In the Spring of 2009, Ted is happily working on his plans for GNB's new headquarters, but Bilson hates Ted's ideas. When GNB assigns a new HQ taskforce to oversee Ted, they love his work. Ted skips merrily along through his days at GNB until he meets a girl in the elevator, and in the course of bragging to her about his position as lead architect, he learns his project was scrapped a month prior.
Bilson canned it because of the economy, and gave Barney and Marshall the dirty job of telling Ted. Since GNB was paying Ted's firm for two more months, they put off telling him and invented the taskforce to keep up their ruse. After hearing the whole story at MacLaren's Ted storms out, furious that his friends wasted a month of his life when he could have been drumming up new business for his architecture firm.
Feeling badly, Barney and Marshall talk Bilson into letting Ted pitch a design for GNB's new ETR (Employee Transition Room/the layoff room) on the 20th floor. And in black and white security cam flashbacks, we see Barney attacked when he lays people off; one even whacks him with a chair. After hearing Ted's plans for the ETR on the 20th floor, Bilson invites him to look at the existing ETR on the 18th floor, too. Once there, Bilson fires Ted. So Ted whacks him with a chair. That night at MacLaren's Ted tells the gang that during his time working for the fake taskforce, he did the best work of his life, so he quit his architecture firm, because dealing with Bilson taught him can't work for big heartless, corporate clients anymore. Of course, he was actually fired, but he got a good severance package so he has decided to start his own firm.
In the B Plot, the gang tries to figure out which Canadian celebrity once invited Robin to his place to see his collectibles and propositioned her with an act so filthy she won't tell them about it. She finally relents, but will only give them the deets if they manage to guess all three elements: the celebrity, what sort of collectibles he collects, and the sex act. Barney steers the group to CanadianSexActs.org, to help them guess part three, and his laptop does a decent job of covering Alyson Hannigan's baby bump which can no longer be contained by the table top, alone.
While we've got to get busy adding some Canadian Sex Acts to this list, find out what cool words we've added to our vocabulary thanks to this show.
Remember last week, when my "weecap" was anything but wee? Remember how I geeked out about this little half-hour show to the tune of 17 TWoP pages (probably over 6,500 words)? That's in the neighborhood of my page average for an hour of the craziest show I'll ever love -- Lost, and yet, HIMYM's "The Front Porch" demanded the same attention. Yeah, well, that's not going to happen this week. Not even close. Where last week was chock-full of romance and characterization that pushed the boundaries but felt right, this week is just... a sitcom. And that's okay. I mean, HIMYM is a 30-minute situational comedy, but usually it makes me forget about that. This week, it drove it home, over and over again. So...
Saget!Ted narrates that in the Spring of 2009, Ted was happily working on his plans for GNB's new headquarters, and he loved the assignment. There was only problem -- (GNB's) Bilson. When Ted presents his plan for the atrium -- wood beams bathed in natural light -- Bilson shuts it down. "Uh, no. Natural light reminds the workers that there's an outside world where they have family and friends. We want to crush that. You show up in the dark. You go home in the dark. You spend your whole damn day in the dark!" Oh my word, I've worked for GNB. It was masquerading as a hospital's finance department, but that's a story for another day. Back to this story... Marshall whispers to Barney that he needs to hear Lily's voice and makes to go, but Bilson crushes his escape, too. Saget!Ted tells us that, eventually, GNB took Bilson off the project and appointed a new taskforce to oversee current-day Ted's work. When Ted's all, la la la rooftop Zen garden, reflecting pool, neighborhood children, la la la, the taskforce gives him a standing ovation. They're the anti-Bilson. The more new-agey, holistic, touchy-feely elements Ted incorporates into his design -- for a bank, mind you -- the happier the taskforce is. Ted skips merrily along until...
There's this girl... She rides the elevator with him. She's pretty, blonde, busty, and Ted's all atwitter, so he fakes a cell phone call -- with the Mayor, of all people -- and blathers on about his big plans for GNB and how at age 30, he's such a young architect to be leading such a big project, and yes, he's single and gives to charity. Oh, Ted. When he ends the fake phone call, he fesses up to his elevator-mate that it was fake. "I also know that the new GNB headquarters project was scrapped last month. Nice try." Blondie exits the elevator, leaving Ted standing there with his jaw hanging down to the floor. And...
Marshall, Lily, Robin and Barney are at MacLaren's. Barney's got his laptop on the booth table, and, throughout the episode, it is conveniently placed to hide Alyson Hannigan's baby bump, as often as not. He is waxing hornyonic about Scarlett Johansson at the Oscars. She's his celebrity pick as most nailable. "Hot, talented, and nobody does that many Woody Allen movies without serious daddy issues." Ask Soon-Yi, and she's only in the home vids. Marshall says, "If I could nail any celebrity, it would be Lily. She's the star of my heart." Lily, Awwwwws him, along with the rest of us, but she then adds, "For me, it's Hugh Jackman." Not Alexis Denisof? Huh. Robin warns her friends off celebs, saying they're into the kink. Barney wonders how she'd know that, so Robin confesses that a few years back, she went home with a celebrity one night, but he wanted to do really freaky things with her, so she left. Lily gets so agitated demanding the details that Marshall warns her not to swallow too much air, and I forget for a moment that Lily isn't pregnant. Barney tries to play it off like Robin's talking about him, but she shuts him down. Lily can't contain her rising curiosity, and ends up with the hiccups.
Finally Robin says that although she won't tell them anything specific, she will admit that the celebrity is a Canadian-born star they'll all know, and he got her to come to his place by offering to show her his unique collection. Lily says, "So, a mystery celebrity who collects a mystery item asked you to do a mystery Canadian sex act... Tell us." Robin says she will, but only if they manage to guess the star, what items he collects and the freaky sex act. When Lily frets that she doesn't even know any Canadian sex acts, Barney, who must being doing a little Robin-related research, says, "Well, you got your Sloppy Dog Sled, your Newfoundland Lobster Trap, your Full Mountie..." Lily's enthralled by Barney's Canadian sex knowledge, but Barney admits he's getting it from the web. "Canadiansexacts.org; it's bookmarked on the top right." Heh. He's romantic, just differently so. And of course, the show has set up a website. It was cute -- earlier this week, the network sent out top seeeeekrit heads-ups to various media outlets, informing us of the website, but I'd already known about it for days, courtesy of cagewench in the forums. Anyhow, check it out. They use Alan Thicke on all the "error message" pages you hit, when you're clicking on the sex act definitions. As Barney says, "It's not for profit. They really wanna just get the information out there."
Ted walks in -- to, er... kill all the fun. He tells the gang about the woman in the GNB elevator, and how she said the new HQ project was canceled a month ago. Barney and Marshall do the I-think-we-should-tell-him, but I-don't-want to-tell-him act for a moment. After some bad attempts at lying, Marshall finally tells the truth. In a flashback, we learn that a few weeks ago, Bilson called him and Barney in to tell them that the new HQ building plans have been scrapped, as has anything that's been deemed non-essential, because the recession is killing them. "And I have a lot of tough choices to make at the bi-quarterly retreat in Saint Croix." O HAI BANKING INDUSTRY! Marshall knows Ted will be "devastated." Bilson says, "Not when it comes from his best friend," and in unison, Marshall and Barney both say, "I have to tell him?" And we cut to...
MacLaren's: Barney and Marshall are at the bar, having their standing argument about which one is Ted's best friend, but the twist is, this time each of them proclaims the other to be "best friend." Neither guy wants to tell Ted that his major project has been canceled. When Ted enters the bar, complaining about how Bilson's always shutting him down, the guys try to convince Ted to quit the gig, but Ted scoffs at this, because his firm just laid off another architect. Bilson may be a pain, but Ted doesn't want to be out of a job. Barney tries to deliver the bad news, but Marshall turns it into a compliment on his recent work. Ted soon decides to go back to the apartment and continue his design. As he leaves, he says, "I've got to find a way to introduce some wood into Bilson's dark atrium." This gives Marshall and Barney pause, so Ted turns back to them and says, "I think you know what I mean." Heh. Anyhow, after he's gone, Marshall suggests that that since GNB will be paying Ted's firm a while longer, they should string Ted along for a little while. Okay, Marshall puts it more nicely than that, but that's what the logic boils down to. Barney shows Marshall that he's not up to the task of orchestrating a long, complicated lie alone, so he ends up taking the lead on this new "project" and they're off and running. We flash forward to...
MacLaren's: Ted laments the fact that he just got screwed by his best friends and didn't even know it. Since she's still surfing the Canadiansexacts.org website, Lily says, "In Canada, that's called a 'Sneaky Snow Plow.'" Barney's P.C. is now serving to cover those parts of Ms. Hannigan's pregnant belly that the booth can't hide. Lily feels badly enough for Ted, but wants to get back to the Canadian sex acts. She then makes her first guess as to Robin's secret: "Bryan Adams; he collects baseball cards; and he wanted to do a Greasy Kayak." Then she hiccups, poor thing. Barney puts out Wayne Gretsky, vintage Hot Wheels and a Squatting Eskimo as his guess. That's not it, either. Marshall says, "Kiefer Sutherland, souvenir shot glasses and a Sticky Flapjack?" Robin says, "No, that I would have done." Hmmm. Is Kiefer sober? Is he whispering? What? Inquiring minds want to know.
Ted returns to the booth and wants to know why, if the project was canceled a month ago, he's had weekly meetings with the new "Headquarters Taskforce." Marshall and Barney tell him they invented the taskforce. They gave $50 apiece to Roy the janitor, Louisa the lunch lady (a Latina who speaks no English), Crazy Arty the One-Man-Band street musician, and some interns. All they had to do for their money was dress the part and act interested in Ted's plans. Ted is understandably upset. He'd been doing some of his most inspired work since the fake taskforce came on board. Lily, who is not above screwing around with Ted's life, is already over this plot, so I'm not sure why we should remain interested. She offers Robin another guess: "Alex Trebek, a Musty Goaltender and Beanie Babies." That's not it. Ted, meanwhile, is trying to figure out which moments in the past month of his professional life were real, and which were parts of the elaborate scam. He recounts coming on to Louisa after one of the taskforce meetings. The flashback is funny, mostly because Ted is so pretentious and Louisa protests in Spanish that she's going to marry "Senor Barney." They share a passionate kiss, and then Ted leaves her cold, berating himself -- and perhaps her -- with a, "For God's sake, you're on the taskforce!" Duke. Back from the flashback, he asks Barney and Marshall if there's anything else they need to confess. And apparently, there is. They so wanted Ted to have a few good memories that they faked up a GNB softball team, made Ted the third baseman, rented out a field, gathered up a bunch of guys to play, and stipulated that they needed to make Ted the "hero." Ted says, "So my game-winning walk was a lie?" Marshall's only excuse is, "We're sorry, Ted, but we knew that you'd be out of work soon, and we just -- we just wanted to make you feel good. You know, that's what friends do." Ted says, "Lie to each other?" And really. Between finding out about Lily's manipulations last week, and what he's learning this week, I'm have heretical thoughts that Ted would be way better off without these people. I'm pretty sure that's not what the writers want me to think, but they're making these characters awfully toxic. As much as I "enjoy" the other characters more than Ted, I think Ted might be the only one I'd want to be friends with on anything other than a casual basis.
When Ted says he'd never lie to them, Barney reminds him of the night they watched as Marshall did an open mic night at a comedy club. Marshall's routine consists of a list of (not-so-funny) fish names. That's about it. At the end, Ted tells him he was really great. Sorry, that's not comparable. Ted feels the same. He wasted a month of his life working on a project that was never going to be, when he could have been drumming up business for his firm. He's probably going to get fired. "Best case scenario, my boss is going to ream me out in front of everybody." Robin says, "Back home, we call that a..." Lily looks up from Barney's computer and cuts her off. "A 'Saskatoon Totem Pole.'" A beat. "It's on here." And then it's time for a commercial, which is a good thing, because I don't like any of these people, this week -- except for Ted. And I'm losing a lot of respect for him, because he clearly doesn't respect himself that much, so why should I?
The morning, Marshall and Barney come to Ted's before work. They've talked Bilson into letting Ted pitch a design for GNB's new ETR (Employee Transition Room/the layoff room) on the 20th floor. He wants one exactly like the bland, plain, cold one on the 18th floor. In black and white security-cam flashbacks, we see Barney using that ETR to lay off people, all of whom attack him -- probably because his lay-off delivery technique amounts to waving them away with his hand. Predictably, during this segment, we see Barney and a woman crawl out from under a table, clothing askew. Clearly, they've just had sex, and even more predictably, he still lays her off with a mere hand wave, right after. One person even whacks Barney with a chair -- but it's not even that woman, so it really didn't work for me. Anyhow, we cut to Ted's pitch to Bilson. It's full of elements like a "dismissal space" a "rebirth tranquility hallway" and a "new beginnings fountain." Barney and Marshall cringe throughout, because they know Bilson wants a room just like the existing one on the 18th floor, but Bilson surprises them, says he loves it, and invites Ted to look at the existing ETR on the 18th floor, too. Once there, Bilson fires Ted. So Ted whacks him with a chair. Yeah, yeah, funny, ha ha. Laugh, people. The funny music is telling you it's time.
MacLaren's: Lily's making more guesses as to Robin's aborted celebrity liaison. "Anyone from the band Rush, a Montreal Meat Pie, and superhero lunch boxes?" That's not it. Neither is: "Rick Moranis, the Reverse Rick Moranis, antique Judaica." Lily says she gives up. She's been guessing for three days. But then she launches into her hiccup-laden demands for Robin to tell them. Robin finally acquiesces, but she swears them to secrecy, because they're such a trustworthy group of friends, don't you think? She writes down the answers on a napkin. Um, I totally wouldn't leave evidence like that. Lily reads it aloud, "The Frozen Snowshoe, Old King Clancy, Harvey's trays." Nobody even knows what any of those words mean, nor which one is the celebrity name, which is the sex act, and which is the collectible. Marshall says, "Who the Hell is Old King Clancy?!" Robin clarifies that that's not the person; it's the sex act (which is apparently the same as a Sacramento Turtleneck "except with maple syrup"). Marshall figures this means the celebrity was "Harvey Strays." Robin clarifies that was the collectible, and explains about the Harvey's restaurant chain in Canada. When no one is familiar with Harvey's, Robin is incensed. "Oh, come on! You're road-tripping down the Trans-Canada Highway; you get a hunger on between Milverton and Wawa; where you gonna strap on a feed bag, huh? Harvey's! 'Over 12,000 served'!" Oy. This means the celebrity was The Frozen Snowshoe, who is, according to Robin, the biggest name in Canadian pro wrestling. Lily's half-furious, half-incredulous. "So you're saying The Frozen Snowshoe invited you back to his place -- to look at Harvey's trays, and asked you to do an Old King Clancy?" Robin confirms it, completely missing Lily's ire. Lily sneers. "Well, my hiccups are gone. Possibly forever." Barney looks upwards and yells in frustration. "Canada! You did it again. You even found a way to ruin this. Why? Why do we let you be a country?"
Ted walks in, and thank goodness, because even the Canada jokes can't save this episode for me this week. He tells the gang that Bilson fired him. Lily asks if this means he'll get laid off. Ted says he quit his firm, because he's realized he can't work for heartless corporate clients. Living out Marshall and Barney's big lie reminded him how much he loves his work when he's not answering to the "Bilsons of the world." Barney is not fooled. "They fired you, didn't they?" Ted says they did, but he got a good severance package and has made a big decision -- he's going to start his own firm. Everyone congratulates him, while Barney (bless him) says, "In this economy?" It turns out Ted's not mad at his friends for completely screwing with his life. He's grateful. I'm so annoyed at his lack of stones that it's a struggle for me to type this. Barney asks how it went down between Ted and Bilson, and Ted tells the story in the corporate buzz speak which I didn't transcribe earlier, because I'm so mad at the show. I'll lay it out here, though, because I'm not mad at you, gentle readers. Ted says, "Well, after he proposed a vocational paradigm shift, I made an impromptu presentation using a four-pronged approach that really brought him to his knees." Barney says, "Hit him with a chair?" Ted confirms and Barney says, "That's my boy." Look, Show, it's going to take more than buttering me up with NPH's flawless delivery. That's right. You'd better go to commercial.
End Tag: Robin's in British Columbia, circa 2002, paying rapt attention to The Frozen Snowshoe, as he shows her his Harvey's trays. "And this one, I got on the drive from Milverton to Wawa." Robin's star struck. "That's pretty impressive, The Frozen Snowshoe." He tells her to call him "Shoe," because they're friends, and invites her to sit down with him. Robin says, "So, Shoe..." and my TV TURNS INTO THE BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH! WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON? WHERE'S THE SHOW? OH NO, NOW IT'S BLACK. NOW IT'S BLUE AGAIN! DON'T DO ME LIKE THIS! IS MY TV DEAD? WHAT WILL I DO?
Ahem. Apparently, this problem happened all over Boston, and my TV is just fine, thank goodness, because I really can't stand to miss Lost. I couldn't get the episode to play on the CBS website, but didn't want to leave you all in the lurch, so I found a transcript. Assuming it's correct. [You're good. - Z] Here's how it went down while my TV was blue. Ms. Robin Sherbatsky pulls a bottle of maple syrup out of her purse and says, "How would you like to give me an Old King Clancy?" Shoe looks at her in disbelief, then says, "I think you should go." Robin embarrassedly puts the bottle of maple syrup back in her purse, and we fade to black.
Thank goodness it's over. You know, I should explain a bit about my grading. I assign the grade to an episode right after I've watched it, before I've thought about it, re-watched it, picked it apart, looked for links, etc. I assign the grade even before the recaplet. I do this, because it's a TV show -- and although watching and writing about TV shows is an assignment for entertainment writers, TV shows are not built to be an assignment. They're meant to entertain, inform, or otherwise engage you for a half-hour, or hour, or whatever. So, to me, it's always seemed unfair to think too hard when I'm choosing my grade. That's why I originally gave this episode a "B." But in retrospect, it doesn't deserve it. I must have been in an unusually good mood Monday night, because... just "no." I'm changing my grade to C-, and honestly, I think that's generous. Oh, maybe it's a "B" when compared to episodes of other sitcoms, but when I compare it with other episodes of HIMYM, especially ones like last week's, it just pales. So, there you go. I'll be keeping my fingers crossed that this was just a blip and the show will get its groove back, time. Until then, try not to hit anyone with a chair.
Discuss this episode in our forums, then read all about HMYM's non-sexual, non-Canadian lingo in our updated HIMYM dictionary!
Did you love "Old King Clancy"? If so, please feel free to tell Cindy why. You can reach her at CynthiaMcLennan[at]gmail.com, and tell her what a downer this weecap was.