How I Met Your Mother: The Naked Man
By fred | November 25, 2008
(S04E09) It’s been an odd season for How I Met Your Mother, with some really good episodes and others leaving us wondering what happened to our beloved and once so unique & original show. Just last week I said how it wasn’t that the episode was not good or funny, because it was, but not in that very unique ways that make this show so unlike anything else on TV.
This week I won’t say it was pulling a very sitcom-esque move again, I feel it was a good and funny episode – partially. Partially only, but all in all I was left underwhelmed, not to say disappointed, once again. I think I would say this: cut this episode in half, the first half was great, the second was only “meh” at best.
At first I loved Ted moving on and forgetting about Stella. We all want to forget how badly things went down there, and I liked Ted to flirt with the girl in the elevator, Vicky, and how they both seemed in sync and were very cute. Of course, Ted letting out all about his failed almost-marriage only to correct himself and ask her out was also very good.
Then he walked home, and walked on something unexpected, as he’s done many times in the past. Now I loved all those little flashbacks, my favorite one being Robin and her gun pointed at the guys trying to rob the place, with a close second for Barney in the water tank. Those were awesome, and of course I loved the goat as well — so mark your calendars folks, come May next year, we should finally have that episode we’ve all been waiting for !
But for the time being, Ted walked on the naked man sitting in his couch, naked. Mitch, as is his name when he’s not wearing his nakedness, was a normal guy, fully aware that he only had one shot with Robin, and it wouldn’t go any further than that, making him a likable character that couldn’t have grabbed our interest more than for a few minutes, but that was the whole idea.
So far the episode was great, I was loving it, just like I loved Barney hoping Robin wouldn’t fall for the naked man — though he wouldn’t admit it, of course, pretending/finding refuge in this whole naked men idea. But I have to say that this is about where things started to go down for me, because Robin going on a “I’m not a slut” date was really quite boring, for Mitch, for Robin, and for us; as well as having that sitcom-esque feeling when she went from calling him her boyfriend to tell him goodbye when Marshall admitted she wasn’t a slut.
Also, I knew long before Ted that he would pull the naked man out. It just seemed obvious to me that both he and Barney would do it that night, and that he would only work for Ted. It was the expected move, both go for it, and only Barney, otherwise so successful with women, fails to pull it off. That whole thing really didn’t work for me, and I have to add that I wasn’t a fan of the naked man poses, which I thought went on for a little bit too long.
I also didn’t like the complete change in Ted’s date, because during the elevator rides she seemed perfectly in harmony with Ted, with a cute little smile on her face, also stepping back when she walked in too early, so to have her out of the blue turn out to be so different than he – and we – expected her to be, up to trashing Ted’s favorite poem(s)/poet after having responding so well to his elevator confession, it just felt awkward to me.
In the end this didn’t make for a very good episode to me, but at least things didn’t end entirely wrong. First, because Ted’s little speech about the superhero that is the naked man was good, and because a naked Barney’s reaction to the suits on the street, preferring to remain clothesless than wear those, was just funny, and it’s always nice to end on a funny note. Speaking of which, Lily trying to come up with 50 reasons to have sex :”Wow this is getting a little hard… Barney: 46!”
Side note: one of the things that made me laugh the most relating to this episode, was found in Barney’s blog. When mentioning the descriptions of cave paintings from our ancestors, here’s how Barney described the man who wrote said descriptions : “a legendary archaeologist who prefers to remain anonymous. Let’s just say he survived a temple of doom, a last crusade, and some really stupid crystal aliens.” I’m still laughing at that one.
So, what did you think of this episode ? Did you feel it was great, only so-so, or did you not like it at all ? What’s your favorite reason to have sex ?
Posted in Reviews
Shows: How I Met Your Mother
