How I Met Your Mother: "Knight Vision"

"Knight Vision" was possibly the worst episode so far this season (although there are other contenders, particularly "Last Time in New York"), and one of the worst episodes of recent memory in How I Met Your Mother's run. The episode really demonstrates the limitations of the story being confined to Farhamption. There's only so many stories you can tell in this location and in this time frame. And the writers can try to sugarcoat the story of Ted's ill-advised attempts with Cassie as setting up the eventual meet-up with the Mother, but it's a band-aide on flesh wound. It's a last minute story beat to salvage one of the most unmemorable, unfunny and simply bad stories this season. The story never clicks and always feels like filler. But it's the A-story, right? It's hard to tell what story is meant to be the most prominent here, but it really doesn't matters as they all felt limp.

Barney and Robin aren't an interesting or believable couple any longer and they're only together out of narrative necessity rather than plausible or satisfying reasons. The series acknowledging the strangeness of how they became a couple only serves to highlight just how weird and poorly handled their pairing has been and continues to be. When Robin and Barney get all cutesy and talk about how they love the messiness of the story, it rang very, very false. To have the reverend die immediately after only pointed out how awful this couple is and how unlikable they've increasingly become. This was an episode that tried to examine the problems inherent to this pairing and only served to make the pairing feel all the more desperate and destructive.

The episode isn't devoid of amusing moments but they're few and far between, and they almost always seem to trump the story and characters. Hearing Sherri Shepherd dub Lily's voice is initially quite funny (although it wears its welcome quickly) as is having characters pretend to be other characters in flashbacks (particularly Marshall as Barney re-enacting Ted meeting Robin), but these fleeting moments aren't enough to save an episode that feels scattered and uninspired.

Give us more of the Mother. The brightest part of the season thus far has been the welcome entrance of Cristen Milioti, and yet she has only appeared in one episode, despite having been elevated to the status of series regular. Nothing has felt quite as funny or emotionally satisfying as Milioti's screentime.

Grade: C