After two weeks off, How I Met Your Mother returned with a brand-new episode last night. It was the fifteenth of the season, and was called “The Chain of Screaming”. This was a Marshall-centric episode that mostly served as a means of keeping Marshall and Lily in the apartment with Ted despite the fact that they bought their own place earlier in the season.
Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Basically, the entire ep takes the form of a flashback from Marshall, who describes a day from hell at his corporate law firm. One of the higher-ups is a screamer who doesn’t mind ripping into new associates who don’t perform as expected. When that happens to Marshall, he responds by… crying.
This leads to several scenes of the gang dispensing advice on how Marshall should proceed the next day. The scenes take the form of the others talking to Marshall’s boss while dressed as Marshall. Some of the individual lines were funny, but on the whole, I thought the gag got tired rather quickly.
The title of the ep comes from another Barney theory. He thinks that being screamed at is no big deal because it’s simply part of a natural chain that runs downhill. A higher-up screams at a subordinate at work (Marshall, in this case). Marshall goes home and screams at his wife. Lily goes to work and screams at one of her kindergarten students. The kindergarten student goes home and screams at her father — who happened to be the boss that started the screaming in the first place. Yes, that’s a circle, but since neither Marshall nor Lily yell, Barney had to revise it to a chain.
In the end, Lily convinced Marshall that what he really needed to do was quit his job. He didn’t go to law school to work for a large, greedy firm, and he’s clearly not happy with where he’s at. They will sell their apartment and mooch off Ted until they’re back on their feet.
The only other thing that happened during the show was Ted buying a car. He never drove it though (because he had a great parking spot), and at one point Marshall, Robin, and Barney ended up eating and/or smoking in there. Then Lily walked up, pounded on the window, scared the hell out of everyone, and caused them all to drop whatever they were holding, effectively ruining Ted’s car. He then sold it to help out Marshall and Lily with their cash crunch.
My Reaction: I thought this episode was kind of boring, especially after the awesomeness that was “The Bracket”. I know it was necessary for the larger story arc of keeping Marshall and Lily in Ted’s apartment for a while longer, but still… it mostly just dragged for me. As a result, I don’t have much to say about it. I thought the car scene was cute, but there weren’t any true laugh-out-loud moments here. Hopefully, next week will be better!