photo: cbs

How I Met Your Mother
The Perfect Cocktail

Original Air Date: May 2, 2011,

Caitlin- Associate Staff Writer
caitlin@thetwocentscorp.com

After five seasons of mostly light-hearted comedy, HIMYM took a turn into darker places this season. It’s worked very well, but occasionally I’ve missed the goofy comedy. Tonight it’s back- and is some of the best humor we’ve seen in a while.

You might not expect such fun from the first minutes of the episode-Marshall leaves GNB, seemingly with the blessing of boss Arthur; only to find out the terrible reference left for him has lost him his environmental agency job.

Steaming, he storms back toward his old workplace, only to run into Zoey, who suggests a way he can get revenge on GNB- work as a lawyer to prevent the destruction of the Arcadia. Ted’s not happy, but Barney is enraged, and it’s game on between him and Marshall- a game including acts too terrible to mention (mostly because we never actually see them).

Lily and Robin use every alcohol in the book to get the two back together, but in the end, beer does the job. Meanwhile, Ted takes Zoey to the Arcadian to try and convince her how terrible it is, but is won over himself when she tells him she used to live there. Ted now being on Marshall’s side ruins the reconciliation between Barney and Marshall. We’ll see where things go from here.

On the outset, all that might not sound all that hilarious. But it’s the execution that counts. Lily and Robin’s discussion and eventual usage of various forms of booze gave us an emotional Barney, a narcissistic Marshall, an angry/dancing/emotional Barney and Marshall, an apparently bisexual Lily, and a Robin that, well…Tip #1 from this episode is that if you drink absinthe, you’ll never need to do drugs. (Tip #2 is never to drink tequila).

And then there were Ted and Zoey, together in the Arcadian. Hints were dropped that we’d see an old “friend” again in this episode, and indeed we did. The cockamouse! Apparently it has taken residence in the hotel and spawned. (I’m just interested in how it did this, being that, as far as we know, there’s only one of it.) Secretly I believe Ted didn’t save the Arcadian for Zoey, but rather to protect an endangered species. I’m expecting the old building to fall eventually, so hopefully they at least move the poor creature first.

Finally, because Lily and Robin apparently weren’t busy enough reigniting bromance; they also borrowed a page from Barney’s book in getting rid of the captors of their booth in MacLaren’s. Hey, if they couldn’t make it work with the boys, at least they had success somewhere. This was mostly a “filler” episode, but first, it was nice to just have a light episode- it reminded me of some of the earlier seasons. Second, I’m sure there’s a lot more drama to come as the season draws to a close.