5.5/10. It's funny, when diving back into the series, I realized that I couldn't really remember how Barney and Quinn broke up. Aside from the fact that I was not necessarily super-attentive when I bulldozed my way through this season the first time, I think it's because their break up doesn't make much sense, and feels like a reversion for both characters, and in some ways, everyone else too.
The Barney who would have a knee-high prenup demanding weekly weigh-ins and providing for "wives 2-8" doesn't feel like the same guy who was ready to throw out his old mugs, or who didn't mind his apartment being turned into a Hello Kitty shrine so long as Quinn was still there. It feels like a quick fix to shift us into hyperdrive toward Barney and Robin getting together, without nearly enough build or progress to that front to make their break up seem real and well-motivated. It just sort of happens because it needs to happen for the big plot arc of the series to get where it's going, and that's not good enough, or enough grounded in the characters and relationship we've gotten to know over the past season to really work.
Plus, the whole episode devolves into a pretty crass battle of the sexes, the type of cliche the show normally subverts rather than gives into. There's some solid character beats there -- Ted wanting to play the hero but not being able to stomach Klaus's eccentricities in particular feels in-character -- but for the most part it's a series of contrived conflicts that don't really have enough time to breathe in the episode of hoary tropes. (For instance, Marhsall and Lily's argument over how to play with their son could have been interesting but feels really slapdash and cartoony crammed into the rest of the episode.) And having the characters just announce directly how they feel (cue Futurama's Robot Devil) comes off as lazy rather than insightful.
It's not all so rough. For whatever reason, Robin's kink of being turned on by watching herself do the news (replete with a hilarious wink to future self) really tickled by funny bone in how absurd it was. And I forgot how much Bob Odenkirk is in this show! Even if he too goes pretty broad, his reunion with his dog, Tugboat was oddly sweet. Plus, even if I didn't like the execution, I like the idea of trying to contrast Barney's relationship with Robin down the line with his one with Quinn in the present as a means to show that he trusts Robin and that's why this is different. But it's a really loud, obvious way of doing that, which leans way more into the "tell" than "show" side of storytelling.
I don't know. HIMYM was once a show that, as Ted puts in a meta-gag, had big comedy but let you really care about the characters. But as the show grows long in the tooth, that comedy gets bigger and bigger, less grounded in anything approaching reality or genuine human interaction, and those characters start feeling less and less like real people and more and more like cartoons or cardboard stand-ins to hang cheesy jokes on. I remembered Season 8 being a pretty big nadir for the show, and my hope was that a rewatch would help me to remember the bright spots like it did with Season 7, but we're off to a pretty rough start so far.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2016-08-12T18:01:46Z
5.5/10. It's funny, when diving back into the series, I realized that I couldn't really remember how Barney and Quinn broke up. Aside from the fact that I was not necessarily super-attentive when I bulldozed my way through this season the first time, I think it's because their break up doesn't make much sense, and feels like a reversion for both characters, and in some ways, everyone else too.
The Barney who would have a knee-high prenup demanding weekly weigh-ins and providing for "wives 2-8" doesn't feel like the same guy who was ready to throw out his old mugs, or who didn't mind his apartment being turned into a Hello Kitty shrine so long as Quinn was still there. It feels like a quick fix to shift us into hyperdrive toward Barney and Robin getting together, without nearly enough build or progress to that front to make their break up seem real and well-motivated. It just sort of happens because it needs to happen for the big plot arc of the series to get where it's going, and that's not good enough, or enough grounded in the characters and relationship we've gotten to know over the past season to really work.
Plus, the whole episode devolves into a pretty crass battle of the sexes, the type of cliche the show normally subverts rather than gives into. There's some solid character beats there -- Ted wanting to play the hero but not being able to stomach Klaus's eccentricities in particular feels in-character -- but for the most part it's a series of contrived conflicts that don't really have enough time to breathe in the episode of hoary tropes. (For instance, Marhsall and Lily's argument over how to play with their son could have been interesting but feels really slapdash and cartoony crammed into the rest of the episode.) And having the characters just announce directly how they feel (cue Futurama's Robot Devil) comes off as lazy rather than insightful.
It's not all so rough. For whatever reason, Robin's kink of being turned on by watching herself do the news (replete with a hilarious wink to future self) really tickled by funny bone in how absurd it was. And I forgot how much Bob Odenkirk is in this show! Even if he too goes pretty broad, his reunion with his dog, Tugboat was oddly sweet. Plus, even if I didn't like the execution, I like the idea of trying to contrast Barney's relationship with Robin down the line with his one with Quinn in the present as a means to show that he trusts Robin and that's why this is different. But it's a really loud, obvious way of doing that, which leans way more into the "tell" than "show" side of storytelling.
I don't know. HIMYM was once a show that, as Ted puts in a meta-gag, had big comedy but let you really care about the characters. But as the show grows long in the tooth, that comedy gets bigger and bigger, less grounded in anything approaching reality or genuine human interaction, and those characters start feeling less and less like real people and more and more like cartoons or cardboard stand-ins to hang cheesy jokes on. I remembered Season 8 being a pretty big nadir for the show, and my hope was that a rewatch would help me to remember the bright spots like it did with Season 7, but we're off to a pretty rough start so far.