't actually kill anyone, which Shawn figures out relatively early and thus must be true and only proven at the very end of the episode. The producer and director of the original show had accidentally killed the critic who was going to ruin their Ripper musical, then framed Z and, seven years later, found his original, awesome script for the play and revived it under a new title.

The resolution is a little unsatisfying, simply because one of the killers (the producer) is dead, and the other (the director) got about a minute and a half of screentime. The motives ascribed to them make sense, and I certainly buy the overall story, but it would have been nice to see just a little more of these guys; I don't even remember the characters' names, and I'm drawing a blank in trying to remember anything about the producer. It's not like this episode lacked time.

Still, this is nit-picking. "Psych: The Musical" is a big, fury ball of joy, much like the series as a whole. There's precious little to complain about, and so much to enjoy.

Notes

• I'm not sure if any of the cast had their voices dubbed over with professional singers (Jenna Fisher's voice was replaced during the musical numbers in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story), but assuming those were the natural voices, that was an impressive display of talent. I particularly enjoyed Maggie Lawson's voice.
• I want to single out Dule Hill for some special praise in this section. He's been wonderful during his entire run on Psych, and I say that as someone who really didn't care for his performance on The West Wing. Here, he shows off his exceptional dancing skills (according to IMDB he got his start as a tap-dancer on Broadway) and generally lights up the screen.
• "I see a light." "Do you see fire and brimstone?"
• The Skype product placement tonight was a little blatant.
• "Z crushed you? With a piano? Like in the Roadrunner?"
• "He was the Phantom." "Billy Zane!" "The other Phantom." "There is no other Phantom."
• "It's set in London in 1888." "So what are you saying? Black people hadn't been invented yet?"
• "Just jam in as many syllables as you can before the break/It's literally impossible to make a mistake."

Inevitability (Review)

Series: Rome

Episode Title: "The Kalends of February"

Original Air Date: November 20, 2005

Episode Grade: B

Caesar's assassination has loomed large over Rome's first season. I wasn't watching the show during its original run, so I can't say if it did the same back in 2005. I imagine, however, that the show's viewers had been anticipating the extraordinary moment throughout the first season, and it wouldn't be surprising to learn that HBO's executives were looking forward to it from the moment they green-lit the show.

So how does "The Kalends of February" handle the whole affair? Well enough, I suppose. The actual assassination scene is more workmanlike than inspired. But considering Rome's somewhat rocky history with big moments, they pulled this one off well enough.

The assassination scene does a good job showing the brutality and the messiness of the whole affair; a dozen guys stabbing another guy is going to be unpleasant, and depictions of Caesar's assassination can gloss over that in an effort to get at the grand historical drama of the moment. There's a particularly good shot here looking down on the scrum, as the Senators weave around Caesar, their white and red robes swirling, knives plunging into Caesar. 

The most powerful moments, however, come after the assassination, when the Senators look on their work. Tobias Menzies has done an excellent job these last few episodes, and it continues in "Kalends," though he only gets a couple scenes. Though Brutus organized the whole affair and urged the Senators to do the killing themselves, he falters in the moment, and has to be persuaded into delivering the final blow to Caesar. 

And in the near-silent aftermath, as Brutus sits on a bench looking at the dead body of his slain friend, he lets out a wordless, animalistic howl that's more effective than it has any right to be. A viewer might reasonably quibble about the believability of Brutus' sudden spasm of conscience, but I'm willing to accept it as a fair response to the brutality of what he's seeing.

"Kalends" also does solid work when laying the groundwork for the assassination, though a lot of that labor was already completed in previous episodes. There's a kind of "on the one hand, on the other hand" approach here that does grate a bit; Caesar is given a rather ham-handed bit of symbolism when he walks on a large map of Rome laid out on the Senate floor, while the conspiring Senators are as elitist and arrogant as they are patriotic, arguably more concerned with Caesar's introduction of low men (including Lucius Vorenus) into the Senate than they are with Caesar's supposedly "tyrannical" actions. 

Stories can get in trouble when they try to take the "everyone sucks equally" path between two opposing points of views. It was one of my view complaints about BioShock Infinite, for example. But again, Menzies salvages the set-up with his obvious sincerity and patriotic concern. Brutus isn't entirely above his colleagues' elitism, but he is genuinely worried about the direction Rome is taking under Caesar. And Rome has displayed a nuanced enough understanding of Caesar throughout this season that one can accept a few loaded moments like the map scene.

But, of course, "Kalends" isn't just about Caesar's assassination. It's also concerned with Lucius Vorenus and his relationship with Niobe. This is normally fertile soil for the show, and it works again here. Most of "Kalends" is taken up with showing the full evolution of this marriage, and it's a truly beautiful, truly earned set of scenes.

Even in its weakest episodes Rome was able to exploit Kevin McKidd's excellent work and explore the dynamic between Vorenus and Niobe. Their chemistry in "Kalends" is truly extraordinary, and watching the two simply interact is a joy. Vorenus has been the consistent strong point in this first season, and his evolution from a strict, traditionalist Roman into a loving and caring husband has been both dramatic and natural. 

But things don't end there. Vorenus' elevation to the Senate brings his plotlines with Niobe and Caesar together. Caesar's decision to give Vorenus a Senatorial posting is not really about recognizing Vorenus' merit, of course. Nor is it just about appeasing the Roman mob, which loves Vorenus after his stunt with Pullo in the arena.

Instead, Caesar sees Vorenus as a kind of bodyguard and wants Lucius by his side should anyone try anything. Once Brutus figures this out, his mother takes over. Servilia sends a servant to whisper the truth about his "grandson's" parentage in his ear. Vorenus storms off, leaving Caesar alone. And since Antony is also detained...knife time.

There's something kind of ironic about the fact that Julius Caesar's assassination is only the second-most jarring death of this episode. Of course, we knew to expect it. We didn't know the same thing about Niobe.

Again, there's nothing particularly innovative about the moment when Vorenus confronts Niobe. He's throwing the expected rage fit, and Niobe cringes and cries appropriately. McKidd and Indira Varma both play their roles well in this scene, and it's always good to be reminded of the kind of physical presence McKidd can be when the situation calls for it. 

Still, it's a measure of the painstaking character work both actors have turned in over the course of the season that it's genuinely shocking to see Niobe push herself off the balcony of her house and onto the stone courtyard below, saying only, "The boy is blameless."

I have been rather harsh on Rome at various points over the course of the first season. The first several episodes of the show's run were, by and large, weak episodes that failed to achieve much of anything when McKidd wasn't on-screen.

Still, it's impossible to deny the uptick in quality that Rome displayed over the last four episodes or so. Nothing here reached true greatness, and not much really approached it. But Ray Stevenson reached deep, impressive levels of emotion with Titus Pullo, Vorenus' storyline ended in a skillful if heartbreaking fashion and the show didn't botch Caesar's end. 

Season Grade: B-

Notes

• I knocked this episode grade down a notch because of Pullo's storyline, which reached its true climax in "The Spoils." That he's genuinely remorseful about killing Eirene's fiancee is believable, and Pullo sells it. I'm far, far less willing to accept that she ends this hour holding his hand as they walk away from a religious shrine.
• Part of the reason that annoys me so much is that there's a great moment early in the episode where Eirene seethes outside listening to Pullo and Vorenus laugh. It's a wonderful, quiet commentary on the Roman social system, where Pullo can brutally kill a slave and still end up laughing with an old friend (remember, he only got in trouble for killing an important man). Eirene's anger is futile and righteous and thus compelling. It's also completely neutered by the end of the episode.
• Atia: She hates me. Antony: So do I. That's no bar to friendship.
• Antony's slow, silent retreat from the Senate chamber into the darkness after seeing Caesar's body is somehow quite threatening.
• A sad goodbye to Ciaran Hinds, who was wonderful to the end. He's particularly good at playing Caesar's shock and disbelief, even while bleeding out.
• Housekeeping note: We're going to take a brief break from Rome reviews. Look for a review of the Psych musical episode instead next week. 

Satellite of Hate

Due to issues with DirecTV reception, there will be no review of American Horror Story: Coven tonight.