How I Met Your Mother: Romeward Bound, Review
Are they slow-playing us with some filler this week? Building suspense? Trying to steal our chips?
There are episodes, and then there are episodes, and then there are filler.
This week on How I Met Your Mother, we watched Barney be a sleaze (but it’s ok, because he’s getting married!) and Lily make a decision.
Literally. That was the entire episode. No amusing subplot, no twist, no turn around. Just cheesy dialogue and season arc set-up.
Yep. This is pretty much the reason why I try to avoid half hour sitcoms.
Oh, you want a detailed version of what happened? Ok, fine. Lily and Marshall are doing well. Then The Captain, Lily’s employer, throws a wrench in their life by telling Lily he wants to move to Rome for a year. And he wants her to come with him! Whataaat? Dream come true for Lily! Except wait, Marshall’s busy with big cases at work. She says no, regretfully. Except…
Cut to Barney and Ted hanging out in MacClaren’s, Barney talking about how it’s great hanging at home with Robin and why go out, then Ted spying his yoga classmate in a big coat and saying how she has a rockin’ bod and Barney now ogling and…
Cut to Lily visiting Marshall at work and finding out his law firm is pretty much going under. All he does at work is…not work. She tells Marshall what she turned down. He runs out to convince The Captain to ask her again. He asks her again. Lily says no again. Whaaat? Except…
Barney and Ted are still at the bar ogling, but Robin comes in. She knows hot body girl! Turns out she’s Barney and Robin’s wedding planner. She never takes the coat off. Barney ogles and drools. Ted makes fun of him. Robin finds out, is amused (hence she’s “cool”) and challenges Barney to ask wedding planner to take off the coat because, “he’s engaged to the woman he loves for the rest of the life like Marshall so it’s not creepy.” Barney asks her and…
Cut to turns out Lily is just a big scaredy cat when it comes to change. Marshall does want t live in Italy and be the godfather and watch black and white Italian movies. He has a heart to heart with her, speaking (cutely) the one Italian sentence he knows, which is like paragraphs in Lily and Marshall speak. He convinces her to say yes. She smiles. To Rome they go! Cut to…
The wedding planner taking off her coat. Barney isn’t creepy! She has a rockin’ bod. Barney and Ted hang out at the bar again later and Barney starts talking about how much he’s looking forward to the wedding to see what the planner wears. Ted accuses Barney of not acting like a man about to get married. Barney gets snippy and tells Ted to shut up, Robin chose him. Ted slinks away. Barney goes home to Robin in a seductive puffy coat. She’s way “cool.”
Cut to end of episode.
Was that boring to read? Trust me, it was even more boring to watch.
I get it. Big life changes for Marshall and Lily and Marvin ahead on the horizon. Ted clearly still has unresolved feelings (still!) for Robin. Barney oh so clearly still has commitment issues, and he and Robin’s wedding looks like it’s gonna be a trainwreck spectacular. Oh, and we have still not met the mother.
Gargh.
I hope there aren’t too many more of these types of episodes before we get to the finale. Which will probably be an annoying cliffhanger. Oh, and what happened to Marshall maybe becoming a judge or something? Are we just dropping that so Lily can go pick out art with The Captain in Rome? Don’t get me wrong, I love The Captain and hope he is in many more episodes to come. But this career just seems like another…dare I say…filler move before bigger things happen to Lily and Marshall.
Am I right or am I right? I suppose only time will tell.
As for Barney and Robin, the path to true love never did run smooth, especially when you have two notorious commitment phobes engaged to each other and planning their wedding. To each other. Oh, and they’re both still friends with the bride to be’s ex, who still clearly has feelings for her. Think Ted will pull another blue French horn move soon and try to win Robin back? Predictable bonehead Ted storyline in the future?
Am I right or am I right? I suppose only time will tell.
Also, will Ted actually meet the mother at the wedding? Will The Captain be at the wedding? Will Wayne Brady? Will the new guy who plays Robin’s dad, after the first guy couldn’t do it anymore, and got into a feud with Neil Patrick Harris about it?
Am I right or am I right? I suppose only time will…oh, wait, I didn’t make any predictions in that paragraph. So I can’t really be right about it…or not. But….
Only time will tell!
Do these paragraphs, much like this 21st episode of the 8th season of How I Met Your Mother feel disturbingly like filler to meet a certain quota of verbage? Perhaps….not. Hey. When you gotta write how many of these to meet the ridiculous number of episodes they order per season, they can’t all be Emmy/webby/awesome blog winners.
It’s hard out there for a television half hour situational comedy writer. So too is it for the blogger that has to report and review the crappy episodes they turn out when it’s clear they either pulled out a spec script and shoved it at the show-runner, or gave a new writer a spin. Or just ordered pizza and pulled words out from a hat.
Good ole Mr. Dictionary. You never steer me wrong when I flip open a random page and happen upon aboriginal. Hey, this episode let’s write about Australia! One Baz Luhrman reference coming up.
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Lisa likes to think of herself as an Expert in Words and Geekery. In a grossly optimistic mood, she even put that on business cards she…