At times it feels as though the writers don't really know what to do with this extra time and "Coming Back" is the stronger of the portions of the episode on the whole as story elements begin to snap into focus. But the extra time allows the writers to drop in smaller moments that I don't know they would have otherwise, for good and for ilk. Much like the extended appearance of Seth Green in "Final Page", things in the first half get a little too goofy and needlessly unfocused for their own good.
The freshest moments are those that feature Cristin Milioti. The series, not surprisingly, highlights her brief moments. Not only that but they have a creative spark to them. In those moments, it doesn't feel like the show is dragging its feet and spinning in circles. In fact, it likely should have made these moments really stick and have some breathing room (When Future Ted says, "And that's how Lily met your Mother", the show passes over it far too quickly). It's something completely new and different, as well as something we've been dying to witness for over 8 years.
There's stuff that doesn't work. Marshall has the weakest of the stories, especially in the first half. His story highlights the series biggest problem at the moment: the characters are far too fragmented in their interactions at the moment. Though Sherri Shepherd gets some good fodder out of her lines and is a suitable match for Jason Segel, it can't help but feel like the writers are just killing time in Marshall's part of the story.
Critic Todd VanderWerff once described the power of television as accumulation. Movies can have more texture and they can have less loose ends but television has staying power. You don't just watch a tv show; you live through it. And so though there's a bit too much excess in this hour, the moments that need to stick and are intended to really get you in the gut do. Take the final moments of the episode where future Ted, now with the mother, recalls sitting at the same table a year earlier. What's so powerful about that moment, and moments elsewhere like it the series has pulled off, is how achingly real it is. The facade of sitcom antics fades away for a brief moment where the show rewards our investment and reassures us that it has been and will continue to be worth it.
I laughed for sure at the premiere, although not as consistently as I did when the show was at the top of its game. But the show can still be daggers. And ultimately it's just nice to be in this world for an hour or a half, to revisit some old friends and start to say good bye. Whatever complaints I may have had, it's been a lot of fun How I Met Your Mother.
Stray Thoughts:
-Thus far the weird structure for the season, letting it unfold over just the wedding weekend, is proving to be a fruitful device -- especially for relating to us the mother's role in it -- but we'll wait and see how long they can sustain it. The more they get out of the discussion of fate and fateful coincidences the more I will be able to ignore it (As I eat that stuff up). If they get into too much minutiae about weddings though, it could start getting rough.
-Though Marshall's story was the weakest -- in part because it feels like there's a lot of the show's ill-advised stall tactics and narrative contrivance -- his mother's attempts to take down the Facebook photo, for me at least, provided some of the most solid laughs.
-Marshall's story was the overall weakest but, for the most part, I also could have done without the "Barney and Robin might be cousins" story; left to their own storytelling devices in recent years these two characters can get a little too sickeningly cute and too over the top.
-Christin Millan and Josh Radnor have some killer chemistry as demonstrated by that brief flash forward scene and that makes me absurdly pleased after waiting and wondering for so long what that might be like.
-“King Joffrey’s parents were brother and sister, and he was a fair and wise leader.”
Grade: B+
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