How I Met Your Mother: The Mermaid Theory

     "The Mermaid Theory" was season 7 of HIMYM encapsulated in 30 minutes, a constant flow from great funny moments to total misses.  I wish I was just able to say that this episode was awesome or just plain horrible, but my opinion seemed to change with each changing scene.  The opening scene was classic.  The Happy Captain/Scary Captain was hilarious and brought back one of my favorite moments, Marshal's obsession with blowing up pictures and charts at work.  Lilly's theory about a single person and a married person of the opposite sex hanging out had potential as well, but then Ted screwed up the narration and things took a turn for the worse.  I loathed this storyline.  It was stupid and took you out of the flow of the episode.  It might have worked better if it was the main story, but I didn't care about Lilly and Barney in this episode so the constant changing of the story was just annoying.  The one saving grace was when Ted showed up in a green dress.  I love when later episodes are set up!
     The Marshall/Robin story was very hit or miss as well.  The idea of them having an awkward dinner was cool.  We've all hung out it groups and while we can have a good time hanging out with everyone in the group, there are some people who we know we just wouldn't enjoy hanging out with alone.  I thought that's where this was going, but when it took a turn in a different direction I didn't buy it.  At the same time, The Mermaid Theory was awesome.  It was HIMYM at it's best, taking a nugget of truth, spinning it into a funny theory and introducing it with either a college flashback (because where else did any of us have the time to come up with these types of theories then college?) or a fake historical reenactment.  I would have been much happier if they had used the theory with another storyline, but oh well.
      The Ted storyline had its moments, but for the most part I though it was a miss.  The ticking Mermaid clock at the end of the episode had no punch at all.  Really?  There's going to be sexual tension between Ted and Zoe?  Why the hell would she be hanging around if there wasn't?  The episode acted like it was some big revelation that Ted was going to find her attractive, that the clock was ticking before Ted saw her as a mermaid, but I was under the impression that he already liked her.  The mermaid theory says that someone that is not attractive to you slowly becomes attractive.  It seems to me that Ted has always been attracted to Zoe, he just can't admit it for various reasons (she's married, she wants to stop his building of the GNB building, etc).
     It seems to me that the writers of HIMYM are still trying to capture the magic of the first few seasons and haven't quite figured it out yet.  This type of search almost always results in a hit and miss season and that it exactly what we are in the middle of.  Nothing has showcased that more then this episode that seemed to go from hit to miss back to hit minute by minute.  All we can hope for is that when all is said and done, it's been more hit then miss and they figure things out so next season can be all hit.