Quick Take: How I Met Your Mother, "The Burning Beekeeper"
"It's pretty bad ass you're so nice, Ted."
Review: How I Met Your Mother, "The Burning Beekeeper"
(S0715) My girlfriend walked into the living room when I was about 15 minutes into "The Burning Beekeeper" and after watching for a minute or two, she looked at me and said, "What the hell is going on here?" I told her not to worry about, you had to see the beginning of the episode to get it and it's not really worth explaining. That was enough for her and she returned to the kitchen.
That little vignette is kind of "The Burning Beekeeper" in a nutshell. It's an episode that is structured in such a way that the complexity of the plotting becomes the central focal point. If you miss the first couple of minutes, or any stretch of more than two or three minutes anywhere in the middle, you completely lose the thread. And unfortunately, it's just not worth having someone explain what you missed. It's like the writers decided to show off how clever they are without putting much thought into making a funny episode. Not that "The Burning Beekeeper" didn't have it's moments, it just didn't have enough of them.
My real issue with "The Burning Beekeeper" is the fact that I know How I Met Your Mother is capable of doing good episodes that play around with time, space and format, while at the same time serving the larger plot. "Beekeeper", despite making lap after lap around Marshall (Jason Segal) and Lily's (Alyson Hannigan) new suburban home, doesn't actually take us anywhere. We don't really learn anything about the characters, nor do the characters seem to learn anything about themselves. One could make the argument that the point of the episode is Lily's realization that parenthood is all about constant crisis control. I would buy that, except Lily is a kindergarten teacher, so this shouldn't be a new lesson for her.
It's certainly possible that I'm being overly critical. How I Met Your Mother is just a sitcom, after all. It might be asking too much for a show like this to provide meaningful character development as well as laughs. I should probably stop whining and just enjoy it. But it's hard to do that when the writers try an ambitious episode like "Beekeeper" and fail to stick the landing.
