HIMYM: Steinfeld did it!

Quick spoilers for "How I Met Your Mother" coming up just as soon as I clean my Glock...

On my drive home from work, I was mentally plotting my night of TV watching/blogging, it occurred to me that, of the three sitcoms I'd currently consider the best on TV ("30 Rock" and "The Office" being the other two), "HIMYM" rarely reached the heights of the other two ("Slap Bet" excepted) but was more consistently funny...

...so, of course, I have to be rewarded for this not so brilliant insight with an incredibly lame, sitcommy episode where one of the plots (Ted and Barney pretend to be tourists to pick up women) was lifted wholesale from a "Seinfeld" episode. Given that Barney makes a "Steinfeld" reference later in the episode, you'd think the writers would at least own up to it the way Mike Judge had Michael Bolton in "Office Space" admit that his embezzling scheme was used in "Superman III."

(Judge, by the way, has always insisted that he never saw "Superman III," but that once someone pointed it out to him while reading an early draft, he felt compelled to cop to it because the audience -- maybe not the whole audience, but some of it -- would know, and "Superman III" was a lot less popular than "Seinfeld.")

I'm not sure I've ever laughed less at an episode of this show. When even Barney's smutty punchlines are falling flat, you know it's just a bad night at the office.

That said, a few interesting things to note:

• Robin and Barney have yet another bonding moment when they drink together to the end of Vacation Robin, and Robin has no problem telling Barney about her erotic dreams. At this point, is there anyone in the audience who doesn't think the two of them are going to get together eventually?
• And speaking of the distant future, I like that combovers will still exist in 2029 -- as will Nancy Reagan's hairstyle -- but Marshall and Lily's bickering in both the present and future felt tonally off. It's not that I don't believe they'd fight, but that the pettiness and anger of it doesn't seem like something they'd do, not even after getting married. Maybe after 22 years of marriage, but the fundamental schmoopiness of their relationship is one of the defining characteristics of both Marshall and Lily, and I'm annoyed that it got tossed out for the sake of a flash-forward punchline to a subplot that wasn't very good to begin with.
• Also, was I the only one hoping that Combover Marshall would be slapping Barney?

Ah, well. They can't all be "Slap Bet." Or even "Wait For It..." I'm sure next week'll be just fine.

What did everybody else think?

Oh, and no: I'm not just annoyed at Ted's anti-Jersey rant. I've never claimed to be from New York, even when I lived just across the river in Hoboken. I know my place and am fine with it.