Better than I remembered! Ted chasing Maggie, the "ultimate girl next door" who can't stay single for more than an hour, and enlisting his friends in the attempt to keep all of her potential suitors off her scent, was a very sturdy premise for the episode, that gave everyone something to do. The heightened realism of all the guys trying to date Maggie was a fun engine to drive the story, and led to lots of great comic hijinx.
Ted having a heart-to-heart with his class, including trying to turn "MAGGIE" into an acronym nicely balanced Ted's emotional vulnerability and the absurdity of devoting an entire class period to your romantic life. Both Robin and Barney's storylines went pretty broad. Robin's comedic turns are rarely my favorites -- I feel like Cobie Smulders does better with down-to-earth comedy than with the wacky stuff, but she had some nice moments of bravado here. But Barney accepting his own challenge and trying to get laid in Marshall's overalls is exactly the kind of ridiculous quest that his character thrives on, and Robin busting on him with farm jokes kept the bit rolling.
Lastly, Marshall trying to resolve his disappointment with failing to live up to his fifteen year old dreams was sad and sweet. He's kind of a giant teddy bear, and the heart of the show, so seeing him struggle with that managed to walk the line between comedy and pathos, and Lily was understandably sweet and funny about it to boot.
The ending of the episode leaned more toward the sweet than funny, but then again, so do a lot of the better HIMYM episodes. The idea of Ted relenting when he hears Maggie and Adam's story, because he wanted something that good, and realized he was tired of chasing the single life when he wanted "the real thing" is a nice note to go out on that brings a fairly cartoony story back down to earth. Nice to see the show still putting on episode of this quality smack dab in the middle of its run.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2016-04-29T04:43:21Z
Better than I remembered! Ted chasing Maggie, the "ultimate girl next door" who can't stay single for more than an hour, and enlisting his friends in the attempt to keep all of her potential suitors off her scent, was a very sturdy premise for the episode, that gave everyone something to do. The heightened realism of all the guys trying to date Maggie was a fun engine to drive the story, and led to lots of great comic hijinx.
Ted having a heart-to-heart with his class, including trying to turn "MAGGIE" into an acronym nicely balanced Ted's emotional vulnerability and the absurdity of devoting an entire class period to your romantic life. Both Robin and Barney's storylines went pretty broad. Robin's comedic turns are rarely my favorites -- I feel like Cobie Smulders does better with down-to-earth comedy than with the wacky stuff, but she had some nice moments of bravado here. But Barney accepting his own challenge and trying to get laid in Marshall's overalls is exactly the kind of ridiculous quest that his character thrives on, and Robin busting on him with farm jokes kept the bit rolling.
Lastly, Marshall trying to resolve his disappointment with failing to live up to his fifteen year old dreams was sad and sweet. He's kind of a giant teddy bear, and the heart of the show, so seeing him struggle with that managed to walk the line between comedy and pathos, and Lily was understandably sweet and funny about it to boot.
The ending of the episode leaned more toward the sweet than funny, but then again, so do a lot of the better HIMYM episodes. The idea of Ted relenting when he hears Maggie and Adam's story, because he wanted something that good, and realized he was tired of chasing the single life when he wanted "the real thing" is a nice note to go out on that brings a fairly cartoony story back down to earth. Nice to see the show still putting on episode of this quality smack dab in the middle of its run.