TVSquad

(S04E09) I've never pulled The Naked Man (a pretty suggestive phrase all by itself) in order to salvage a date. I just never thought of it. Given what I saw tonight, though, I don't think it would have ever helped. I would have had to think of the excuse to get into the woman's apartment, wear clothes that I could remove and put back on quickly ... there's too many logistics involved.

This episode was just as silly as last week's, but for some reason, the silliness works this time around. Maybe because The Naked Man joke was something that was unexpected. Maybe it was the results that everyone got. Or maybe it was Lily's 50 Reasons To Have Sex (which, by the way, the folks at the show were nice enough to send us ... her napkin-scrawled list is after the jump). Or maybe it was the fleeting glimpse of the goat ... in 2009.

As we saw all the weird scenes that Ted has walked into -- I love Robin thwarting the robbery with her gun the best, followed by Barney's Houdini impression -- we see the goat once again, this time with a date attached: May 8, 2009. That would put it near the end of season five this season, if we're assuming the show's going in real time like it has before. No idea what we're going to see in this episode, but all the allusions to the goat make me think it's going to be a big one...

Notice the fake-out we were given as Old Ted was describing his elevator flirtation with Vickie ... "This is the story of how I met ... that person" Psych! Of course, it turns out that Vickie is a big ol' jerk; she hates old people and Ted's favorite poet who writes in Spanish (oh, Ted... you can be such a tool sometimes). Hence his use of The Naked Man. At least he was successful ... as was Lily (more on that in a sec). Poor Barney was the one out of three times where it didn't work. Maybe it's because the method was just too straightforward for Barn to get a handle on it. But his unusual failure with this method gets the award for Best Barneyism this week.

The less said about the ONM (Original Naked Man), Mitch, the better. At least he was realistic; he knew that Robin was going out with him a second time just to prove to herself she's not a slut. Besides his being naked and describing his "move," there was nothing remarkable about him or his character. I guess that's the point.

Other funny stuff:

- As I said above, Lily's 50 Reasons to Have Sex have been conveniently provided by the folks at the show. They're below; click on the picture for a bigger version. My favorites? The Cheetos one (#47) is good. I also like "Damn, your calves look good in those cargo shorts" (#39). I thought it was interesting that the last one Lil was able to think about was "love."

- Still more signs that Lily's going to become sexless and miserable in her middle age: "One-partner sex sucks sometimes," her refusal to play "I Never" because everyone knows who she's done stuff with, and her longing question about Barney's toys.

- Nice switch, with Lily doing The Naked Man to bring Marshall down from his "it only should be love" stance. Her pose? "I've got boobs." It's very effective.

- Speaking of poses, which Naked Man pose did you like the best? The Captain Morgan one was good, as was Barn's Heisman.

- Marshall's gotten so sensitive lately, hasn't he? Watching The Notebook doesn't help.

- "Mr. Wang's back in business?"

We seem to be on a one-good-episode, one-meh-episode run right now. Has this been one of the show's best years? Not really; the Stella storyline fizzled a lot of what we liked about the show. But episodes like this one are encouraging, making me think that we're just getting started, especially as the new dynamic. Let's see where this goes.