Wednesday, March 22, 2023

What I’m Watching: How I Met Your Father

How I Met Your Father: Season 2, Episode 8 “Rewardishment” (B-)

This episode felt the most sitcom-esque of any installment I’ve seen yet, which I’m not sure is a great thing. Jesse and Sid are friends who stand by their traditions (as did the characters on the original series), but it hardly seemed necessary for them to require each other to overcome a major fear by the end of the night and to punish themselves with a truly disgusting - and clearly unhealthy - consequence of drinking the drippings. Sid’s commitment to the clock felt like a rule no one else should have respected, even if they did all motivate themselves to change long-standing behaviors just because of peer pressure. That Sophie and Valentina didn’t drive felt unrealistic, even if they were city people who had just never bothered to learn, and it was unsurprising that Sophie found herself in a critical situation where she had to do so and couldn’t quite deliver. Charlie’s inability to shave properly was the most absurd reason they had to go to the hospital, underlining just how much this is a “situation” comedy where everyone somehow gets themselves into absurd scenarios that would surely never happen in real life. The universal appeal of mega-bed also felt like something that they could just have done anyway, but, alas, that’s not how things work in the world of this show. I would at least rather spend time back in the present with this crowd rather than in the future where Sophie has turned into someone much more confident about her own obnoxious habits and tendencies.

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