After several solid episodes of How I Met Your Mother, “Romeward Bound” left me …disappointed and even, dare I say, freakin’ annoyed. (I took this poll and said I was at level SIX!)

how i met your mother romeward bound

“Romeward Bound” — Pictured: Jason Segel as Marshall Erikson, Jocelyn Osorio as Bellissima. Photo: Cliff Lipson/CBS é 2013 CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Let’s break this down, okay?

The only entertaining character, tonight, was Marshall (Jason Segel.) But even his “funny bits” weren’t that great. Lily (Alyson Hannigan) also didn’t have much luck tonight. But the redeeming moment came when they both sat on a stoop to discuss their possible move to Italy. Marshall spoke his one Italian phrase over and over, while conveying a different meaning to his wife. And, of course, she understood. So now they’re bound for Rome.

(I didn’t find the black-and-white Rome bits all that entertaining. Did you?)

When we move on to Ted (Josh Radnor), he was lusting after a girl. A girl (Liddy) who had a body so great it was “Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol” Redonkulous, apparently. We never saw it. Well, I saw that movie – and it WAS really, really good. But we didn’t see the body of the girl, it was always hidden under a coat. And it’s smart, because any body they showed us wouldn’t have been good enough to make us believe Ted should have been so shy about her. (Mircea Monroe does have a great body. She does fantastic work in comedies, btw. Hollah. When my colleague Melissa Miller interviewed Shiri Appleby, the former Roswell actress gushed about Monroe’s talent.)

Sidenote: The How I Met Your Mother writers seem to have nuclear war on their mind. The past several episodes have alluded to this in some way or another. It’s becoming an odd pattern.

Finally, we have Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) and Robin (Cobie Smulders.) Barney is being a disrespectful, awful fiancee! They’re getting married in just a few weeks and he’s still checking out other women. Robin is surprisingly cool with this. (The bit at the end with the coat shocked me, I wanted her to react!) But Ted knows it isn’t okay, and he says as much to Barney.

We then saw Barney Stintson be a massive sucknozzle to his best friend. It was awful. I want them to hug right now! It was completely mean-spirited of Barney to judge Ted, and shove “Robin picked me” in his face.

Those are my thoughts. Share yours in the comments so we can keep talking until there’s a new episode.

Trivia: The Italian woman was played by Jocelyn Osorio, who is German and Spanish. We’ve also seen her in one episode of New Girl.

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