How I Met Your Mother S9 Episode 14

How I Met Your Mother S9/E14 Review “Slapsgiving 3: Slappointment in Slapmarra”

I must say, for an episode that barely advanced the actual overarching story forward, “Slappointment” was quite a pleasurable episode. Every time an episode involves Barney getting slapped, it is probably going to be a solid episode. All of the previous ones have been pretty hilarious, my favorite being the “one man show” slap. Like a lot of episodes this season, “Slapsgiving 3” picks up right where “Bass Player Wanted” leaves off. Right as Barney’s about to get that sweet, sweet slap. Before we get the slap though, Future Ted tells us the story of how this slap came to be. Marshall, wanting this slap to be as epic as possible, embarked on a quest to learn the “slap of a million exploding suns”.

If you enjoy old, cheesy kung fu movies, this film has been tailor made for you. For bibliophiles you may also recognize the title as a play on the famous book “Appointment in Samarra” and, yes, the episode follows the same sort of set up. Basically, Marshall meets three masters of slapping, played in “yellow face” by Ted, Lily and Robin. These scenes have already garnered some backlash from asian media groups. Normally, I find white actors doing other races fairly unnecessary but I believe in the context here, it makes perfect sense. The episode, as I said earlier, is attempting to imitate and pay homage to classic Kung Fu films of the B movie era. This over the top makeup was actually a very clever way of incorporating Ted, Lily and Robin, who wouldn’t have had much to do otherwise.

The biggest issue I have with this episode is simply that it doesn’t push the main story very far. It did, however, set up quite a few things so I give it credit in that respect. We still have one slap to go and, most importantly, Marshall is reunited with the rest of the gang, bringing his awkward road trip side story to a close. Not that it was terrible, but that plot line got pretty old, pretty fast, and I’m happy to see Marshall back with the regular line up.

Now that we are getting down to the last 10 episodes, it seems pretty safe to assume that the wedding is going to be drawn out to the end. It’s unfortunate in some ways but at the same time I like how uniformed this season has been, especially compared to the last couple of seasons. This show has been one hell of a ride, and I am both excited and saddened to see it coming to a close. Given the quality of this season, I see no reason to believe that the episodes will diminish in quality. Here’s to a terrific final season!

 

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