How I Met Your Mother: The Third Wheel
By fred | October 11, 2007
(S03E03) Well well. I watched this episode, and I must confess that I love that show. I really do, and as such I kinda want it to be brilliant, and funny, and some more. Maybe it means I do appreciate a bit more episodes than are only “okay”, maybe it does means that I’m more tolerant with the show, I don’t know.
Yet, after this one, I don’t feel so good. I think I was disappointed with this episode.
It wasn’t that funny. I mean, sure, it had its moments, and I laughed out loud at Barney trying to find out whether or not Ted deserves the belt, but apart from that…
Again, I really love the show, but this episode was pretty flat in my opinion. I don’t want to point fingers, but that Wild Ted is the reason for this. Oh yeah ladies, he really is. Unlike most, this episode only featured one story – pretty much, more on that later – and that story was about Ted. And, it was only a one time, one place deal.
Usually, you have all the characters moving around and doing things. Whatever they do varies, may or may not be relevant, but things happen. Not this time.
This time, Ted went to a bar. To keep Barney and Marshall on the apartment, there was some lame unfunny video game plot. Maybe it could have worked, if it hadn’t been stretched out for so long. Then Lilly was out to the bar and back upstairs, where they all ended up being locked, somehow. Including Ted and his two girls of the night – lovely to see the Pineapple girl back, by the way.
Going from there, it had to all take place on that apartment, and because it wasn’t easy to do they used some little tricks of story-telling to get there. While Barney was true to himself, it just didn’t work for me. I couldn’t wait for something to happen, them to get out, so things could finally move on. Only when it did, the episode was over.
I really didn’t enjoy this whole plot that much, I even had a hard time believe Mister Awesome, who I thought had been in a ten-way, would collapse under such pressure. Yeah, when yo get there you put a lot of pressure on your shoulders, but while it’s believable when it’s Seinfeld, a regular guy, when it comes to the love machine that Barney is, it sounded a bit off to me.
Not a plot, I enjoyed, and sadly it involved all but one character and about 80, maybe 90% of the time of the episode.
Then, we had Robin. I mentioned last time that having her alone on her own plot/story was probably not the best idea, I feel like I should rephrase that now : terrible idea. Except for the last scene, where she’s falling down again, it simply wasn’t funny. Buttering her legs, come on!
Ever since she and Ted broke up, there seems to be a dynamic problem on the show, and it really shows. They need to mix things, have Robin and Barney team up, so two of them could be pretty funny together. Never have one character all alone, not a good idea, unless that character is the awesome Barney. You can have Ted & Marshall go on their own things, while still having Lilly and the same Marshall dealing with things on their own.
I wish they would focus less of showing of Ted morphed into Wild Ted, and more on all the characters and have them all interact with each others. Hopefully next one will feel like HIMYM again…
Posted in Reviews
Shows: How I Met Your Mother
