'How I Met Your Mother': Harvey Fierstein makes himself heard
We learned the most horrible thing tonight on "How I Met Your Mother" - Robin smokes. This came as an incredibly crushing blow for some us. There is much we can overlook in our search for a massive televisual crush, but smoking is not one of those things. Everyone else smoking too was also bad (for them), but as I'm not smitten with the others in the same way I am with Robin, it wasn't quite as painful.It is true that Marshall was having a bad night -- his old boss, the guy he yelled at oh so much a few seasons back, was his new boss tonight -- and that said bad night caused his backslide. Thank goodness for Marshall the boss had a heart attack, because even with Marshall's smoking with him every day, he still didn't know Marshall's name.
Taking a step back, I think the show perhaps had a tough time tonight with the non-smoking crowd. I don't think that non-smokers can ever really understand the insane lure of smoking. As the show pointed out with all the stuff Marshall had to do to hide his smoking from Lily, smoking, among other massive drawbacks (see above with Marshall's boss), makes you stink.
Also, if you're a woman, smoking makes you talk like Harvey Fierstein. Harvey Fierstein has a great, very distinctive voice, but it's a great voice for Harvey Fierstein, not for Lily. It was hysterical that Harvey Fierstein was doing Lily's smoking voice tonight, but I think that in general Lily's voice suits Lily better than Harvey's does.
Just as Marshall was having problems that cause him to backslide, Robin was terribly stressed out, which I'm hoping exacerbated her smoking (though all indications are that she's been a hardcore smoker for quite some time). First off, there was Don, the idiot new co-host who insisted on doing his anchoring in his tighty-whities. Everything that came out of Don's mouth made him sound like a horrible, horrible person. Okay, all but one thing, Don was absolutely right about one thing -- Robin is adorable. Outside of that though, the man was just wrong.
Don spent much of his time trying to convince Robin that at most one person in all of New York watched her morning show. That is exactly the sort of thing that I think Robin has always feared, and with good reason. She's a reporter, if no one wants to watch her report, what's the point? If Mayor Bloomberg thinks she's too lowly to interview him, why should she bother?
Obviously her friends were watching the night Bloomberg backed out, the one night they'd ever watched. I tend to think that was something of a cop out solution to Robin's issues this week. The show made a big deal about even the cameraman going to get chicken rather than operating the camera, implying there was no one there with them, but as soon as Don called for the phone number to be put up, it was put up. That means that there was someone working in the control room, the entire operation wasn't on autopilot. I think that ought to have counted, not Robin's friends watching. The show went with the sappy, feel-good choice, and I don't think it worked as well as a funny choice.
In the end, I guess all I can say is that I can hold out until 2013 for Robin to stop smoking. I'm just that dedicated.
Odds and ends:
- As the show pointed out, smoking in bars was never a good thing.
- You want a good thing? How about Marshall going back in time to beat up his 13-year-old self? Now that was funny (but not as funny as old Marshall giving young Marshall the picture of Lily).
- I would absolutely watch "Wakey Wakey Beaverton" given the opportunity.
- You can't cut an umbilical cord with a MetroPass -- you totally can with a MetroCard though.
- Would you ever pet a picture of your boss's dog that was on their shirt?
- Do you think the show was trying to convince Mayor Mike (as I like to call him) to come on? Maybe Bloomberg is the mom!
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Photo credit: CBS
If you actually watched the show from season 1, you would have seen Robin smoke back then. And please don't push your anti-smoking rhetoric onto people
I'll agree with the gross-out factor of seeing them smoke. "Anti-smoking rhetoric" isn't some sort of silly hippie opinion, btw--smoking kills. It's a terrible, disgusting thing.
I'm not a smoker so perhaps that's the reason why I didn't like the story. It just seemed like the story really never went anywhere. There were plenty of funny moments, but the story which was the majority of the episode did not interest me.
Review of the episode on my blog.
http://th3tvobsessed.blogspot.com/2009/12/review-how-i-met-your-mother-season-5_15.html
I found the episode as a whole to be in extremely poor taste.
Smoking kills. It is a very serious subject and not, in my opinion, something to be made light of on a situation comedy.
That said, the most appalling part of the episode was watching each cast member actually inhaling their cigarettes.
If they all agreed just to smoke their 'props' for the sake of the storyline, I find that in the highest in stupidity---and if they are all revealed to be actual smokers in real life through this---well, it kind of turned me off to the entire cast/show just a bit there.
Watching people smoke is disgusting to me, on tv and in life.
I mean really, there's such a vast well of comedy material out there to use---but smoking?!
Whatever lame a** writer chose this storyline should be handed a pack of Marlboros, a lighter...and their pink slip!
Remember the episode with the fiero.. Robin was enjoying the hell out of those cigars, AND remember the episode where Ted was going to move in she was having a good bye smoke in the bathtub?
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I laughed myself silly over the 13 yr old Marshell camping out in the snow in Minnesota. I live in Minnesota so that scene had my laughing hysterically.
I love how some people apparently feel they are the arbiters of That Which Must Not Be Joked About. I'm sure the horrible abuse you were subjected to by 22 minutes of situation comedy is a stain that will never come off. I can only pray that network television will never again inflict such horrific psychic damage against an innocent, unsuspecting public.
This ep just made me want to go have a cig. And a beer.
And it was funny.
Win-Win-Win.
I don't get people being up in arms about the smoking. They sit there drinking alcohol in every episode. Alcohol kills, too. And don't say that "but with alcohol, there's no second hand smoke" b/c there are drunk drivers running over people all the time. So get over it. It was used as a gag. Episode Over.
It just seems phony to me that after 4 1/2 seasons we all of a sudden see all of them smoking? Sorry, real smokers smoke all the time. It just seemed very contrived.