This isn’t nearly as much fun as it looks like it should be.
I was pretty nervous when How I Met Your Mother once again opened with Marshall and Lily’s baby problems. I talked about this in my recap last week – the show works best when it features the gang functioning as a unit, which this season, with its focus on the Ericksons and their lackluster baby problems, hasn’t been showing off. Even though this week’s episode, “Who Wants to be a Godparent?” finally addressed this problem, the episode itself was pretty unexciting, once again drawing on an extremely overdone parenting plotline: The idea that having a baby takes new parents away from their friends.
Marshall and Lily, having finally found a baby-sitter for baby Marvin, spend their first night out with the gang. But Robin, Ted, and Barney find themselves conflicted – Lily and Marshall have implemented an “eight-or-higher” rule, meaning the three childless pals cannot come to the Ericksons with problems that are not a level eight or higher. For Ted, this means he can’t bring up the fact that Victoria’s father wants Ted to pay for the wedding he helped Victoria leave (a problem I would definitely label an 8.5, at least). For Robin, this means she can’t talk about how unsexy Nick’s moped is. And Barney can’t tell the gang about the chick he banged the night before. (“Not an eight, at best she was a six, six-and-a-half.”)
They don’t have to feel conflicted for very long, as Marshall and Lily soon bail, to the dismay of the rest of the gang. (Barney: “I didn’t even bring my booty call phone!”) The couple is looking for a little alone time, but instead they find that the perils of life await them around every corner. Death is on their minds and the two immediately go home to start planning for their untimely ends. (Sidenote: this is not the first time Marshall and Lily have fixated on death. Season 3’s “We’re Not from Here” focused on the couple’s death letters, written to provide important information in the event that one of them dies before the other.)
Of course, the couple has to pick a guardian for Marvin, which of course led to a controversy, because somehow irresponsible Barney and tough love Robin, who has said she’s not even interested in having children, are viable options. The three compete to win over Marshall and Lily’s affection, Ted and Robin by purchasing larger and larger stuffed teddy bears, Barney by singing crude “bro”-versions of children’s tunes in various costumes (“row, row, row your broat gently to the bar, hit on sluts and do ten shots and—).
Seeing that this is not working, Marshall and Lily decide to host a game show titled “Who Wants to be a Godparent?” because as Marshall puts it, “And then I thought, ‘What do you do if you’ve got a wife who won’t stop crying, three idiots who won’t stop bribing you, and a universally beloved skill for gamesmanship?” Thus, the most disappointing part of the entire episode was introduced.
The scenarios Marshall introduces certainly have potential, but the game show scene drags on for way too long. The parenting styles of the three are pretty obvious based on their characters, so there was really no need for each character to answer every single question. Ted’s infosaurus puppet was funny when its usage was reversed in the “Marvin’s first heartbreak scenario” and it became a tool for a teenaged Marvin to use to console Ted over his latest heartbreak. Barney’s decision to teach Marvin about “the birds and the bees” by heading first class to Amsterdam was classic. And Robin’s over-the-top threat to send Marvin back to boarding school was packed with exactly the amount of childhood regression and daddy issues that we’ve come to expect from her. But the bit lost its cuteness by being far too long.
In the end, it becomes obvious that the gang is upset that Lily and Marshall don’t seem to care about their lives. Marshall and Lily realize the error of their ways, revoke the eight-or-over rule, sign all three of their friends as Marvin’s godparents, and “close down” the bar for the first time in months. Corny? Yes, extremely. But at least it might mean that the How I Met Your Mother writers will finally go back to more interesting plots about the relationships between the five characters and not spend so much time on overdone and uninteresting parenthood plots.
Additional tidbit: This episode produced another website, a promotional site for Barney’s book, Bro-Code for Parents, (which actually seems like it’s a real thing) at brocodeforparents.com
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