How I Met Your Mother: "The Poker Game"

Well, that was more like it. This wasn't a perfect episode but the B-plot of "The Poker Game" about Ted forgetting a wedding gift for Marshall and Lily was classic How I Met Your Mother. The show has always been good at one particular joke: time jumping, telling a story once before re-telling that story from a different perspective to see the story in a different context. When Ted recounts his side of the story and we revisit events, it felt like the kind of jokes the series was managing at its peak capacity.

The main plot about Barney, his family and Robin was more problematic. If you're still invested in Barney and Robin perhaps this story would be meaningful to you, but otherwise this felt like more of the same we've already seen from them without actually learning anything new or worthwhile. It's not an entirely dead story. In fact, the episode's funniest moment comes due to it when the many poker players pop out from various corners of the hotel room after Barney leaves. That was the goofy side of HIMYM at its finest, turning farcical theatricality into its advantage. Even the reappearance of Frances Conroy as Barney's mother Loretta was a welcome sight and she got in some wicked jokes.

HIMYM has so much history to draw upon at this point and I want it to use what we know about its characters and their lives, and by the same token what we don't know, to make both meaningful commentary, poignant juxtapositions and humorous callbacks and jokes (Note the little wonderful details in the flashbacks such as Lily's changing hairstyles or the appearance of the Slutty Pumpkin in the background. Continuity nerds should be very pleased). HIMYM has that power at its disposal. It has always done the previously stated things since its very beginning and it should be able to do it with even stronger emotional meaning and acuity. That it hasn't recently is one of the show's biggest shortcomings. Here was the an example of that opportunity. It's not even necessarily a matter of time jumping. Having Ranjit, William Zabka and Loretta be present and signifiers of the little world the show has built up over its eight plus seasons is a nice way to really make the weight of the show's history be felt. And HIMYM as a show about history, storytelling and growing up should be making those acknowledgements of its history; and it doesn't all have to be serious as the hilarity of "The Poker Game" demonstrated.

Grade: B+