As I mentioned last time, I just don't buy the "Barney grows through romance" stuff. It didn't work with Robin, and it doesn't work here. First of all, I don't buy that there's some magical connection between Barney and Nora to effect such a change in Barney, or to make him so wistful about it. The show spends a lot of time telling us that Barney has feelings for her, and shows us the surface level of that -- the way he smiles when he says her name or squirms over her, but it does very little at showing them having any sort of connection beyond the fact that they can play laser tag together. It's just sort of "important connection by fiat" and that simply doesn't work.
So while the episode's best moment comes from Lily telling Barney that he's lying because deep down he really does want to settle and have kids and all that, because you believe her, the forced attempt at pathos at the end falls flat, because the show has done little in three episodes to establish that Nora is worth all this fuss. There's some juice to the idea that apart from Nora, Barney is scared to take a step that would lead him down the path to what he truly wants, and that's tragic in and of itself, but because the episode spends so much time tying it to a relationship that we're just supposed to accept as meaningful without the show laying enough of the groundwork to get us there makes this whole storyline a house built on sand.
The B-plot about Robin dating a guy who's basically a human dog (which, incidentally, is an occasional philosophy behind Homer Simpson) is the lamest sort of broad sitcom humor. The dog puns coming fast and furious leads to a few good chuckles, but the whole Scooby Doo riff is incredibly weak.
The only real positive from the episode is the heart monitor as a conceit, creating a frame story to retrace Barney's night, but even that leads to a dumb "skipped a beat"moment. What can you do?
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2016-06-19T16:30:32Z
As I mentioned last time, I just don't buy the "Barney grows through romance" stuff. It didn't work with Robin, and it doesn't work here. First of all, I don't buy that there's some magical connection between Barney and Nora to effect such a change in Barney, or to make him so wistful about it. The show spends a lot of time telling us that Barney has feelings for her, and shows us the surface level of that -- the way he smiles when he says her name or squirms over her, but it does very little at showing them having any sort of connection beyond the fact that they can play laser tag together. It's just sort of "important connection by fiat" and that simply doesn't work.
So while the episode's best moment comes from Lily telling Barney that he's lying because deep down he really does want to settle and have kids and all that, because you believe her, the forced attempt at pathos at the end falls flat, because the show has done little in three episodes to establish that Nora is worth all this fuss. There's some juice to the idea that apart from Nora, Barney is scared to take a step that would lead him down the path to what he truly wants, and that's tragic in and of itself, but because the episode spends so much time tying it to a relationship that we're just supposed to accept as meaningful without the show laying enough of the groundwork to get us there makes this whole storyline a house built on sand.
The B-plot about Robin dating a guy who's basically a human dog (which, incidentally, is an occasional philosophy behind Homer Simpson) is the lamest sort of broad sitcom humor. The dog puns coming fast and furious leads to a few good chuckles, but the whole Scooby Doo riff is incredibly weak.
The only real positive from the episode is the heart monitor as a conceit, creating a frame story to retrace Barney's night, but even that leads to a dumb "skipped a beat"moment. What can you do?