As I try to figure out exactly where the HIMYM writers are going wrong, many possibilities come to mind. The most obvious is that they've just run out of ideas. We are now in season seven of a show that barley made it out of season two and it just might be that they've exhausted all the ideas they had for a show that they didn't expect to run this long. Craig Thomas and Carter Bays based the show on their friendship and personal experiences and no matter how rich a life you lead, that well has to run out at some point. But "The Rebound Girl" is the perfect example of that just not being the case yet. The show's current problems aren't a lack of ideas, the writer's still have a ton of those, but seem to lie in the execution of those ideas.
Although filled with funny premises, "The Rebound Girl" failed to deliver the laughs that it should have. The thought of Barney and Ted deciding to raise a kid together is hilarious, but the motives were all wrong. Barney's character has grown a lot over the last few seasons but not once has he ever expressed any interest in having a family, so the jump to wanting to raise a kid with Ted seemed to huge to believe. In light of his recent heartbreak, if the writers had just made his desire to have kids a play to get into the chasing girls game, it would have worked much better. I know this was touched upon briefly, but it was a side effect not a desired result. It was a funny idea that the writer's just bungled.
Another funny premise was how Lily and Marshal found their apartment so small after visiting Lily's grandparent's house in Long Island. But again, everything else written around that premise felt wrong. The first scene of the episode with Lily and Marshal in Long Island felt so familiar I thought at first I was watching last week's episode. I was pretty sure we had resolved the house issue and all of a sudden they are having the same discussion they had last week. It's not that it was a bad plot point or that it's unbelievable that the two would readdress what to do with the house, but it didn't work putting it so close to the original plot. Why not have a few weeks of them struggling to sell it, draw it out, make it an albatross that they eventually grow to love? It just felt forced the way they presented it and was a disservice to the funny premise of their apartment feeling small.
The premise was also ruined by Robin's over the top reaction and hysterics. They must have felt they needed to work Robin into the stories somehow, but this didn't work and the revelation that she is pregnant at the end seemed forced as well. Without Barney, the writers seem to have no idea what to do with her, which begs the question, why have her choose Kevin over him in the first place? The pregnant angle feels so cliche and like another stall tactic by the HIMYM writers.
We're almost half way through season seven and the shows record stands at 3-6-2.
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