HIMYM 7.05: "Field Trip"

“It’s like watching ‘The Breakfast Club’ on TBS.”
-Barney

“Field Trip” was a rather middling (although not horrible) episode of HIMYM. I prefer the episodes that really speak to life events, and this wasn’t one of them. My roommate said that Marshall’s plot made her sad (she’s an environmental policy student), but overall, there wasn’t big stuff going on in this one. Some reasonably funny stuff, for sure, but noting big. I guess my favorite bit of the episode, even though it was awfully shallow and cartoonish, was Barney stressing because Nora said she hated Ewoks. Mostly because I loved Barney’s very long PowerPoint all about Ewoks. That was genius. Ted’s plot had some potential, because the idea of him dragging his class around to all the important locations in his life had potential, but it didn’t quite hit the mark. It was funny, but it didn’t really get into Ted’s character enough for me. Ted being so desperate for one of his students to want to be an architect just didn’t work for me. Yeah, it fit with Ted’s character, but it was kind of pathetic. I suppose it just goes to show how low of a place Ted is in right now.

Anyway, the episode opens with Robin in therapy with Kevin. They’re working through her abandonment issues when all of a sudden Kevin drops Robin as a client. He says he’s moving to Alaska, but then he turns up at the diner while Robin is eating breakfast. Kevin admits that the real reason he dropped Robin was because he was attracted to her and didn’t want to cross any ethical lines. Robin invites him to eat breakfast with her in as non-date like a way as she can muster (sitting side by side, technically alone, looking at the coffee maker). After this goes on for about a week and Robin walks forty blocks in the rain to make it to breakfast, they decide to finally start dating for real. I found that to be just plain gross. And thankfully, the rest of the characters all pretty much agreed with me. I like Kal Penn and the character of Kevin, but the fact that he was Robin’s therapist is just something I’ll never be able to get over. Squickiness to the extreme.

The gang is at MacLaren’s, as they often are, and Marshall starts venting some frustrations about work. He’s concerned that the great Garrison Kootz isn’t really as much of an environmental defender as he seems. He seems to have become jaded about the environmental law game. Somehow the conversation turns to Ewoks, and Nora arrives in the middle of it. She says that she doesn’t like Ewoks, and this makes Barney really upset. So upset that the thinks he wants to break up with her. Even though I am firmly pro-Ewok like Barney (and no, I think I was older than ten when I first saw the Star Wars movies, so that kind of destroys Barney’s theory I’ll be writing about it a bit). It just amuses me that underneath the kind of gross ladies’ man exterior, Barney is a massive Star Wars fan.

In other news, Ted has been planning a big field trip for his Inro to Architecture class. He’s going to take them to the new GNB tower construction site in the hopes that it will expire one of them to decide on architecture as a career. This plan backfires, however, when a construction worker tells Ted and his students (about the 1/3 of the class that actually showed up) that it’s a closed construction site and they can’t go in. Which makes sense, really, and Ted should have realized. Construction sites are dangerous places. So Ted takes his students to see Barney, with the thought that Barney could teach them about the financial side of constructing a building. Instead, however, Barney gives an awesomely hilarious lecture about the “Ewok Line.” Basically, according to Barney’s theory, anyone who hates Ewoks is in their late 30’s, not 29 like Nora claims to be, because only people who were little kids when Return of the Jedi was released actually like Ewoks. The theory is funny enough on its own, but what really made the joke was that Barney had to flip through a ton of slides about the details of Ewok physiology and culture before he got to the “Ewok Line” slides.

Meanwhile, there’s a big party going on at Marshall’s office because of a $24,000 settlement offer from a big pharmaceutical company that Garrison seems ready to accept. There’s cake and champagne and all the trimmings. This really pisses Marshall off, because this company did major damage to a waterway, and there’s no way $24,000 will fix it. Eventually, Marshall just can’t take it and has a major outburst. Garrison pulls Marshall into his office (which has creepy green lighting for this scene for some reason), and he goes on a tirade about how the environmental movement has lost and the world is going to end in ten years. Garrison has just been putting on a happy face for his staff with the cake and champagne so they can be comfortable while they wait for Armageddon. The next day, they talk again (in much less threatening office lighting), and Marshall explains why he still has to have hope- his unborn child. He shows Garrison a video of Lily’s latest ultrasound. There’s also some hilarious conversation about how Garrison has a bunker set up that is stocked with all five seasons of Friday Night Lights, but Marshall warns him that season 2 isn’t worth watching. So true, so true. Garrison ends up turning down the settlement offer and “going to war.” Saget!Ted tells us that Garrison and Marshall would eventually save the planet.

The next stop on Ted’s field trip (with Barney now tagging along) is his and Robin’s apartment. Robin and Kevin are there on the couch, and Robin’s kind of annoyed because she was just about to make a move. There’s a really funny sequence where Ted and Barney give Kevin a hard time (sometimes in unison) because they (rightfully) think that a therapist dating a former patient is super creepy. They decide to poll Ted’s students, and the vast majority of them think it’s creepy, too. Outside the apartment building, Ted and Barney realize they have collected the perfect focus group, so they start polling the students on all sorts of things, such as whether macaroni salad is really a salad (the answer is “no”). Then the questions start to get into Barney’s situation with Nora. Ted and Barney keep changing the story to try to win the students to their side (Ted thinks it would be shallow for Barney to dump Nora over being old, and Barney obviously disagrees). Meanwhile, now that they have the apartment back to themselves, Robin and Kevin try to make out, but they finally realize it’s too creepy. Robin fixes the situation by acting as Kevin’s therapist for a couple hours to even the score. Which I don’t think is really good enough to erase the squick, but whatever.

Ted’s field trip ends up at MacLaren’s. One student finally says he might be interested in being an architect, mostly because since Ted can meet up with his friends at the bar at 4 PM, the hours must be good. He says he’ll look into it if being a DJ doesn’t work out, but Saget!Ted tells us that he did indeed become a DJ. Ted finally lets the class go home. Nora meets up with the gang, and Barney confronts her with his belief that she’s about nine years older than she says she is. It turns out that Nora had only just seen the Star Wars movies a year ago, so she had indeed been older than ten when she first saw the Ewoks. But she’s most definitely still 29. Barney is happy with this answer, and I’m annoyed that Nora is still sticking around.