6.5/10. The episode is this close to being good, but falls just short. I love the Barney-Lily part of the episode. The show is often at its best when it's playing around with unusual narrative frame story, and having Ted mix up who was mad at whom and when and why, and have that lead very organically into a reveal that Lily does, in fact, get pregnant down the road, is some wonderful storytelling. The way the memories get jumbled has a mild Eternal Sunshine quality to it, and though Barney's especially disgusting here, which brings down the effort a bit, the unique storytelling makes it the best of the bunch.
The Robin and Marshall story is an interesting one that ends up faltering in the execution. The Mermaid Theory doesn't quite match the pantheon of great HIMYM memes, mostly because it's kind of an odd idea, at least as applied to something as mundane as Marshall's secretary. And we've seen Marshall and Robin hang out solo before, most notably at Little Minnesota. I'm not a continuity hawk or anything, but the two of them have often been on the same page and it makes the emotional crux of their supposed awkwardness and resolution here ring somewhat false.
The weakest of the bunch is Ted, Zoe, and The Captain (which sounds either like a cheesy comedy movie or a night club act). Kyle MacLachlan almost makes the bit work through sheer force of will, and he's the funniest part of it, and the "smiling face/scary eyes" bit is kind of amusing. But the humor is not especially clever, and the whole thing centers around a Ted and Zoe relationship where the chemistry just isn't there and the episode does nothing to obviate how wrong it feels for Ted to be sidling up to a married woman the way he is.
Overall, it's close to a passing grade with the inventiveness of the Barney-Lily story, the heart (if not the execution) of the Robin-Marshall story, and the wide-eyed brilliance of Kyle MacLachlan, but too much of the rest of the episode doesn't really gel and it brings it just a notch below par.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2016-06-12T17:37:19Z
6.5/10. The episode is this close to being good, but falls just short. I love the Barney-Lily part of the episode. The show is often at its best when it's playing around with unusual narrative frame story, and having Ted mix up who was mad at whom and when and why, and have that lead very organically into a reveal that Lily does, in fact, get pregnant down the road, is some wonderful storytelling. The way the memories get jumbled has a mild Eternal Sunshine quality to it, and though Barney's especially disgusting here, which brings down the effort a bit, the unique storytelling makes it the best of the bunch.
The Robin and Marshall story is an interesting one that ends up faltering in the execution. The Mermaid Theory doesn't quite match the pantheon of great HIMYM memes, mostly because it's kind of an odd idea, at least as applied to something as mundane as Marshall's secretary. And we've seen Marshall and Robin hang out solo before, most notably at Little Minnesota. I'm not a continuity hawk or anything, but the two of them have often been on the same page and it makes the emotional crux of their supposed awkwardness and resolution here ring somewhat false.
The weakest of the bunch is Ted, Zoe, and The Captain (which sounds either like a cheesy comedy movie or a night club act). Kyle MacLachlan almost makes the bit work through sheer force of will, and he's the funniest part of it, and the "smiling face/scary eyes" bit is kind of amusing. But the humor is not especially clever, and the whole thing centers around a Ted and Zoe relationship where the chemistry just isn't there and the episode does nothing to obviate how wrong it feels for Ted to be sidling up to a married woman the way he is.
Overall, it's close to a passing grade with the inventiveness of the Barney-Lily story, the heart (if not the execution) of the Robin-Marshall story, and the wide-eyed brilliance of Kyle MacLachlan, but too much of the rest of the episode doesn't really gel and it brings it just a notch below par.