How I Met Your Mother: Exploding Meatball Sub

     Watching this season of How I Met Your Mother is a lot like playing Ted's game of "Who's Hot, Who's Scott."  Each week I tune in not sure if I'm going to get a widely entertaining and moving half hour spent with my favorite characters on TV or an unfunny impostor dressed in HIMYM cloths.  This week's episode was, without a doubt, a Scott, turtleneck and all.  With a few brief exceptions, the episode didn't even resemble funny or moving.  After the last few great episodes and a few weeks off, I was expecting the show to come back with a homerun, really drive the progress they have made home, but instead we get what is essentially a throw away episode.  The plot lines were stale and forced and the humor just didn't land.  The Barney story was, at first, overdone and then unsatisfying.  Barney's abandonment issues were played out too dramatically and unconvincingly, which is most likely because he doesn't seem to have them when we find out his anger is over not getting revenge on Marshall.  I'm guessing this was the writer's attempt to remind us Barney is still Barney, but all it did for me was undercut what has been established with the character over the last few episodes.  The Ted-Zoey/Marshall-Lilly story was an obvious set up to the end of Ted and Zoey.  It makes me feel like we continue to spin our wheels with Ted, we know the relationship needs to end but we have to make sure it lasts to the end of the season.  I would have been fine with the storyline if it made me laugh, but it failed there as well.
     I understand that the writers have to come up with 24 shows of storyline per season and because of this there is going to be some throw away episodes.  Whither the broadcast network season should be 24 shows or not is an argument for another time because the fact of the matter is it's not going to change.  There is too much money to be made in the present setup.  My problem is when the writers decide to use their throw aways.  In my opinion, this was the wrong time for "Exploding Meatball Sub."  We needed an episode that kept the pre-break momentum going and this episode didn't get that done.
     All that being said, the last scene with the show's namesake exploding meatball sub was hilarious.  I wasn't ready for it at all.  Maybe if there had been more exploding subs earlier I would have been won over.