Jordan's Review: How I Met Your Mother, Season 6, Episode 10: Blitzgiving

One of the things that set How I Met Your Mother apart from other sitcoms in its early years was its ability to coin terms for everyday occurrences that seemed to match perfectly with real life experiences. They have continued to try this over the last few years, with increasingly mixed results, but tonight's term, "The Blitz" is definitely more a winner than a loser.

The term "The Blitz" denotes the person with the tendency to leave the room right before a succession of increasingly awesome things occur, which in the life of the gang was Steve (Jorge Garcia, throwing as many Lost jokes as possible into his appearance), who left Ted and Marshall's room for Kraft-Croft night (a mixture of mac and cheese and Tomb Raider that sounds delightful to me) and missed a naked girl and a "sandwich" fueled viewing of Apocalypse Now with Weird Al's Greatest Hits playing over it, among many other awesome occurrences. This week, Ted and Barney both briefly become The Blitz before it, of course, transfers back to steve in the blip at the episode's end. Ted's reign as The Blitz is my personal favorite, bringing back the idea of drunken misadventures and their conflated awesomeness like we haven't seen since "The Pineapple Incident," a Season One classic in my book. After Ted goes to sleep, the gang bonds with Zoey, throwing hats onto Marshall's head ("The Gentlemen!"), playing truth or dare and sending a picture of Marshall's junk to a random guy, and watching a dog skateboard through Maclaren's before breaking Ted's oven and painting a kiss mask on a passed out Robin.

With the oven broken, the gang, and The Blitz, who managed to be there for all of it, transferring his curse to Ted, search for a suitable place for Thanksgiving and end up at Zoey's, where Barney has become the Blitz for taking his own cab and missing the gang's joining of the Macy's Day parade and Ted's becoming "The Bueller" by singing "Twist and Shout" on a float. Barney feeling like the butt of a joke and getting all whiney about of it is always fodder for comedic gold, and NPH plays it as excellently as usual tonight.

And so we see Zoey pass from enemy to friend with Ted's realization that she hoped to spend Thanksgiving with her stepdaughter, and the apparent masterplot of Season Six moves another step forward. more than that, though, "Blitzgiving" also gives us a pretty good Thanksgiving episode to clear the palate after "Slapsgiving 2" (which I was thinking during tonight's episode would have gotten a few continuity points if it had been called "Slapsgiving 2: The Re-Return") and a new term that will actually be applicable in daily life. Not too shabby for a late period episode of How I Met Your Mother and a decent model for how the show can continue to turn out funny episodes that move the plotline forward and manage to be respectful of the show's continuity.

Grade: B

Notes:

-I like Ted's turturkeykey idea.

-"Lily doesn't let me do truths, so dare."

-"My name...Is Steve!"

-Most ridiculous joke I never fail to laugh at: People having sad yearbook quotes. Since you choose your own quote, its patently ridiculous that you'd pick something sad, and yet every Blitz chose "Aw, Man!" as their quote.

-I also liked that the original Blitz dropped out right before college became co-ed.

-"And here's the twist, Babakha..." I love Barney's ability to become best friends with cab drivers instantaneously.

-"I'm so happy to be here my face hurts from smiling."

-"Did Wang guy just quote Gandhi?" Also a good running Robin gag is her refusing to admit crushes and instead saying something like "No, I hate him!"

-"Where to?" "I guess we're going home." "Yeah, I don't know where that is..." and later, "You really need to start throwing some addresses my way, buddy."