Tuesday, 1 November 2011

How I Met Your Mother - S7 E8 - The Slutty Pumpkin Returns

Ted stumbles across an old crush from a Halloween party several years prior. Lily's grandparents bequeath her their house in the suburbs and she and Marshall are faced with a tough decision. Barney receives some disturbing news.


Spoilers after the jump.

MotherWatch 2011
The idea of the Slutty Pumpkin was introduced in the first season way back in 2005, at which point Ted had been dressing as a hanging chad on Halloween for four consecutive years. He is cajoled by Barney into moving on from it and forgetting, but can't help himself when he sees the costume in a shop window. Conveniently, Naomi (Katie Holmes) is easily tracked down to her address and is single.
Ted, desperatw as he is, pursues the relationship even though the two of them have very bad chemistry problems, but as Barney points out in Classic Schmosby form, Ted fails to account for Naomi's feelings and is mercifully dumped by her. I wouldn't call it the most satisfying outcome for a seven season long plot thread, I'm not even sure it's one that really needed to be resolved.

How Would That Even Work?
Ted, at a much younger age got amorous with a top-loading VCR. Huh? The owner of the fancy dress store references another costume he stocks, the Slutty Artichoke. Yeesh.

Barney Fraser
The most disturbing part of this is that Robin is friends with Jerome Whitkaer (John Lithgow) on Facebook. It might be more excusable if the parent in question has been previously estranged, but it has never seemed right to me for the older generation to move in that same social circle with the young'uns. Makes me uncomfortable. Barney's grandmother as it turns out, is from Manitoba, right next to the infamous Saskatchewan making him 1/4 Canadian, a fact Robin is gleeful in constantly alluding to. As though it's not bad he wears a ducky tie everywhere he goes, he now has to contend with this - and after he can't go through with wearing a mountiew costume to the party, he will have to suffer a while yet to come. Some of Robin's taunts I suspect are entirely made up - or is Canada really such a strange, unknowable place?

Marinating Like a Fox!
Christina Pickles, Lily's grandmother is best know for playing Ross and Monica's mother on Friends - has she cornered the market in playing the elder Jew on primetime sitcoms? Robin's pregnancy brain theory is not necessarily wrong, but the opinions and outlook of women, and people in general tend to change the older and more responsible they become. The apartment Marshall shares with Lily is very small and not befitting an Eriksen boy. It will at least have Minnesota Viking drapes though, and for that we can be thankful.
Rejecting the opportunity to move away from the city prolongs the life of the show - it could have provided a nice jumping off point. Presuming they go through with the sale, they should at least have a nice nest egg, possibly for a town house. At least they would get away from the not sweet, not cute and very armed populace in their current locale.

In conclusion
The best parts of this episode were Robin's mirth at Barney's heritage. The bonus was seeing her dressed as a Vancouver Canucks player, compelte with missing tooth! Katie Holmes was perfunctory in her role as the Slutty Pumpkin but it did drag the episode down a little, leaving it overall a good episode, but not one that will live long in memory - bar the coda where Barney splits into two personas, the mountie and Uncle Sam, who proceed to throw down in the weirdest fight ever.


"How I Met Your Mother" airs Mondays on CBS at 8:00 pm EST.

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