After a string of hits, week after week, 'How I Met Your Mother' delivered a dud with 'The Mermaid Theory', an episode that featured many of my favourite things about this show but put twists on them that I didn't like or simply didn't execute them very well. It certainly wasn't the worst episode of 'HIMYM' ever, but there were too many things that irked me in some way to really enjoy it.
I'm quite happy for this show to do time jumps, because if done properly it can be an interesting way to tell this big long flashback story. Here though, the jump forward a year or so seemed completely out of the blue, with no real ties to the current story other than the weak 'Mermaid Theory' tie - this wasn't even an episode where Lily was discussing babies. In my head I compare it to the season opener, 'Big Days', which managed to mesh together two stories in separate timelines and hold them together so that they make sense.
The characters breaking the fourth wall by actively waiting for Future Ted to finish also struck me as weird. Several times, Future Ted - the most unreliable of unreliable narrators - has butted in because he's forgotten something (think 'Blah-Blah') but the scene has always paused. For the show to completely break that tradition for no apparent reason seemed strange and unnecessary, and the over-use of Future Ted narration became really off-putting - I got fed up of Ted realising he was telling the story wrong by the end.
And though I usually like Barney's 'rules', there was something just completely icky about the mermaid theory, and I didn't particularly enjoy seeing Marshall get caught up in it - as he's usually the most moral of the group (despite Lily thinking she is). It also means we're now definitely stuck with an ultimately fruitless relationship with Ted and Zoey (unless I heard that ticking in my head?). I have always said I don't mind Ted having relationships that I know will never be 'the mother', as long as they give me a reason to care about the couple while they're together. They're gonna have to do a lot of work with Ted and Zoey though, because while I've warmed to Zoey as a temporary member of the group (though I'd much rather have Steve a.k.a 'The Blitz') I don't really think Josh Radnor and Jennifer Morrison have an awful lot of chemistry.
Finally, I usually love Robin and Marshall stories because they're so few and far between, but having them address why we only see them alone once in a blue moon didn't feel awfully necessary. We know from seasons past that they really enjoy hanging out with each other, and that their love of sports, cold weather, and cold weather sports gives them something in common with each other that they don't really share with the others.
I'm not worried - I've been more critically positive about this season than a lot of people, because I genuinely think it's been great. If it means once every eleven or so episodes we get one that aimed high but didn't stick the landing, well, I think I can live with that.
What did everyone else think?
