I also have to admit that I’m growing a bit tired of this more one-dimensional Barney: he may be quippy, and there might be a lot of google hits that get to this post by my use of MILSWANCAS (That’s Mothers I’d Like to Sweep With and Never Call Again), but I don’t think that’s enough to sustain an episode of comedy. My objection to Barney reverting back to this sort of character is not just that I felt he and Robin had more of a relationship to investigate, and that the storyline had a lot more comedy to wring out over time. Stinsfire were derivative even while remaining enjoyable for Neil Patrick Harris’ performance. Some of them, like “My Penis Grants Wishes,” were legitimately unfunny, while others like The Mrs. But the episode really didn’t have anything else going for it beyond those simple constructs, and it showed: while some of the plays from the Playbook were clever, none of them were a new pinnacle for the show, and the constant winking to the audience made them feel more gimmicky than they needed to be. On a surface level, there’s a lot to like in this one, as Lily and Barney are always a fun pairing to throw into the ring together and anything which plays into the mythos of Barney Stinson is always fun.
My point is that there was an opportunity here for these types of stories to still be told in the context of Robin and Barney’s relationship, and that in fact it would have resulted in a far more interesting story than this one.
The episode’s storytelling narrative could have even been maintained, except that Lily could have told a pre-Barnman & Robin story about Barney intercepting one of Ted’s dates as opposed to that story happening in the context of the episode. The episode could have been about Robin finding out about the Playbook and seeking to have it destroyed to further cement their relationship, and the various scenes acting out the Playbook could have still remained as vestiges of Barney’s past as opposed to present behaviour. If Robin and Barney had stayed together, this episode would still have been possible. This episode could have worked within the context of their relationship had the show been willing to do so (I’ll explain how after the jump), but the end of the episode confirms that Barney has reverted to a one-dimensional caricature and Robin is already moving on.Īnd while the show is certainly more clever than your average sitcom, that sort of character regression is the sort of thing that I call out other shows for – as such, this is another disappointing episode for me. If the writers dumped Robin and Barney’s relationship so quickly because they were that desperate to be able to tell stories where Barney gets to be his usual, philandering self, then it feels like the sort of regressive move that I thought the show was above. In the end, Todd convinced me that I was perhaps being too hasty to judge where the show was going, but forgive me if “The Playbook” doesn’t somewhat prove my point.
He chose to believe that the writers still have more in store for Robin and Barney, the episode representing just a bump in the road, whereas I chose to assume the worst and believe that the writers had truly bungled the conclusion of this relationship that still had a lot of mileage in it. For example, Todd VanDerWerff and I both liked elements of the episode, but our overall impressions of the episode were fundamentally different. Last week’s episode of How I Met Your Mother proved enormously divisive, despite the fact that for the most part most critics read the episode itself in much the same way.
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