How I Met Your Mother - "The Slutty Pumpkin Returns"

Season 7, Episode 8

The thing about expectations is that they almost always lead to disappointing outcomes. As much as the idea of a second episode that features The Slutty Pumpkin sounds cool, the truth is that it’s probably not going to live up to the original episode – especially when the Pumpkin in question is played by Katie Holmes.

On the attractiveness scale, it’s perhaps understandable why Ted would fall for Naomi – especially if the first time around, without those pesky television censors present, the costume was used to its maximum sluttiness. (I only bring this up because I know some people somewhere on the internet are already arguing about this, especially because Holmes doesn’t seem to live up to Ted’s earlier descriptions of The Slutty Pumpkin. Let’s just assume for the sake of argument that Ted found her attractive, okay?) But there’s also a quirkiness to her that, while extremely annoying now, seems like the sort of thing Ted, especially the overly romantic Ted of ten years ago, would find endearing. Unfortunately, none of this is ably expressed by Holmes, who frankly doesn’t have the comedic chops to pull this weirdness of, or even the twist at the where she’s supposed to be “normal”.

This is mostly due to the fact that Holmes herself as proven to be a bit crazy in real life, and while putting her in a role that makes her seem crazy could be seen as a bit of meta humor, it doesn’t particularly work here, both because it doesn’t seem as if Holmes is on the joke, but also because this storyline (luckily) isn’t really about her character at all. Rather it’s about Ted and his knack for over romanticizing the past, and while there wasn’t any particular growth here, it was a funny and endearing story, and much better than anything staring Katie Holmes should have been. (I was however thrown off by the fact that the show was making fun of the Barenaked Ladies, both because they're my favorite band, and because Community already did it better.)

But the real winner of the night was the Robin and Barney storyline, which much like Ted’s was highly inconsequential, but more enjoyable because it had multiple episode’s worth of build-up to play off of, as opposed to the Slutty Pumpkin’s one. Sure, Robin mocking Barney for being one-quarter Canadian is highly silly, but it allowed her to go be all Super Canadian, and Neil Patrick Harris to cry in a comedic fashion, both of which are always pluses for the show to turn to. There wasn’t a lot of depth here, but it was highly funny and played off past character interactions, and sometimes that’s all I need to be satisfying.

However, I wish I could say the same thing about the Marshal and Lilly plot. While I like the idea of the show doing more pregnancy stories so that it can build to the birth of their child, and the idea of “pregnancy brain” in general, the storyline ended up making Lilly so dumb as to appear misogynistic, and that just didn’t sit right with me. Even more confusing, the episode waffled on exactly how dumb Lilly was supposed to be, as she was conniving enough to trick Marshall into participating into handing out candy to suburban trick-or-treaters, but still dumb enough to pass out wine and office supplies to another group of kids. There were some nice lines here, especially Lilly’s gobbling of words and the lines about the house that served as double entendres, but it was so offensive that I’d rather it not exist in the first place.

There wasn’t  a whole to this episode – which is why this review is only about half as long as my standard reviews for this show – but it was fairly funny hour where 2/3 of the episode wasn’t predicate of abnormal characterization, and at this late run of the show, I think that’s an admirable enough of a feat.

Quotes, Etc:

“I was on Facebook…” “Nobody cool is on Facebook anymore.”

“He’s gotten really good at Bejeweled Blitz.”

“Three girls got proposals off my wife’s ‘slutty asparagus’ costume. Two other disappeared, but I focus on the positive.”

“Yes, right now Lilly is a goddess bestowing the miracle of life. But damn she dumb!”

“I want scotch! American scotch, from Scotland!”

“At the end of the night, when I leaned in and somehow accidently kissed her open eyeball, there was a slight flicker of something I might call chemistry…adjacent.”

“It’s federal currency, and you people talk about it as if it’s a Hannah-Barberra cartoon.” “Not ‘you people’, Barney – our people.”

“Come on, it’ll take like 30 seconds!”

“Look at how sweet and happy and unarmed they all are!”

“Those are all references to our shared homeland.”

“Where do you look during sex?”  “Uh, right into the hidden camera a future me watching it.”

“Yes! Yes I’m coming…to terms with this decision.”

“Heavens to Gretzky, that was a real chit-lit rattler!”