How I Met Your Mother - Recap: A Brief History of Rhyme
Recap and review of How I Met Your Mother - Season 9 Episode 11 - Bedtime Stories:
"Bedtime Stories" may be How I Met Your Mother's most gimmicky episode since "The Burning Beekeeper", yet I think this worked a thousand times better than that episode, and an order of magnitude better than I would have expected it to. The entire episode is isolated on a bus, as Marshall (Jason Segel) is headed to Farhampton Inn for Barney and Robin's wedding with baby Marvin. However, Marvin is incapable of falling asleep without being told a bedtime story entirely in rhyme. Since Marshall has no books, he has to make up some rhyming stories to lull his son to sleep. What follows are three vignettes told entirely in rhyme (even the interstitials, which take place on the bus and feature Marshall talking to a man named Gus -- which is helpful, given the vehicle -- are told in rhyme). It's an infectious episode that's as funny as it is clever. We don't get any substantial storyline advancement, but the novelty of the gimmick, coupled with the laughs it produces, is enough to make "Bedtime Stories" worth going out of your way to see.
"Mosby at the Bat" is the first, and in my opinion, best of the three vignettes. We flashback to when Ted (Josh Radnor) was in the midst of his dating dry spell. Desperate for a date, he jumps at the opportunity to go out with his smoking hot teaching assistant, though he must determine whether it's actually a date or not. Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) offers a globe with an "international date line": If you're in the green, it's a date. In the red? Not a date. The eventual night out veers back and forth between the two, as Ted tries to determine what the woman's intentions are. She eventually reveals that she dated Derek Jeter of the New York Yankees, and offers a photo as proof. But when Ted checks the phone, it's an image of Barney in a Derek Jeter shirt, having tricked yet another woman into believing he's someone famous despite not looking a single loving thing like the person he's supposedly impersonating. And so Ted decides that even if this is a date, he won't be asking her out for another. It's an incredibly succinct little story, and it's remarkably quick with its comedy, as we get Ted obsessing about which Yankee the girl dated (in classic Ted fashion, as he tends to ruminate on the past), while Barney luxuriates in explaining the Date/Not a Date rules (in classic Stinson fashion, as Barney loves detailing the structure of "game"). It was pretty easily my favorite of the three, yet a new story needs to be told when the movements of the bus wake baby Marvin, leading us into our next story...
Credit: CBS
"Robin Takes the Cake" represents Robin (Cobie Smulders) at her lowest point. While pigging out on cake at a bakery during a post-breakup binge, she runs into Simon (James Van Der Beek), her loser ex-boyfriend from her pop star days in Canada. Except Simon isn't a loser anymore. He's lost weight, cleaned himself up, and looks more like...well, like James Van Der Beek. To make matters worse, Robin learns he's in the bakery to pick up his wedding cake, as he's recently moved to New York and gotten engaged to his longtime girlfriend. And so, in a fit of depression and jealous pique, Robin steals the wedding cake and runs off to Ted's apartment with it. From there, the theft becomes a spectacle, as Robin -- with the encouragement of Lily (Alyson Hannigan) -- decides to eat the entire cake as a big middle finger to the universe. And so she does, and with each bite, she draws a bigger crowd to Ted's apartment. Barney even brings a keg for the cake-watching festivities. Eventually, Robin finishes the cake and, in her moment of triumph, decides to do a keg stand...which ends about as well as you'd expect, as Marshall explains that Robin had to have her stomach pumped. This was the weakest of the three vignettes, but it's almost salvaged by the interstitials on the bus, as Marshall struggles to think of a word that rhymes with "Canada," prompting Gus (Lin-Manuel Miranda) to go on a crazy freestyle thought-train that impresses the entire bus. It's a surprisingly awesome little moment in an episode that already had a lot going for it.
Credit: CBS
"Barney Stinson: Player King of New York City" is a monument to Barney's self-professed skills as a Lothario, as he becomes distracted from getting a beautiful woman's phone number one night at MacLaren's to tell the story of his meeting with the council of Players. It all started after word got back to the Players that Barney slept with a woman in the East Village, which is outside his West Village jurisdiction. He's taken to the Players Club to answer for his wrongdoing, and the entire council is made up of caricatures portrayed by Neil Patrick Harris: Pickle Jar Bob from Brooklyn, Captain Bill from Queens, Tuxedo Bob from the East Side, and a host of other similarly absurd characters. To make amends with the society, Barney must offer the offended parties a free go at Robin and Lily, yet Barney claims to have found a clever way out of having to pimp out his friends: he poisons the entire council. Neil Patrick Harris's diabolical laugh is fantastic, even though we know his story is complete bunk. It also leads to an amusing callback to "Mosby at the Bat," as Ted ends up picking up the girl Barney had intended to hit on as payback for Barney having slept with Lisa, the hot teachers assistant. With all three tales told, the bus breaks down, prompting the passengers to stand outside to watch a nearby fireworks display. In a fairly poignant conclusion, Marshall muses to Marvin that while he won't remember any of this night, Farhampton will be where Marvin's troubles end and Marshall's begin, as Lily is still furious about his decision to take the judge position without consulting her.
Future Ted (Bob Saget) eventually reveals that this night is actually the first thing Marvin remembers, and it's a really sweet way of wrapping up the story, even though it didn't have much of anything to do with the ongoing plot of the season. It helped that the storyline went out with two added bits of comedy at the end (the abrupt cutaway to the fireworks while Marshall tries to think of a rhyme for "Nantucket", and his eventual decision to walk the five remaining miles to Farhampton, both of which were terrific bits). All-in-all, this is my favorite episode of the season so far, though it will likely be divisive among the fanbase. The rhyming gimmick could either get old quick, or become one of the most entertaining novelties the show has adopted. I'm firmly in the latter camp. This was funny, touching, and actually pretty adorable once you factor in the awesome lullaby version of the How I Met Your Mother theme song at the start. This probably shouldn't have worked half as well as it did, but I really loved this.