My take on Monday night’s TV.
Spoilers...
How I Met Your Mother – “The Perfect Cocktail” (C+)
I’m going to give the writers of How I Met Your Mother a pass on this one. Cleary their minds were more on the upcoming season finale than on this episode. “The Perfect Cocktail” lacked the substance that’s made this season of the show so engaging, and because of that it ended up scattered, inconsistent, and gimmicky (well more than usual).
The main story revolved around Lily and Robin using drinks to solve a feud between Marshall and Barney. Apparently each different alcoholic beverage fosters a different reaction in each of the guys, and put in the right order can solve just about any disagreement, hence “The Perfect Cocktail”. Here’s my problem with that – we’ve been watching these characters drink since the inception of the show (at least once an episode) and never have we seen any of these reactions. Now don’t get me wrong, some of the jokes definitely worked – like Marshall’s mirror gag – but the quality between each phase (or drink if you would) was incredibly inconsistent.
The other major storyline in this episode was Ted and Zoey staying the night in the Arcadian. From a comedic standpoint it didn’t do much better than the previous storyline, consisting mainly of jokes surrounding the terrible disarray of the battered hotel. There was one significant development in the storyline however – Ted, seemingly out of nowhere, decided to join Zoey in protecting the Arcadian. It wasn’t a huge boost to the episode but it could end up playing a significant role next week.
It’s also worth noting that this episode featured two fairly prominent call backs to a couple of first season episodes. First, taken from “Milk”, was Barney’s method of pranking Marshall via photographs of disgusting things he’d done to poor Marshall’s stuff. And second, going back to “Matchmaker” was the return of the cockamouse, who is now apparently living in the Arcadian. Neither were huge, but I always like a good call back so long as they’re used responsibly.
But call backs alone weren’t going to save this episode. In the end “The Perfect Cocktail” felt like one of those episodes where they bent the characters to the concept more than the concept to the characters, and for that reason the comedy seemed forced. The episode could have benefited greatly from a little more substance in its plot, but I think lack of substance in general is what drove them to such a gimmicky plot, and that’s where I think the writers deserve a break. They’re coming off an episode where Barney spent a ton of time getting to know his father, a pretty significant event for his character, and next week they’re moving into season finale territory (there’s actually two episodes left, but both are written by Bays and Thomas who tend to take the more important shows). They clearly needed some sort of transition episode and unfortunately I think that’s what we got here. It doesn’t excuse the episode, but it understandable to say the least.
The Event – “Us or Them” (C+)
The word mediocre comes to mind. I’m sure I’ve said that before about The Event, but it’s sort of a recurring theme with this show. The characters aren’t compelling, the storylines are inconsistent and dry, and worst of all, there doesn’t seem to be anyone on that writing staff who knows how to give The Event any sort of direction.
Sterling’s story in this episode was one example. Sterling’s a smart guy, so in last week’s episode when he found evidence of the Vice President’s involvement in the assassination attempt on the President I was looking forward to watching him build his case and outsmart Jarvis. After all, that’s the kind of thing his character seems to do best. But instead, we saw him dim-wittingly accuse the VP to his face, get himself fired, and drag out an already tired storyline in the process.
One of the worst things I think a show can do is to try and draw out storylines by having characters make unintelligent and poorly motivated decisions. I understand why they want Jarvis to continue on as President – with somebody incompetent running the country it puts more emphasis on the supporting characters – but if you don’t have an intelligent reason why it should happen it hurt more than it helps. Sterling’s much too smart for his actions, and now his uncharacteristic reaction is a fundamental component of the plot. They’ve built the story around a pillar of incompetence, which now taints almost everything that comes next.
And because they wanted to keep the VP in the hot seat for at least one more episode, the President’s story didn’t move at all. Now I know, he’s in a coma now, but that’s hardly a big change from last week. The last two episodes have both finished on down endings where things didn’t look good for Martinez and they’ve consisted almost entirely of doctors working while his wife stands idly by.
Leila and Michael weren’t much better either. Michael death was certainly a huge change up, but that doesn’t mean it was an effective story beat. We never got to know Michael enough to really understand his motivations. He flipped flopped so many times over the course of this season that he wasn’t much of a character at all. First he was innocent pilot forced into an assassination attempt on the President, then he was an NTB enforcer, then he was a father trying to save humanity. And that’s not him being a multi-dimensional character either. He was used as a plot twist so many times we never really got to know exactly what made his character tick, and thus we never got enough depth from him to make his death (or potential death) feel meaningful.
The one bright spot in this episode was Sean and Vicky. You may recall I didn’t have high hopes for their storyline after last week’s episode, but they managed to impress me with the surprising intensity of the airplane sequence in this one. They do need to make sure though that next episode they make some sort of progress in stopping Sophia. They failed this week and that’s fine, but if they miss their opportunity again next week they’re going to become tiresome. Oh and Vicky totally wants Sean. I called that.
House – “Changes” (B)
“Changes” was about as average an episode of House as you can get. A typical patient story with some inter-team hijinks and some House/Cuddy friction sprinkled on for good measure. Perhaps we’ve been spoiled a bit of late with Thirteen’s return and Masters’ subsequent departure, but the stakes in this one just seemed lower. I will however give the writer of this episode some credit, because despite following the familiar formula, they did write a fairly entertaining episode.
Having Thirteen back on the show certainly helped. Finally House has someone on the team that can dish it out almost as well as he can. She didn’t have as much time on screen as I thought she would but her discussions with House about lotteries and fatalism were certainly some of the episode’s highlights. I also enjoyed some of her smaller moments, like the way she perfectly described how Cuddy always gives in to House as she went about discharging the patient, and how she talked the team into ignoring House’s orders by calling out one of the show’s conventions – “worst case we’re right and he’s impressed we defied him.”
House and Cuddy’s legal battle with her mother this week was a little more over the top, but entertaining nonetheless. I quite enjoyed all of their scenes with Wilson, especially the trios visit to Cuddy’s mother house and House’s, according to Wilson, B+ apology. I did roll my eyes a bit though when I found out the only reason Cuddy’s mother was doing all this was to get House and Cuddy back together.
I also thought Chase and Foreman’s little wager made for an amusing distraction from the conventional patient story. There were certainly a few good quips that came from that blood pressure monitor. My one complaint is that Chase in bed with the girl at the end there felt a bit tacked on. Was that supposed to mean something or was it just one more punch line at Foreman’s expense? I honestly couldn’t tell.
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