We're back to the very choppy days of last season this week, with a directionless episode about Goliath National Bank making PSAs about how much it cares. Barney makes one. New incompetent guy Randy makes one. Bob Odenkirk (Bossman Arthur) makes one. But Marshall refuses. He just can't be one of the GNB liars, and he will never ever fire anyone. But Randy really is incompetent, and he keeps shredding valuable contracts. So, eventually, Marshall lets him go. After a dream in which Randy shoves himself down the shredder, Marshall begs Arthur to let him rehire him, so Arthur does. The catch is that Randy was super-excited to be fired with severance because he wanted to use that money to start brewing his own beer. The unfortunate thing is that he names it Wharmpess (say it aloud), which is his last name. He tries hard to get fired again, but Marshall won't do it until he tastes a bottle of delicious Wharmpess.
Speaking of warm piss, Robin has a secret, and Lily wants the poop. She assumes Robin's slept with someone they know, and eventually decides it was Randy. Ultimately, though, Robin admits there was no mystery sex. She actually made a commercial to compete with her annoying co-anchor Becky's own commercial. Robin's was about adult diapers, and she was the one peeing herself. She hopes they'll choose not to run it and the gang won't see it, but Saget!Ted tells us from the future that the commercial will run for seven years. Also: Ted's stuck dealing with Zoey again, after she joins his class to turn everyone against him and his new GNB building (am I the only one who thought he quit teaching to take the GNB job?).
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Ted's teaching (apparently he didn't quit that job to take the one at GNB; who knew?) in a hot dog suit for Halloween, and his students love him. They call him "Professor Bro-sby" and tell him this class is a treat. Cut to Ted (still hot-dog-suited up) at a Halloween party with the gang. Lily is a bullfighter, Marshall's a bull and Barney's bad guy Johnny from the original Karate Kid. Lily mocks Ted for having students in his class who are such kiss-asses. Barney loves this GNB party, which is just the show's way of wasting him to tell us what kind of party this is. Then a guy named Randy, who's dressed as a lobster, comes in, calls Marshall "boss," says he brews his own beer and asks about Robin. Since she might come by later, Randy, who has a giant crush, is going to go ahead and stay. But we won't, and instead cut to Ted, Marshall and Barney watching the morning's Halloween walk of shame. There are jokes about people's costumes: "She was a busy bee." "That French maid didn't turn down someone's bed." "Pocahontas has a couple of wounded knees." (Even Barney and Ted seem offended by that last one, courtesy of Marshall.) Then they see Robin walk up in a nurse's uniform. She "Ah, crap"s at their delight.
At MacLaren's later, everyone's grilling Robin on who she was with, but she won't talk about it. Instead, Saget!Ted tells us how professional Robin is at her job, while her new co-anchor Becky does commercials. Cut back in time to work, where Robin asks Becky if she doesn't want to be a professional journalist. Becky: "No. I'm cute." Back in MacLaren-land, Ted tells Robin she can't worry so much about being liked, but then again, everyone in his class loves him. But he's also designing the new GNB headquarters, and Zoey and her protester friends are still outside taunting him every day. Zoey yells at him, and he reacts without emotion: "Boo-freakin'-hoo." Then he tells her she knows nothing about architecture, and that he's the one who's a professor and stuff.
Saget!Ted helps us awkwardly transition by telling us GNB wasn't popular, which is why they produced a feel-good commercial every year. This one has Barney caring about recycling, Randy caring about old people, Arthur and his puggle Tugboat caring about high-yield off-shore investments. But Marshall doesn't care about anything, at least not in a commercial, because it makes him feel like a hooker. Randy comes in to lend Barney support, since he was in the commercial. Marshall wonders about some contracts Randy was supposed to send to the downtown office, but Randy thought "send them downtown" was an expression for shredding a document. Marshall yells, so Randy says he can fix this and runs off. Barney likes that there's no quit in Randy, then says Marshall should fire him. Marshall says that's why he won't be in the video; GNB doesn't care and treats people like they're disposable. Last week, he was with Arthur when he fired someone for wearing a green tie on the same day as him. "Marshall Eriksen," Marshall Eriksen says, "doesn't fire people. Period." Just then, Randy comes in and shows Marshall how very shredded the contract is, then answers Marshall's phone and knocks everything off his desk onto Marshall's lap in the process. Randy runs out and things continue to fall around Marshall. Jason Segel stifles laughter and repeats to Barney: "Period!"
MacLaren's. Lily's still grilling Robin on who she slept with, but Robin's not saying. Lily can only assume, then, that it's someone they know; otherwise Robin would just give his name. Robin says fine, it's Bill Pepper. But Lily quickly figures out that name just came from Robin seeing a bill and pepper on the table. Lily squeals with joy: "It's someone we know!"
Jarring cut to Ted teaching again, asking the class if they had any questions about their reading. Zoey pipes up from the classroom: "Yes. How do you sleep at night?" He asks why she's here, and she says it was recently made clear to her that she knows nothing about architecture. Ted tries to be okay with it, but when she keeps interrupting and tells everyone about the Arcadian, he loses his class. Lily tells him he's new to teaching, but she has a strategy for dealing with troublesome students like Johnny Marley, who runs and runs and runs around the class with his stuffed horse. Lily asks if Robin and Ted know about the Taurus outside with the annoying alarm; they respond by singing the alarm in unison. Lily says that when a kid like Johnny acts up, she flashes the lights and makes the alarm sound. Ted says his students are adults and he treats them that way: He'll just give them candy and a mix CD.
Marshall joins them then with his head hanging. Lily asks what's wrong, and he says something bad happened. Cut back to work, where Randy delivers a badly taped, formerly shredded contract. But it turns out it's not the contract Marshall wanted, so Randy puts it back into the shredder. But, uh-oh, Marshall needed this one, too! Randy thinks twice shredded is fairly permanent. Cut back to MacLaren's, where Barney's opening champagne in honor of Marshall popping his firing cherry. Barney says what a huge embarrassment Randy was, which leads Lily to realize Robin slept with Randy. Cut to Robin showing up vulnerable and drunk to the GNB party after the rest of the gang (but not Randy) had left. Her eyes meet with Randy's. Lily reminds us all that this is not the first time Will Forte's been on this show, and that he gets a nosebleed when he gets an erection. He gets another one in the lobster suit at the holiday party, while looking at Robin. Robin tries to deny it, then admits that's what happened. Barney thinks this should comfort Marshall, since at least Randy got sex with Robin before being fired.
That night, Marshall has a dream that Randy comes into his office and throws himself into Marshall's shredder. The morning, Marshall tells Arthur he made a mistake firing Randy. Arthur agrees: "You should have fired him a year ago." Marshall appeals to Arthur's love for Tugboat, who's probably also made a lot of mistakes and hasn't been fired. Arthur agrees; he got Tugboat fixed to calm down. Marshall: "Exactly! Kind of." He says Randy doesn't need to be fired, just fixed. If it will help the bloody-nose thing. Arthur's won over by the Tugboat photo and says Marshall's shown he has a couple things Tugboat doesn't by coming in here, so he can rehire Randy.
Ted's class has basically turned into another protest, as everyone's pissed he's tearing down a piece of the city's history. They're not even won over by his mix CD, "Prof Rock." Plus, Zoey's been playing hacky-sack with the class and filling them in on even dirtier details. Ted, desperate, does the light-flashing alarm thing and tells Lily at MacLaren's later that it totally worked; he and the class are all friends again, even though none of them had heard of the Pixies before his CD. Randy walks up to the table all smiley and says hi to Ted, Lily and Barney. Barney worries that's the smile of someone who killed Marshall. Lily thinks it's the smile of someone who slept with Robin on Halloween. Randy's nose starts bleeding as he says that's not true. He thought about hugging her in the shower, then went to bed. The reason he's smiling is actually because he realized he gets a severance check, which he can use to start his own brewery. If he doesn't shred it. He, Randy Wharmpess, wants to start his own brewery. He says that, if all goes as planned, this time year they'll all be enjoying a "frothy mug of Wharmpess." (Say it out loud.) Marshall runs in then and tells Randy he's not fired. Randy falls down crying.
The morning, Ted shows up to an empty classroom. And do you know why? They're all protesting with Zoey outside GNB.
Marshall's office. He and Randy fight, because Randy doesn't want his job, but he can't quit without severance. Marshall says that's called fraud, but Randy says he's just asking him to give him a lot of money not to work there and not to tell anyone about it. Marshall says he can't fire Randy, now that he's talked to Arthur about it. Randy assures him Arthur won't remember it, which cues Arthur to walk in and tell Marshall how memorable their talk was. He tells Randy that, on behalf of all GNB employees both in and out of prison, they're sorry. He notices Randy's green tie matches his own, gets visibly annoyed, but then compliments it and leaves with a tiny threat. Marshall tells Randy he'll not let GNB change him: He'll never fire anyone ever. Randy says they'll see about that. Barney tries to film some more caring videos, so Randy tears everything apart in Marshall's office. Barney just keeps filming, and Marshall pretends he's not annoyed. And Jason Segel again has to fight back laughter when Randy throws a glass of orange juice in his face. He does it admirably, though, pausing long enough to keep from breaking, then saying, "That's just the pick-me-up I needed."
Lily's at school when she gets a call from Ted, seeking advice. She tells Ted that the only people that like their teachers -- Ted: "I liked my teachers" -- are dorks. We pan out to see a student polishing Lily's shoes. She looks at him sweetly and says, "Except for you, Miles." She tells Ted to embrace the hatred, which has fear behind it. Fear that he can use, like she did with Johnny Marley. She finishes the story by cutting to kids sleeping during naptime. Johnny wakes up to find his stuffed horse's head on his nap mat. Ted tells her she's a psychopath, and she channels Marlon Brando as she agrees.
MacLaren's. Ted tells Lily that he threatened his protesting class that if they don't show up the day, they'll get an F. He says he technically can't give them an F for not showing up, but it does have a scary ring to it. Robin joins them, and Lily asks who Robin slept with. She says Randy, but Lily wants to know "Where's the poop, Robin? Robin admits she didn't sleep with anyone; she actually filmed a commercial, just like Becky. Ted asks why she didn't tell them, so we get to see her commercial. She's a nurse, helping an old lady into a chair as an announcer says that bladder trouble is embarrassing, uncomfortable and can affect anyone; in fact, Nurse Robin says she's going to the bathroom right now. She totally "ahhhhhh"s as she pees herself in the commercial. It's quite disturbing. Back at MacLaren's, Ted cannot wait to see it, but Robin hopes it won't make it to air. Saget!Ted: "It ran for seven years."
In Marshall's trashed office, Randy tells Marshall he wins, and that trashing the office was probably a mistake. It's just that making beer has been his dream for as long as he can remember. He offers Marshall a Wharmpess, which really does look like pee, and I thought that's where they were going with this, which would force Marshall to fire him. But, instead, Marshall loves the beer and fires Randy so that he can go make more of it. Saget!Ted says his class had the highest attendance ever the day, and Randy started a brewery. "Now you can have a Wharmpess at every bar in America." Which is sort of true. Marshall finally films his segment for the commercial: "I care about making dreams come true."
I think there are a number of reasons this episode doesn't really work: 1. Not enough Barney. 2. Nothing really matters. I mean, do we care if Randy gets fired or Ted's class hates him (especially since I didn't even realize he was still teaching)? 3. It just wasn't that funny. I want to think Will Forte is hilarious, and he definitely is as Jenna's boyfriend, Paul. But this character doesn't do much for me. And neither does Zoey. 4. This show's at its funniest when the focus is more on the gang interacting with each other, rather than adding these outlying characters like Zoey, Arthur and Paul, who can work when they're the only one in the episode, but not when they get more airtime than Barney.
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DeAnn, a writer and editor in Portland, Oregon, would like a bottle of Wharmpess. You can contact her at twopmodmars@gmail.com.