How I Met
Your Mother
'Romeward
Bound' Review
An awful
sense of Deja Vu
After the surprisingly good episode, Time Travelers 3 weeks ago, hopes were high that the final few episodes of
season 8 would continue to be outstanding. This most certainly is not the case
for Romeward Bound. The
plots seemed haphazardly put together and consisted of stories which we have
seen time and time again before. So by this point the deja vu has become
extremely monotonous.
The major plot point in last nights
episode is aptly placed into the title. Lily is offered to venture to Rome with
The Captain, continuing her job as an art consultant. But she is caught in a
predicament, questioning whether to go or not seeing as her family seem to be
living a comfortable lifestyle.
It was a satisfactory development but we
have already seen this before when she was at odds about quitting
her job as a teacher in favour of the consultancy job. Her outcome was
once again identical and the eventual resolution was too. Admittedly the final
moments between herself and Marshall were interesting, purely to see how it all
pans out in light of the renewal for Season 9, but it wasn't all that
interesting.
The "humourous" aspects between
Lily and Marshall were also lacklustre. Lily's imagination into the
possibilities of living in Rome were deliberately slapstick and cheesy, but
even so it simply wasn't funny. This dive into stupidity continued with
Marshall's literal descriptions of what he was doing at work. it was pointless
and went on for far too long.
Moving onto Ted, Robin and Barney they
were left with yet another rehashed storyline.
Once more Barney was stuck in his old
bachelor ways, which I honestly thought the door was finally closed on that but
obviously not. We got to witness Barney drooling and pining over the
possibility of seeing a woman's body, much to Robin's eventual displeasure.
Robin was a bit more sympathetic on this occasion, but it was more due to
her own curiosity about this girl with a "ridonkulously" hot body
rather than agreeing with Barney's behaviour.
The only decent aspect of this was the
realisation that, even with their wedding so close, there is still a lot of
work to be done with Robin and Barney's relationship. It also leaves the
question, even if there is a wedding, will the marriage last?
As for Ted, he was left on the sidelines
for the majority of the episode. It was nice to see his obsession with finding
the right girl, even though it was very briefly discussed. There were also a
few humourous moments regarding his behaviour towards this hot girl plus a cool
little reference to Indiana Jones.
Towards the end there was a seriously dark
moment between himself and Barney, one that was delivered by Barney so
callously and was incredibly cold hearted that it instantly made you feel sorry
for Ted. It would have been nice if this discussion was developed further, but
the abruptness of it all definitely made an impact.
As I have mentioned, this episode was
unfortunate in that it succumbed to a tremendous sense of deja vu, worse yet
was that it still wasn't delivered at all well.
This was supposedly a filler episode in
light of renewing for a ninth season. But based on Lily and Marshall's final
resolution it doesn't look to be the case. This plot could be have been a good
way to send them off when the show was originally meant to finish after season
8.
As for the subplot it was mediocre at
best, with the short final scene between Ted and Barney being its small
saviour. Here's hoping that this confrontation and rocky relationship continues
through to the end of the season. It would definitely shake up the formula a
little.
4/10
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