Note to the whole HIMYM team: When your signature gag is a squadron of miniature Barneys dancing around on a girl's torso in British mountaineer garb, it's time to for a rethink. "Little Boys" is the first real whiff of the season, a Friends-esque pair of premises executed with a tin ear and slack discipline. What's really missing here is timing. And I hate to say it, but part of the problem is the laugh track. Somehow it's mixed too low and comes in too slow. Suddenly the show screams "no studio audience," and the actors seem to have nothing to play against. The episode feels like it's acted against a blue screen by people who just met at the craft services table.
Lame & Hoary Premise #1: Barney and Ted make a bet to see who can score with the random girl at the bar first. Even though Ted claims that he really started to like her and therefore didn't want to play the game anymore, it scarcely saves L&HP;#1 from the rampant misogyny that stalks the show in its darker moments. And it's completely negated by the disgusting Barney-planting-a-flag-in-her-lip-tissue (I confess, I flinched) special effect, which leaves the facade of Ted's attraction to the whole woman coughing in the premise's exhaust fumes. Barney's revelation that it was all a big setup is more like it, but way too little, way too late.
Lame & Hoary Premise #2: Robin dates a great guy whose "big but" is that he has a kid. And Robin hates kids! But she connects with the kid, only to find out that he doesn't like her as much as she thought, and she feels rejected! Oh, snap! Did you catch that reversal? The breakupper has become the breakupee — with a kid! Or something. This is straight out of the twenty-something sitcom playbook. If this is what Robin and Ted dating other people is going to lead to, week after week, I'm very afraid.