How I Met Your Mother Recap: Crazy Love

Publish date: 2021-04-03

How I Met Your Mother

Bad Crazy Season 8 Episode 16 Editor’s Rating 2 stars «Previous Next» « Previous Episode Next Episode »

How I Met Your Mother

Bad Crazy Season 8 Episode 16 Editor’s Rating 2 stars «Previous Next» « Previous Episode Next Episode »

How I Met Your Mother has had some fun with the stereotype of the crazy girl in the past — most memorably in season two’s “Swarley” (starring Crazy Eyes, a.k.a. Mrs. Nick Brody) and season three’s “How I Met Everyone Else,” which featured Blah Blah, a woman whose real name Future Ted forgot (yet he recalls so many irrelevant details from the rest of his life!). Strangely, the writers kind of apologized for what might be construed as sexism in this department when they excused Jeanette’s lunacy by putting forth the theory that a woman is only as nuts as the dude she’s dating (wisdom courtesy of Mike Tyson). That’s nice and all, but in this case, we beg to differ. Jeanette (Abby Elliott) is out of her mind, and the fact that Ted continues to hook up with her regardless suggests to us that he’s terrified of the alternative and not that he is trying to deliberately mislead her. She’s a strange character to waste some good intentions on.

Also, her craziness was not terribly creative. She has rage issues, which Ted has encountered before, according to the story he tells in “Swarley” of a woman who once took a bat to the windshield of a car with slight provocation. She holds séances and believes in cat exorcisms. It’s all sort of boilerplate, and certainly certifiable, but she’s a cawp, so what can Ted do? This plot was not entirely objectionable, but it seemed sort of contrived. We learn that Marshall and Barney use Ted’s apartment as their clubhouse to do bro-ish things like play video games (because women hate video games?), so it sort of makes sense that they’re over at his house, but it’s less clear why Ted suddenly and mysteriously steps out while warning them not to let Jeanette in. Didn’t that seem about as convenient as the lack of dependable wireless service in horror movies? Naturally she comes over and proceeds to lock herself in Ted’s bedroom, which she can do because during Hurricane Sandy, Ted stocked up on water and nonperishables and had a disposable waste system installed in there (convenience number two, no pun intended).

The B plot was just as unnecessarily complicated, but more satisfying. That Robin has never held Marvin was believable — and her breathless “this is exhilarating” when she finally does was perfect — but the prolonged story of the one day when she was in charge of Marvin while Lily chased down the bus with his binky bored us. It unfolds over a number of years, in which Lily and Robin seem to evolve simultaneously into Connecticut housewives, but at least the payoff was clever. We were a little skeptical when Robin ended up at a strip club with that kindly old lady, but it made way more sense when that old lady turned out to be (future mayor senator) Mike Tyson. Still, the laborious storytelling called attention to itself, and the entire episode was kind of a yawn.

What we liked:

What we didn’t like:

We wonder if the next stretch of episodes will suffer a little because they were presumably written before the series’ fate had been decided and might just end up treading water.

How I Met Your Mother Recap: Crazy Love

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