I was worried after three months, I would find How I Met Your Mother less funny. I did not. Tonight's episode, unplanned or not, was a St. Patrick's Day episode.
I honestly think with lesser actors, the show would not be as funny. I think some of the jokes are kind of bad, but not that bad. It's like, they're bad enough to be original. When Barney comes into the apartment with a green suit, he gets called Gumby, Riddler and Robin Hood. But Ted walks in and, without hesitation:
"Hey, NBA player sidelined by a knee injury."
To me, Josh Radnor is one the best at delivery on network television right now. Had it been another actor, or had the line been "
You look like an NBA player sidelined with a knee injury," I don't think it would have worked as well. One of the most used words on the show is "awesome," and his delivery works every time.
But the big news - we may be very close to meeting Mother. We've seen the yellow umbrella before, and we see it again in this episode, especially at the end, when Ted himself picks it up. This obviously leads to a story where his future wife looks for it.
I have a small feeling we might have seen her. At the bar, Ted bumps into a girl and says sorry, she replies that it's ok, then they both away. I feel like this would normally be something that would be cut out of the episode, but it might come back in future episodes. That would be too easy, right?
Speaking of the bar, this episode uses a format previously seen in "Ted Mosby, Architect," where we see Ted acting one way, then later we find out it wasn't exactly how it went down. In that episode, Robin thinks Ted is going around town using his job to get women, when in fact Barney is using Ted's name. In this episode, we see a very drunk Ted who has unknowingly been leaving Marshal voicemail. We're left at the end worrying a little about his well-being, as he is extremely bothered by how he acted.
Coincidentally, "Ted Mosby, Architect" and this episode both feature another running joke. In tonight's ep, Ted asks Barney if they have to build a baseball field. The gang often makes references to Field of Dreams, a movie Robin fell asleep halfway through. There is another joke about ghosts in "Architect" as well... maybe the writers saw that episode before writing this one.
Lily and Marshall's new apartment is crooked, and this leads to more could-be-bad jokes about finding the "right angle" and it being an "uphill battle," but again, Cobie Smulders has the charm that prevents me from rolling my eyes. It also works when she goes along with Marshal's ghost story, saying very dryly "It passed through me and suddenly I felt cold, very cold."
And of course there is Barney, whose elaborate jokes would never come from anyone else. "End of the world - Nostradamus - Notre Dame - Fighting Irish - Irish - St. Patrick's Day!" And the extremely long-winded joke about girls living in different area codes, ending wit him calling himself Wyoming.
