6.2/10. The more I think about this one, the more I downgrade it. The whole "remember that no questions asked favor you asked of me?" structure lends itself to the sort of hijinks that HIMYM excels at, and some of them with glancingly fun (Ted being locked in a mailbox, Robin's turn as Nightfalcon). Unfortunately, the various methods of sneaking into Lily's room without her being the wiser got more and more absurd in an episode that feels like it was presided over by late-Simpsons era Mike Scully. This is back to the gang as wacky cartoon characters instead of real people. I did like the resolution where Marshall realizes he's never had to pull a "no questions asked" with Lily because she just naturally supports him, and that being his motivation to tell her that he accepted the judgeship. But I didn't care for the exaggerated "someone's going to die in that room" response or the whole ghost killer motif.
I liked the premise of the Robin-Barney story a little better, if only because it draws attentions to the parts of Barney and Robin's personalities -- specifically their independent natures and lack of willingness to yield to others' wishes or needs -- that make them a poor match for one another. Unfortunately, as usual, the show kind of papers over that in the resolution (though showing them working together to help a husband hide something from his wife was a nice moment of self-awareness in the script), even if you can possibly write it off as the show sewing seeds of discord while depicting Robin and Barney as being wilfully blind to their own respective flaws.
But overall, this is a very inessential episode that's not worth revisiting on a rewatch.
A throwaway line in this episode made me go look up a name—Duke Kahanamoku—and now I finally understand one of the songs in a musical I did 15 years ago… A song about a surf god.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2016-09-07T22:24:28Z
6.2/10. The more I think about this one, the more I downgrade it. The whole "remember that no questions asked favor you asked of me?" structure lends itself to the sort of hijinks that HIMYM excels at, and some of them with glancingly fun (Ted being locked in a mailbox, Robin's turn as Nightfalcon). Unfortunately, the various methods of sneaking into Lily's room without her being the wiser got more and more absurd in an episode that feels like it was presided over by late-Simpsons era Mike Scully. This is back to the gang as wacky cartoon characters instead of real people. I did like the resolution where Marshall realizes he's never had to pull a "no questions asked" with Lily because she just naturally supports him, and that being his motivation to tell her that he accepted the judgeship. But I didn't care for the exaggerated "someone's going to die in that room" response or the whole ghost killer motif.
I liked the premise of the Robin-Barney story a little better, if only because it draws attentions to the parts of Barney and Robin's personalities -- specifically their independent natures and lack of willingness to yield to others' wishes or needs -- that make them a poor match for one another. Unfortunately, as usual, the show kind of papers over that in the resolution (though showing them working together to help a husband hide something from his wife was a nice moment of self-awareness in the script), even if you can possibly write it off as the show sewing seeds of discord while depicting Robin and Barney as being wilfully blind to their own respective flaws.
But overall, this is a very inessential episode that's not worth revisiting on a rewatch.