411 How I Met Your Mother Review: S03E20 'Miracles'

Posted by Michael Tyner on 09.16.2008

An introduction to the Monday night CBS comedy, and a review of last season's finale!



With three seasons behind them, How I Met Your Mother returns for a fourth season on Monday, September 22nd after some doubt as to whether or not the show would be renewed towards the end of the last season (similar to the situation it faced towards the end of season two). The show is an intelligent, well crafted comedy that critics have recently been claiming has “too few viewers for its own good”; similar claims were made of the critically acclaimed but low-rated Arrested Development and longtime fans of HIMYM have feared the show would meet the same fate.

Aside from Arrested Development, the show has also drawn several comparisons to the 90’s hit Friends and the comparisons was even made the butt of a joke in an episode from season two (personal favorite, S02E07 “Swarley”) that began with Ted, Marshall, and Barney at a coffee bar with some lame music playing. Barney interjects, “That settles it. . . hanging out in a coffee shop is not nearly as fun as hanging out at a bar.” It is that sort of cheeky humor and the well-crafted overall story that makes How I Met Your Mother such an enjoyable show.

Each episode, Ted Mosby (as voiced by Bob Saget) tells his children in the year 2030 another tale in the long story of how he met their mother. It all starts late-2005 when Ted’s (played in modern day by Josh Radnor) best friend Marshall (Jason Segel of Forgetting Sarah Marshall fame) proposes to his longtime girlfriend Lily (Buffy alumni Alyson Hannigan). This causes Ted to realize that he wants to settle down and get married himself, and the insecure twentysomething accidentally tells Robin (Colbie Smulders) he loves her on their first date. Rounding out the main cast is womanizing Barney (brilliantly played by Neal Patrick Harris of Doogie Howser, M.D. and more recently of Harold & Kumar fame), a frequent highlight of the show every week and the source of many favorite lines to come.

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE CAST


TED MOSBY

Ted is the main character of the show, and his future self serves as the narrator for the show. Ted met Marshall, and Lily, in college where he & Marshall were roommates. He is an architect, and over the course of the first three seasons has done well for himself by becoming the youngest person to design a skyscraper and (falsely) earning a reputation in the porn industry after a friend from his school days uses ‘Ted Mosby’ as his stage name. Ted spent a lot of time in seasons 1 & 2 dating Robin and after their break-up several episodes in season 3 dealt with them getting over their break-up and becoming friends again. Season 3 also introduced Dr. Stella Zinman (Sarah Chalke of Scrubs), initially as the doctor doing a tattoo removal on the butterfly tramp stamp Ted got while drunk in the season 3 premiere; but as the season went on they started dating despite issues revolving around Stella’s kid.


MARSHALL ERIKSEN
Marshall proposing to his longtime girlfriend Lily was, in essence, the catalyst for the overall plot of the show. From a very large (in number and size) family in Wisconsin, some of his favorite games are “BaskIceBall” and “MarshGammon” and has long dreamed of becoming a lawyer to help the environment. After winning a ‘slap bet’ with Barney, wherein the loser would receive five slaps to be dealt out over time by the inner; still has two slaps remaining.


LILY ERIKSEN
Lily is Marshall’s wife and longtime girlfriend; after leaving to pursue her dreams of becoming an artist at the end of season 1 they reconciled and got back together to wed by the end of season 2. Lily works as a kindergarten teacher, and she & Marshall recently purchased a place in New York’s ‘Dowisetrepla’ neighborhood, which, like all neighborhoods is an abbreviated name; the full name is ‘Downwind of the Sewage Treatment Plant’.


ROBIN SCHERBATSKY
Robin, in her younger days, was a mall-touring, teeny-bopping popstar in her home country of Canada. She works as a news anchor for one of the barely-watched local TV stations and had a long romance with Ted, ending at the end of season 2. During season 3, after being dumped for a second time by the same loser rocker she was sweethearts with back in Canada, she and Barney hooked up in a legen. . . wait for it. . . dary encounter with Barney! Ted was surprisingly alright with it on Robin’s end, but had a falling out with Barney for part of season 3 over their one night stand.



BARNEY STINSON
Barney is a womanizer who is more concerned with the upkeep of his suits than the feelings of all the girls he has gone home with or taken home over the years. He frequently refers to his rules of life & love, documented in various episodes with things like the Hot/Crazy Scale (featuring things like the “Vickie Mendoza Diagonal” and the “Shellie Gillespie Zone”; the Date-Time Continuum; and, the most important of all, The Bro Code. Barney broke The Bro Code by sleeping with Ted’s ex Robin, but after a car accident in the season finale he realized that there might be something more to his feelings about Robin.

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With season four just under a week away, this week we’re going to take a look at the season finale, an episode titled “Miracles.” In this episode, Ted starts out by talking to his kids about how his life could have been different if he would have taken any number of cabs on the streets of New York City other than the one he got into that morning. Generally speaking, HIMYM is one of those shows that you can catch an episode of every now and then and laugh along to the cleverly written jokes and naturally-acted interactions between a group of young friends.

However, if you follow the show you will catch so much more that casual viewers will miss. Like “The Slap Bet,” a recurring joke in the show that started in season two (S02E09 “Slap Bet”) when Barney and Marshall make a bet, the stakes being that the winner has five slaps to give the loser at any time during their friendship; or knowing that Robin was a bubblegum popstar in her homeland of Canada with hits like “Let’s Go to the Mall” and “Sandcastles in the Sand.” As I watched “Miracles” for the first time in a couple of months I realized that season four is going to take a little bit for new viewers of the show to get into because every story arch headed into this season has roots in all of the previous seasons.

As Ted was telling his children, his life could have been different if he had picked any other cab but before we truly understand that the story freeze frames and we’re taken to a scene earlier that day with Ted arriving back at his apartment with Marshall & Lily asking if they have any beer. After Lily questions why he want a beer at 10:30 in the morning Ted explains that he had broken up with his girlfriend Stella (played by Sarah Chalke of Scrubs, a recurring character who will play a bigger role this season and hopefully settle into a regular role after this series finale of Scrubs this season).

Back to the story, the scene resumes and Ted’s cab is hit by a distracted driver. While playing Guitar Hero in his boxers, Marshall gets a call from the hospital and the show’s main character (except for Barney, no longer bros with Ted after breaking ‘The Bro Code’ earlier in the season) all meet in Ted’s room. Marshall starts going on about miracles while Robin argues that they don’t exist and Stella eventually shows up, unaware that Ted thinks the disagreement they had that morning was a break-up.

After taking care of him for a moment, Stella heads out and Lily slips up by mentioning that Ted thought they had broken up. After confronting Ted about the issue, Stella breaks it off and leaves; she has a young daughter and is worried that Ted’s insecurities will not only hurt their relationship but the childhood of her fatherless daughter.

After receiving a phone call from Lily about Ted, Barney rushes out of a business meeting a proceeds to run all the way to the hospital and, just as is about to walk across the street, is hit by a truck. Earlier in the episode, when talking about how the accident made him realize he loves Stella, talks about how when the car was coming towards them and his life was supposed to be flashing before his eyes, he could only see the people he loves, highlighted of course by Stella.

As you’ll quickly learn with this show, Barney has a lot of rules about women, dating, and sex. One of the most sacred documents in his apocrypha of bro-dom is “The Bro Code,” which the producers are working on releasing in book form sometime this season. In season three episode “Sandcastles in the Sand” Barney breaks the Bro Code, article number one, “Bros Before Hoes” by sleeping with Ted’s ex-girlfriend Robin.

After receiving a cell phone call in the hospital that he is Barney’s emergency contact, the group moves to another room where Barney is laid up in a near-full body cast cracking jokes and trying to avoid Ted. Of course, after their horrible ordeals of the day, Ted and Barney sobbingly forgive one another. “Are we friends again?” Barney asks, to which Ted replies, “We’re better than that. . we’re bros!”

After being cleared, Ted runs out the door to find Stella while Marshall asks Barney if he saw the things he loved, mentioning that he was sure Barney’s mind must have been filled with boobs, money, suits, and scotch as Barney looks longingly at Robin. “Yeah,” he answers, “that’s pretty much all the thing I love.”

The last scene of the episode is set beautifully by the music of The Replacement’s haunting ballad “Here Comes a Regular” with Ted finally finding Stella at an arcade with her daughter. Asking if they can talk, the separated couple has a seat in one of the booths of a racing game and Ted gives Stella an orange kangaroo. He tells her he wasted a lot of tokens trying to get the big, fake diamond ring out of the crane machines. “Diamond? What for?” Stella asks as the camera shows a great shot of the two looking into one another’s’ eyes. “Will you marry me?” he asks just before the scene cuts out.

That cliffhanger ending leaves season four to open with a bang, Stella’s answer on the mind of HIMYM fans all summer. For the first time in the shows run, it seems we are close to answering the big question of the show: who is the mother? This season looks promising in terms of payoff for longtime fans of the series, but with ratings steady but a little too low for network CBS one has to wonder if giving longtime fans in what could be the last season is a good idea, or if the show should be trying to pull in more viewers and gain some ground with the execs. Either way, I am looking forward to another season of one of the funniest shows on television.

LINE OF THE NIGHT: “Oh, man, I love Springsteen! He’s like the American Bryan Adams.” – Robin, after being told about a time while she & Ted were dating that Barney stopped him from taking her to a Bruce Springsteen concert

The 411: With three seasons behind them, How I Met Your Mother returns for a fourth season on Monday, September 22nd. The season finale left a big cliffhanger after the writer's strike killed some of the momentum the show had been building made the second half of the season come out a bit rushed. For the first time the viewers have a real shot of finding out if Stella is indeed the mother, if Barney will turn his back on his old ways, and how Marshall & Lily do in their lopsided apartment among other things. The finale felt rushed, and even though it did a lot to set-up season four it did pretty much NOTHING else.

Final Score:  8.0   [ Very Good ]