CBS
Spoilers for last night’s How I Met Your Mother coming up:
So from the moment I learned that “Glitter” would be a Robin Sparkles episode of HIMYM, I had to figure that it was going to be—as the hilarious first and the not-as-hilarious second one were designed to be—a one-joke episode. And it was. But it turned out to be not that joke, and it turned out to be a very funny one, so I’m grateful for that.
OK, the flashbacks to Robin’s acting career as star of Space Teens did, in fact, have its share of ’80s nostalgia and Canadian jokes. (See the final singalong at the Hoser Hut, involving a Mountie, a hockey player, a bear and the Queen.) But the concept that the entire show would turn out to be thoroughly and unintentionally filthy was as hilarious as it was dirty. (Please tell me that I don’t need to feel guilty for laughing at the wildly inappropriate double entendres, because Cobie Smulders and Nicole Scherzinger are adults, and Alan Thicke was involved.)
As for the rest of the storylines and the episode’s overall themes—which were about, um, friendship or something—eh. Each seemed forced and none had much impact. But for wringing laughs out of the third coming of Robin Sparkles, I doff my Mountie hat.
Quick hail of bullets:
* One notably funny non-Sparkles-related joke: “No girl is going home with a guy with a flower on his chest, unless he’s a clown and she’s in the trunk of his car.”
* I hereby declare a moratorium on any sitcom joke involving a character staring at the sky and shouting “NOOOOOOOO!” over something not actually very awful.
* And one other complaint: so Ted is going to be the best man at Punchy’s wedding? Meaning we have to spend time with him at least once more? [Update: Or not—after all, we don’t know that this is the same wedding previewed in the season premiere, so a fake-out is always possible.]
* One thing I have no complaint about: Neil Patrick Harris agilely running through a litany of reality-show sendoff lines. If anything called for a round of studio-audience applause, it was that.
* Finally: eight inches of wood? For shame, Mr. Thicke! Express your filthy double entendres in centimetres!