How I Met Your Mother Review- "Nannies"/"Who Wants to Be a Godparent?"

Meh, don't even feel like doing brief recaps anymore.

"Nannies" was okay at best, but the show is still struggling here. Ted and Robin's argument over who's in the better relationship had its moments, scattered around at least, but got pretty tedious. Especially with the flat "Nick is a girl jokes". It doesn't help that so far, he seems to have at least 3 different personalities that don't really correlate. And Victoria's sloppiness feels unnatural and out of left field, especially since as someone who works in food, she should know better than to keep everything such a mess.

The nanny A-story gets just as tedious, but not so much from Lily and Marshall- although Lily's possessive turn gets a little choppy, it's still somewhat believable for her. I also think that Mickey's revelation of how close he used to be with Lily when she was a child was a nice little way to wrap around things for the episode. It's easier to tolerate his pathetic nature when his good guy shades are shown to be sincere.

My problem with the story comes from Barney. A relapse is understandable, even when he brings some of his worst material back with him, but by now, it should be out of character for him to sabotage his friend's quest so badly. He can do so much better than this, and it's irritating to see this side of Barney back. I like at least seeing him try to make up for it by paying Miss Buckminster, but that's not really enough. Granted, their surprise ending gag is kooky enough to somehow work.

But speaking of out of character, holy shit, Robin. I'll never understand how she lost Kevin to her lack of interest in children, yet fights so hard to become Marvin's godparent. It will make even less sense in a few episodes when the show addresses that Robin has been weirdly distant to him, which is fair, because she has been.

This is a case where I can understand why she was involved in her circumstances, so she can be a part of the game show action with Ted and Barney, but it would have been better if the episode wasn't made. For the sake of her character, and the sake of the series.

A few jokes do work in the episode, even during the unfortunate montage. Sadly, that makes up the majority of the second, and even some of the third arc, and it's a dud. Writer Matt Kuhn adds little insight to the show's game show interior to give it a fresh perspective, instead forcing Marshall and Lily to rely on forced dialogue to get their point across to their contestants. And the structure used in their cutaways- Ted's a square, Robin's emotionally distant, and Barney is completely inappropriate- get old fast. It makes for a predictable, unfunny sequence that takes up too much time of the episode.

This is the weakest episode so far this season, but it isn't completely irredeemable. There's a welcome affirmation of the group's importance to each other at the end that feels nice and kind of important. But it's too little, too late for what's mostly a dud. The show can do better, but it's starting to wear thin at this point.