We’re Going Ice Skating Everybody!

Hurray! I finally got a Grey’s review out before the new episode aired. I’m catching up...

Spoilers!

How I Met Your Mother – “Noretta” (B-)

How I Met Your Mother seasons tend work in phases, at least the recent ones do anyway. Generally, the start of the season is pretty good. We get the funny but we also get some movement in the bigger story arcs – Ted’s search for the mother, major character hook-ups, that sort of thing. Then the show starts to move into more one-off episodes varied around a theme that tends to get resolved by the end of the half hour. They have the potential to be good, but a lot of them end up being pretty forgettable. Later in the season and sometimes at its midpoint the writers will move back into those more interesting storylines, but unfortunately until then we get stuck in that intermediate phase, and that’s exactly where we are right now.

Tonight’s episode was not How I Met Your Mother at its finest. There were as always, certainly a few good moments, but altogether I found this to be a rather one-note episode. I think the storyline with the most holes in it was Robin, Ted and Kevin’s. I feel like I say this every week – I love Kal Penn but his style of acting just doesn’t seem to fit in with the sitcom format of this show. I’ve also started to notice that the writers have been using his character as a way to bring up or accentuate whatever psychological topic they want to talk about that week. This may work to give the episode a common theme, but it doesn’t make his character’s storylines any better.

I will say though, Ted and Robin’s attitude towards each other in this week’s episode, their lack of self-awareness if you will, does serve to highlight what I think is slowly becoming one of the major arcs of this season – the inappropriateness of this group’s dynamic. I mentioned it last week too, but the writers are definitely building towards something and I think it’s going to have a big impact later on in the season.

Thankfully, the other storylines in this episode faired a little better than the latter. Marshall’s decision to not stop until Lily felt sexy was maybe one of the most sitcomy starts to a storyline I’ve ever seen this show do, but the writers did get some pretty good banter out of it. Generally whenever Marshall invents a game there’s going to be something redeemable about that storyline... though I could have done without seeing Marshall’s Dad in Lily’s evening wear.

Barney too had a decent week. Neil Patrick Harris still knows how to sell a line, and I think I laughed at almost every utterance of the words “I can turn this around.” My one disappointment was that I felt like Wayne Brady’s cameo was a little bit wasted. I always enjoy his appearances on the show so I would have preferred it if the writers had held off until they had an episode where he and Barney could have been featured a little more prominently together.

Anyway, now for the quotes:

LILY: Wait you’re finally going to Bootytown?
BARNEY: Look, we just don’t want to rush anything, okay, so we decided to wait until she decides to let me have sex with her.

WEIRD AL: Vinny, start recording!

And line of the night:

MARSHALL: I was trying to think of how to best express how sexy you are to me... a song, a poem, and then it hit me: a board game!
LILY: You just get woman.

Grey’s Anatomy – “Poker Face” (B+)

Granted, this episode didn’t exactly have a ton of substance – dramatically it was a little tame – but there was something quite endearing about “Poker Face.” Tonally it sort of brought out Grey’s fun side, and for a show that very often flirts with over the top theatrics, an episode like this is good. It keeps everything in perspective.

I thought the standout this week was Meredith – she was a catalyst for a lot of funny storylines. I very much enjoyed watching her don the pink scrubs and start delivering babies. The way Christina defended her to Alex for going into gynaecology and then immediately told her stop embarrassing her was hilarious. I also liked her little encounters with Lexie, if only because Lexie had this sort of deer-in-headlights reaction to the whole thing. By the way, it was nice to see Lexie back in the mix again. Is it just me or has she had somewhat of a diminished role this season?

April had a pretty good week this week as well. For my money she’s the most entertaining character on this show right now. I thought Karev was a little harsh in that early scene where he just unloaded on her, but her reaction to it ended up being quite funny so I guess something positive came out of it. Credit Sarah Drew for really that selling that storyline. I love the way she sort of caught herself going into that high pitched voice each time someone defied and then promptly lowered it to great effect. I like watching her get these little wins.

I was a little irked though that they didn’t follow up on that guy she left with in the last episode. Maybe the writers are planning something a little bit bigger (or maybe I’ve just exaggerated the importance of this storyline in my head) but I still think that’s an important moment for her character and they just sort of brushed over it. Seeing as she ended this episode saying she’s going to drink beer and hit on boys I’m assuming nothing happened, but damn it I want to know what’s going on with her. I write a TV blog – these virginity storylines are the only ones I can relate to.

Alright, last thing. I kind of like that Arizona and Mark are friends now. I know that the writers pretty much just inserted that for the sake of Callie’s arc this week, but I wouldn’t mind a few more storylines in that direction. There’s a lot of potential there.