Brow Beat: Slate's Culture Blog

The How I Met Your Mother Shame Index: Episode 9

Every family has its Thanksgiving traditions. This year, How I Met Your Mother officially made the slap bet the centerpiece of its annual celebration.

Shameful:

—The notion that a turkey left behind in a cab would end up in the lost and found at Port Authority. HIMYM occasionally makes keen observations about life in New York. This was not such an occasion.

—The "you're dead to me" look. The Shame Index has previously noted that HIMYM would do well to avoid special effects, but this episode yet again leaned heavily on effects for comedy. The reasons Lily had for disavowing characters like her bridesmaid—"I'm just not a fan of strapless"—and Mr. Park were funny, but the glowing eyes routine got old quick. And Mr. Park's actual death at the end of the episode was a contrived, maudlin twist.

—The attempt to recapture the magic of the original Slapsgiving episode. The Shame Index doesn't necessarily think this sequel was doomed to fail—the long shelf life of the slap bet is part of what makes it so funny—but fail it did. The transferability of slaps was a clever idea, and an apt one coming from lawyer Marshall. But the bickering over whether Robin or Ted would get to bestow the slap grew tiresome, as did the slap puns, which failed to capture the spirit of one-upsmanship of the previous Slapsgiving.

—Related: As Amos Barshad has noted on Vulture, one of the strangest aspects of the Robin-Barney arc was how unfazed Ted was by the relationship. Last night, during the argument over who would get to slap Barney, Ted announces that he's angry that Robin slept with one of his best friends. Was some repressed issue with Swarkles finally rearing its ugly but understandable and potentially dramatic head? Nope! It was merely slap-bet brinksmanship.

—Also related: Is the Shame Index alone in feeling upset on Barney's behalf vis-a-vis the slap? That the slap-bet commissioner could herself become a slapper via a transfer of slapping rights seems to the Shame Index a prima facie conflict of interest. And while a slap bet is inherently rough justice, was it not cruel and unusual of Marshall to bestow on Barney a fake pardon the moment before delivering the brutal fourth slap? The slap bet must be governed by the rule of law. The Shame Index would like his objection noted for the record.

Awesome:

—Guest star Christina Pickles. Yes, sitcom fans: Pickles, who played Judy Geller on Friends, showed up last night as Lily's grandmother. A conscious nod to the debt HIMYM owes Friends? Or just casting happenstance? The Index likes to think it's the former.

—Mickey's board games. They weren't all funny, and some were funnier than others, but the Index did enjoy Tijuana Slumlord, Dog Fight Promoter, and, especially, There's a Clown Demon Under the Bed. Donna Bowman of the AV Club spied in the background of Mickey's apartment a prototype for a game called Landmine Lunge, which is also inspired. The episode pushed the joke too far in the end, however, with the exploding gallbladder filled with lead paint and horse bile. The final bit—a fake '80s-style ad for a slap-based board game—was likewise just silly.

—Marshall's appearance via video link at the weekly Eriksen family dinner. (Does the fact that Marshall's dad is played by Bill Fagerbakke of Coach bolster the argument that HIMYM pays homage to sitcoms of yore through its casting? Was Carter Bays also a big fan of Get a Life?)

—"Well then we'll just give him some dark meat."

In other news, the Index was pleased to see Carter Bays forced to account for HIMYM's poor handling of the Barney and Robin relationship, even if his response was far from satisfactory. The Index was also happy to see that he is not alone in finding the treatment of Swarkles problematic. Time's James Poniewozik, in a response to last week's episode, put his finger on what's so odd about the abrupt breakup: Last season, HIMYM convinced us that even Barney—promiscuous, solipsistic Barney—has a real emotional life. Now the series wants us to forget about it. Ain't that a slap in the face.

Previous Shame Indices: Episode 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Click here to comment on this post.
      

The How I Met Your Mother Shame Index: Episode 8

Last week's episode of How I Met Your Mother proved to be controversial. The Shame Index pronounced it the worst of the season. Vulture called it the best. Others were somewhere in between. There was some disagreement about whether Barney in a fat suit was funny or, as the Index argued, plain lazy. But the more serious issue was the treatment of the relationship between Barney and Robin. It seems that many fans of HIMYM had quickly soured on the romance—they wanted the old Barney back.

They got him. This week's episode was given over almost entirely to Barney's scams, cons, hustles, hoodwinks, gambits, stratagems, and bamboozles. And flimflams.

Shameful:

—MILSWANCA. We live in a post-MILF Island world. There's no going back to MILSW-.

—The flashback within a flashback. It wasn't at all clear to the Shame Index why this episode required a second layer of recollection. Couldn't Lily have intercepted the blonde (Sarah Wright, last seen making out with Mad Men's Pete Campbell after her failed Maidenform audition) before The Scuba Diver was to begin in earnest and warned her then of Barney's plot? HIMYM is typically masterful in its handling of chronology—memories often inspire other memories, so it's natural when Bob Saget stops a story and rewinds further to explain. Here it just felt unnecessarily complicated.

—Robin joining in the chorus of "hell no" when Ted asks rhetorically whether he'd consider dating a woman Barney had hooked up with. Um, you're one of those women now, Robin.

—SNASA. Actually, SNASA is pretty funny. But the writers stepped on a fragile joke with Smoon and Smoron.

—Don. That guy is going to be the love of Robin's life? She deserves better. (The Shame Index recognizes this is a snap judgment based on the briefest glimpse of the guy. But come on.)

Awesome:

—"Civil Union and planning to get married pending passage of legislation currently on the floor of the New York State Senate." Funny and timely.

—Marshall's fumbling comparison of Barney to Stephen King.

—Marshall's extended frozen waffles metaphor, followed up by his quite serious request that Robin pick up some frozen waffles.

—As indicated above, some of the gambits from Barney's playbook were better than others (whereas Robin's two-volume playbook is thrilling from cover to cover). But, on balance, Barney's collection of strategies were imaginative, cleverly enacted, and handsomely calligraphed. Of particular merit:

—The Lorenzo von Matterhorn—"spelled like it sounds." Kudos to Barney for his inspired set of fake Web sites, and to the art director of this episode for actually making the Internet look like the Internet. (The cartoonish rendering of Web sites on network television is a pet peeve of the Shame Index.)

—The Ted Mosby. Barney impersonating Ted—that can't help but be funny.

—The Cheap Trick. Elegant in its simplicity.

The Shame Index suspects that most viewers were thrilled to have the old, promiscuous Barney back last night. The Index enjoyed seeing him in action as well, but couldn't shake a nagging feeling—that HIMYM fans were on the wrong end of a different cheap trick. The series spent nearly an entire season establishing what felt like a very real, very believable relationship between Barney and Robin, only to abruptly dissolve it last week on the thinnest pretense. Barney and Robin deserved better than that, and so do viewers, who were led to believe the series was invested in its characters enough see the relationship through. Barney's coup de grâce in this week's episode was to land the blonde by feigning sympathy for Robin's lingering sadness about their breakup. It felt like a joke on the audience—you fell for that whole Barney and Robin thing? Sucker. You thought for a moment that Barney felt empathy for Robin? Sucker. Robin seemed unfazed by all this, but it may be a while before the Shame Index can fully appreciate Barney's antics again.

Previous Shame Indices: Episode 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Click here to comment on this post.

The How I Met Your Mother Shame Index: Episode 7

Click here to comment on this post.

The How I Met Your Mother Shame Index: Episode 6

Look at you, had a relationship for five minutes and think you can play with the big boys. That's adorable. Son, I been in a relationship since you had a ponytail and were playing Dave Matthews on your mama's Casio. I'm a good boyfriend in my sleep. I can rock a killer foot rub with one hand and brew a kick-ass cup of chamomile with the other that would make you weep. Hell, I've forgotten more about microwaving fat free popcorn and watching Sandra Bullock movies than you'll ever know. But thanks for your concern, rook.

The How I Met Your Mother Shame Index: Episode 5

—The havoc Gazola's (sp?) pizza visits on Ted and Marshall's gastrointestinal systems.

—Crumpet Manor.

—The "shrimp fried rice" chant.

—Everything about Goodbye, Sparky: The pitch-perfect send-up of maudlin doggy lit, matching Kenny Rogers's honeyed drawl with the text, actually getting Rogers to do the voice work, Marshall and Ted's reconciliation after learning a valuable lesson from Sparky's story. A brilliantly conceived and executed gag.

The greatest Kenny Rogers-themed sitcom episode remains "The Chicken Roaster," from the eighth season of Seinfeld, in which Kramer becomes addicted to chicken from Kenny Rogers Roasters. But kudos to HIMYM for crafting a fine part for one of our finest musical talents.

Previous Shame Indices: Episode 1, 2, 3, 4

Click here to comment on this post.

The How I Met Your Mother Shame Index: Episode 3

Last week's dud of an episode had the Shame Index expressing concern that Barney and Robin's nascent romance might be problematic for this season of How I Met Your Mother—could these two be funny together? This week's solid effort answered the question with a reassuring yes.

Shameful:
—Robin's opening of Barney's briefcase with a sledgehammer. A shade too broad. Plus, would that even work?

—Marshall's beloved barrel, which felt like an afterthought—something to keep Marshall busy in an episode that didn't have much use for him.

—Barney's Twitter joke. Twitter jokes will surely be popping up all over sitcoms this fall. Prediction: Zero of them will be funny.

—Barney's Barack Obama Jr. pickup line. Another strained attempt at unnecessary topicality.

Awesome:
—Lily's declaration that Robin Scherbatsky is many things: "friend, confidante, occasional guest star in some confusing dreams that remind me a woman's sexuality is a moving target."

—Lily's professed allergy to barrel resin. The only good thing to come of the barrel plot.

—Pretty much all of the Robin Scherbatsky 101 bit. Kudos to the HIMYM writers for taking two plot strands that had the Shame Index concerned about this season—Robin and Barney's relationship and Ted's teaching gig—and combining them for quality comedy. Of particular merit:

—The three ways of distracting Robin from being mad at you, especially her soft spot for the mating rituals of empire penguins.

—The top five things never to do around Robin. Occasionally, HIMYM will leave some of its best material as an Easter egg for the close viewer. Last season, when Marshall became obsessed with Goliath National Bank's graphics department, he commissioned a chart ranking the U.S. presidents in order of how dirty their names sound. He only announced the top four—Johnson, Bush, Harding, Polk—but the list was printed big enough for viewers to see that Bush was also ranked ninth, which took the joke to a whole new level of hilarious complexity: Why is one Bush's name dirtier than the other's? Last night, a bonus item not to do around Robin was scrawled on the chalkboard but never read aloud: "mention hockey's lack of popularity in the U.S."

—Ted's hypercorrect pronunciation of Beaux Arts, which came out sounding like "bozarts."

—Shin Ya, who is auditing Robin 101. Just on the right side of the thin line separating amusing and harmful stereotype.

—You know an episode is more awesome than shameful when even Ted's sappy moral has some bite: "When you're dating someone, it's like you're taking one long course in who that person is. Then when you break up, all that stuff becomes useless. It's like the emotional equivalent of an English degree."

So: A fine return to form this week. In other HIMYM news, Rachel Bilson, late of The OC, has been cast in what executive producer Craig Thomas touts as a pivotal role in the series' upcoming 100th episode, raising the possibility that she is the one for Ted. Knowing how HIMYM's producers love to milk this mystery for all it's worth, however, the Shame Index hereby pledges to eat its shoe if Bilson turns out to be the eponymous mother.

Click here to comment on this post.

[Update, 5:18pm, Oct. 6th: Corrected the spelling of Scherbatsky. The Shame Index must have cut that class of Robin 101.]

How Letterman Should Atone: Hire Some Women Writers

Leno's and the rest of the nighttime comedy shows are bizarrely lacking in women writers. Did a bomb go off and kill all the women comedy writers and leave the men standing? The other night on the Emmy Awards broadcast, the names of the nominees for best writing on a comedy or variety series were read, and, out of eighty-one people, only seven were women. Leno has no women writers on his show. Neither does David Letterman, and neither does Conan O'Brien. Come on.

Letterman's Brilliant Crisis Management

But what was it like to be in the studio audience yesterday at the Ed Sullivan Theater? One moment you were inhaling brisk fall air out on Broadway, and then, privy to a blackmail plot, you were witnessing a fat, juicy footnote to TV culture. At home, it seemed like the audience was negotiating some kind of acute stress response. The key moment sounded like this:

Dave: The creepy stuff was that I have [breath] had sex with women [beat] who work for me [beat] on this show.

Audience: [Awkward silence, as if thinking, "Is this joke? If so, is it at our expense?" and also imagining, "What does Dave look like having sex?"]

Dave: Now, my response to that is, Yes, I have—

Audience: [Cathartic laughter and extended nervous applause, the latter all the more fascinating because the producers couldn't have been so indecent as to light an applause sign.]

Dave (speaking under the extended idiotic applause): I have had sex with women, and—and would it be embarrassing if it were made public?

Audience: [Hearty titters.]

Dave: Perhaps it would. Perhaps it would—especially for the women.

That last line was beautifully turned, a great release of tension, never mind that its dry heat curdled some of the laughter for it. Letterman is often best when, dying badly on stage, he turns his parched sarcasm back on himself. This was deadpan candor and ace crisis management. He had something to say, but this was not a confession. I notice that the first comment on Bill Carter's NYTimes.com report on this story was blurted out by an entity calling itself "tomb": "He did not even say he was sorry. Jerk." Say sorry to whom? To his public? Why do we deserve an apology? What does he owe us beyond a bit of entertainment at bedtime and something to talk about in the morning?

Click here to read more on David Letterman's confession.

The How I Met Your Mother Shame Index: Episode 2

In last week's inaugural How I Met Your Mother Shame Index, I tried to capture the powerful feeling of disappointment the sitcom can inspire in even its most committed fans. More often than not, the show is great fun, but when it misses the mark, it can miss widely, inspiring feelings of embarrassment: I made an appointment for this television? Last night's episode was full of such misses.

Shameful:

—The central conceit: That in 2009, Ted is unwittingly repeating a blind date he went on in 2002. A healthy willingness to suspend disbelief is required to appreciate HIMYM, but this strained credulity too far. At first, Ted and Jen don't remember each other at all. But once they realize they've been on this date before, a series of very specific details come right back to them. Plus, we know of several women that Ted has dated for long stretches between '02 and '09—Robin, Stella, Victoria. How many one-and-done dates has he really been on during that time frame? Barney would have forgotten this woman during his cab ride home, but not Ted.

—The cheap moral of the repeat blind date: Ted realizes he wants to hold out for a woman who does find his shellfish joke funny. Making us all a little less interested in finding out who the mother is.

—Ted and Jane watching two rotund people have sex from Ted's rooftop—a blatant rip-off of the old Ugly Naked Guy routine from Friends.

—The strip club that Barney takes Marshall to. This is CBS, not HBO, but even by network standards this joint was unconvincing. It was lit like a dentist's office.

—The gang's doppelgänger. Close call: This had the feel of a great HIMYM bit, but it didn't quite deliver. Making Robin butch wasn't a wild enough leap—she's already got a butch, hockey-loving side. Stripper Lily could have been amusing, but wasn't: The closing bit, in which Alyson Hannigan tries out an Eastern European accent, was embarrassing for everyone. Mustache Marshall—aka Senor Justicia—was admittedly kind of great.

Awesome:

—2002 Ted's goatee. HIMYM has always done an impressive job of using hair and/or facial hair to mock its characters' former selves. Though this is also a gag that was perfected by Friends.

—Barney's use of the (annual) "Origins of Chewbacca" exhibit to lure Marshall—and previously Ted—on adventures.

—Marshall's inability to fantasize about women other than Lily unless he first imagines that she has succumbed to a chronic disease. This was the rare instance when dragging the joke out made it more funny, not less. When Lily referred to "that busty delivery girl from that one time" it was amusing; when the priest at her funeral repeated it, it was hilarious.

Is it too early to worry that the Barney and Robin relationship is going to do harm to HIMYM? There was a conspicuous drop in awesome Barney moments this episode. Let's hope it was a fluke.

Click here to comment on this post.

Introducing the How I Met You Mother Shame Index

How I Met Your Mother, which entered its fifth season last night on CBS, resembles Friends in its outlines. Both sitcoms follow a group of young men and women coming of age in New York City. But there's also something similar in the experience of being a fan of the two shows—namely, a suspicion that it might be cooler not to be a fan. There's no shame in admitting that you spent a night watching Seinfeld reruns—Ooh, which ones? goes the response. With Friends, a certain sheepishness attaches. What did you do last night? Um, caught this great episode of Friends on TBS, where Ross and Rachel ... Never mind.

Being a fan of HIMYM is a bit like that, and not without reason. While the show boasts one of the best characters on any current sitcom—Neil Patrick Harris' rightly celebrated Barney Stinson—it also features one of the most frustrating: Josh Radnor's Ted Mosby, whose painfully earnest pursuit of true love can bog down an otherwise rip-roaring episode full of ribald wordplay and hysterical gags. At its best, the show is funny and heartwarming; at its worst, plain sappy. To help fans decide whether to don their MacLaren's T-shirts or keep their love undercover like Barney and Robin, Brow Beat is inaugurating a new feature, The HIMYM Shame Index. Each week, we'll enumerate the latest episode's great moments and its embarrassing ones and decide whether Mother has made us proud.

Shameful:

—Robin's use of the tired phrase "slow your roll."

—The endless talk about "the talk."

—The episode's persistent use of Vampire Weekend's "Oxford Comma"; HIMYM's creators seem to have a soft spot for indie rock, and while in the past they've been known to underscore a broken heart (Ted's, natch) with an apt Pavement track, this felt like a reach for hipness.

—Ted's lame dream sequence. Really, the forgot-to-wear-pants thing? You're better than that, HIMYM.

Awesome:

—Marshall chiding Lily for not using her "indoor ‘woo!' " Adorable.

—Barney and Robin's use of flugelhorn as a code word for when things have gone too far in bed or, later, in their fledgling relationship.

—Barney's disdain for brunch.

—"T-Dog, you're in the wrong room bro." And just about the whole scene in the economics classroom—HIMYM is at its best when it's playing Ted's earnestness for laughs. His uncertainty about how to spell professor was particularly amusing.

—Marshall's unilateral declaration of Tuxedo Night. "Didn't we meet on a yacht?"

All in all, more to be proud about than ashamed of in this episode, plus some very good signs for the rest of the season: The Robin and Barney plotline shows promise, and Cobie Smulders and Alyson Hannigan are no longer hiding obvious pregnancies behind flouncy tops and preposterously large handbags.

Click here to comment on this post.

Back Adswards

CBS and Pepsi are teaming up for a promotion in an upcoming issue of Entertainment Weekly. When readers open to a two-page spread in the magazine, a tiny embedded video screen will flicker to life. Various buttons on the player will call up short promo clips from fall CBS shows, along with an ad for Pepsi Max.

The Financial Times compares the stunt to a singing greeting card and to the moving pictures on the pages of the "Daily Prophet" (the newspaper read by characters in the Harry Potter series). The FT estimates the cost to build the video screen into magazines was "several dollars per copy." Given this tremendous expense, CBS and Pepsi are placing the ad only in EW issues sent to subscribers in New York and Los Angeles—attempting to generate maximum buzz among TV freaks and entertainment-industry machers. Ad Age calls the promotion "intriguing," and claims it demonstrates that marketers are "experimenting with new technologies to get their messages out to consumers." A CBS marketing exec tells the FT that the ad is "part of the future—a way to engage consumers in new and surprising ways."

Ah, so this is the bold new future, and a potential savior for dying print-magazine ad sales: a teensy, low-fi screen that costs a huge amount of money to distribute in just two cities and can only play a few short video clips. Fascinating! If only this screen could be larger and sharper and didn't need to be shipped to people's homes because they already owned one, and it could display an unlimited array of content that people could click on for more information, and it were incredibly easy and inexpensive to distribute that content onto screens in every corner of the world. Seems like the sort of futuristic idea advertisers might get really excited about sometime down the road. Until then, thank goodness for bold marketing innovations like this one.

On CBS, Will "Medium" Remain Well-Done?

On Monday night, NBC aired what it billed as the "finale" of Medium, the drama starring Patricia Arquette as a psychic crime solver and mother of three in Phoenix. When my partner and I saw that word "finale" in the teaser for Monday's episode, we nearly fainted. In the five years since its debut, Medium has become the only network show we watch without fail every week, and it's right in the middle of several long-term story arcs too juicy to be wrapped up in a single hour. But, mercifully, NBC's teaser was misleading. What the peacock was too proud to add is that after a heated negotiation at last month's TV upfronts, the show was acquired by CBS, where it'll be airing on Friday nights starting in the fall, in between Ghost Whisperer and Numb3ers. This "psychic sandwich" programming makes a certain amount of sense for attracting viewers (even if Medium fans may be irked at the implied equation between Patricia Arquette's smart, complex, grownup character and Jennifer Love Hewitt's busty nitwit). But Friday night prime time is known as the "death slot" for a reason; it's the place networks traditionally move shows on their way to being canceled.

Even sadder than the idea of a world with no Medium is the possibility that the show will lose its character in an attempt to save its skin. The show runner, Glenn Gordon Caron (who also created Moonlighting and the short-lived but much-mourned Now and Again) has sworn that the content and quality of the show won't change at its new venue. I just hope Caron—and everyone involved in producing the show—knows what it is that sets Medium apart from your average "she-sees-dead-people" procedural: The show is the richest and truest portrait of marriage and family life currently on television. As Allison and Joe DuBois, Arquette and Jake Weber make living with the person you love look as annoying, as demanding, and as rewarding as it is in real life. They fight (not cute, made-for-TV squabbles but substantial debates about work, money, and children), they have sex, they kibitz about Allison's latest murder case while going to bed ... and then they grab a precious few hours of sleep before she's awakened by another clue-filled nightmare. The show weaves together the supernatural and the quotidian so skillfully that Allison's job—essentially, she's a professional dreamer for the D.A.'s office—starts to seem like a metaphor for the plight of every working mother, psychic or not. Allison is so overcommitted to both work and family that she multitasks in her sleep.

There are so many other things to love about Medium: Patricia Arquette's unapologetically normal body size, the skillfully drawn secondary characters, and the refreshingly uncute performance of Maria Lark as Bridgette, the DuBois' eccentric middle daughter. (For a glimpse of Bridgette's awesomeness, watch this behind-the-scenes clip.) Please, CBS, don't try to "add value" to your new "franchise" by messing with Medium. Just give Caron, Arquette, and the rest of them the keys to their new offices—and leave them alone to do what they do so well.