When I started watching this show with my wife, I wasn't sure how far we were going to make it. I'd seen the whole series previously, but it's her first time through, and I was not quite sure how much of the show's lumpy middle age she was going to be able to stomach. But as we started getting within spitting distance, I hoped that we would make it to this episode and this storyline because it and Marshall dealing with the loss of his father, may be the last capital-G Great stories of the show. There's still some good stuff to come, and even a few transcendent moments, but both Marshall and Barney coming to terms with their relationships with their fathers, and the way the season mirrors the two of them, may be the last time the show truly hit a homerun like this.
It helps having a ringer like John Lithgow come in to play Barney's dad. Few actors are as equipped to glide between the broadly comedic tone of the bumbling dorky dad and the repentant absent father the way he can. The premise of the episode, that Barney tells his friends that he has the world's coolest dad, when in reality, we flash back to his Dad's unexpectedly geeky interactions with him is a nice play on the type of perspective gags the show does so well. Jerome's tepid attempts at bragging (including notes that he's written both non-fiction and fiction books about asparagus) were silly but fun, and the fact that it's all framed by an intervention where Marshall in particular is encouraging Barney not to give up a relationship with a father when he can still have one is a nice narrative direction to go.
The B-story, where the gang seizes on Barney's inability to use tools and starts thinking about everyone's gaps in knowledge, was mostly comic relief, but great comic relief. The running jokes about Robin thinking the North Pole is imaginary just kept bringing the laughs, and while it's such a dumb joke, Lily's inability to aim had me in stitches. Even there, the show tied it back to something with a bit of heft, as Marshall asks his friends to stop treating him with kid gloves just because his dad passed away, and let him have it about his own gaps. The scenes of him testing the gang to see how far he could go without them contradicting him were funny (him complimenting the Star Wars prequels in particularly got a laugh out of me), and it was a well-observed if exaggerated story about getting back to normal after a loss.
That's also what Barney's scenes with his father were about -- the lack of normalcy in their father-son relationship for obvious reasons, and their joint struggle to figure something out. The scenes where an obviously jealous Barney makes fun of Jerome's 11-year-old son was a little too broad for my taste, but the follow up scene where Barney tries to take J.J.'s basketball hoop is an all-timer. His jibes at his half-brother are not simply a childish bit of sibling rivalry, and his desire not to have a relationship with Jerome isn't just because his dad isn't cool enough for him. It's that this is the life he never had. Another kid gets to play basketball in the suburbs, another kid gets the kind of parental support he sorely needed, and as Barney himself puts it, if Jerome was going to turn out to be a lame suburban dad, why couldn't he have been Barney's suburban dad?
It's a strong, emotional moment that shows off both NPH and Lithgow's dramatic chops. There's a legitimate sense of pleading when Jerome tells his son that he owe him a lifetime of apologies. It's a little too neat, but the ensuing beat where both of them take a small step in that direction with Jerome showing Barney how to use a screwdriver is a tremendous capper for their story. It's a nice way to tie the themes of the episode together and bring Barney and Jerome one little bit closer to repairing their relationship.
I don't know if it's really the last great storyline the show would do. Without spoiling it for anyone coming to this show later, there are still highlights in the series last third; they're just fewer and further between, and very few of them, if any, hit the heights that the show does here. It's definitely one worth watching.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2016-06-21T19:38:32Z
When I started watching this show with my wife, I wasn't sure how far we were going to make it. I'd seen the whole series previously, but it's her first time through, and I was not quite sure how much of the show's lumpy middle age she was going to be able to stomach. But as we started getting within spitting distance, I hoped that we would make it to this episode and this storyline because it and Marshall dealing with the loss of his father, may be the last capital-G Great stories of the show. There's still some good stuff to come, and even a few transcendent moments, but both Marshall and Barney coming to terms with their relationships with their fathers, and the way the season mirrors the two of them, may be the last time the show truly hit a homerun like this.
It helps having a ringer like John Lithgow come in to play Barney's dad. Few actors are as equipped to glide between the broadly comedic tone of the bumbling dorky dad and the repentant absent father the way he can. The premise of the episode, that Barney tells his friends that he has the world's coolest dad, when in reality, we flash back to his Dad's unexpectedly geeky interactions with him is a nice play on the type of perspective gags the show does so well. Jerome's tepid attempts at bragging (including notes that he's written both non-fiction and fiction books about asparagus) were silly but fun, and the fact that it's all framed by an intervention where Marshall in particular is encouraging Barney not to give up a relationship with a father when he can still have one is a nice narrative direction to go.
The B-story, where the gang seizes on Barney's inability to use tools and starts thinking about everyone's gaps in knowledge, was mostly comic relief, but great comic relief. The running jokes about Robin thinking the North Pole is imaginary just kept bringing the laughs, and while it's such a dumb joke, Lily's inability to aim had me in stitches. Even there, the show tied it back to something with a bit of heft, as Marshall asks his friends to stop treating him with kid gloves just because his dad passed away, and let him have it about his own gaps. The scenes of him testing the gang to see how far he could go without them contradicting him were funny (him complimenting the Star Wars prequels in particularly got a laugh out of me), and it was a well-observed if exaggerated story about getting back to normal after a loss.
That's also what Barney's scenes with his father were about -- the lack of normalcy in their father-son relationship for obvious reasons, and their joint struggle to figure something out. The scenes where an obviously jealous Barney makes fun of Jerome's 11-year-old son was a little too broad for my taste, but the follow up scene where Barney tries to take J.J.'s basketball hoop is an all-timer. His jibes at his half-brother are not simply a childish bit of sibling rivalry, and his desire not to have a relationship with Jerome isn't just because his dad isn't cool enough for him. It's that this is the life he never had. Another kid gets to play basketball in the suburbs, another kid gets the kind of parental support he sorely needed, and as Barney himself puts it, if Jerome was going to turn out to be a lame suburban dad, why couldn't he have been Barney's suburban dad?
It's a strong, emotional moment that shows off both NPH and Lithgow's dramatic chops. There's a legitimate sense of pleading when Jerome tells his son that he owe him a lifetime of apologies. It's a little too neat, but the ensuing beat where both of them take a small step in that direction with Jerome showing Barney how to use a screwdriver is a tremendous capper for their story. It's a nice way to tie the themes of the episode together and bring Barney and Jerome one little bit closer to repairing their relationship.
I don't know if it's really the last great storyline the show would do. Without spoiling it for anyone coming to this show later, there are still highlights in the series last third; they're just fewer and further between, and very few of them, if any, hit the heights that the show does here. It's definitely one worth watching.