“The Chain of Screaming”
April 14th, 2008
Like last week’s episode of 30 Rock, I felt as if “The Chain of Screaming” was trying too hard to follow the checklist of HIMYM’s most successful elements as opposed to actually creating a strong episode of television. Barney’s titular catchphrase never quite gelled, even if it was the episode’s best element, and everything just felt extremely slow – the central point was there, but I wasn’t feeling the flow I’ve come to expect.
My thoughts were the same on 30 Rock, but on second viewing I enjoyed it more – perhaps tomorrow I will feel the same about this one, but I really just wasn’t on board from day one. I’m not necessarily against Marshall and Lily stories, our first in quite some time, but their side of the series has been floundering ever since they bought the crooked apartment. After two episodes focusing on Barney and Ted, clearly at this point the show’s most interesting character studies, heading back into the working life of Marshall seems, ultimately, uninteresting.
This isn’t to say that it was all bad, but rather felt more inconsequential compared to how it feels like it wanted to feel.
There are some shows where I’m able to spot the work of a writer without seeing the credits, but this isn’t one of them – it’s a very character-driven series, and you don’t see the major tonal shifts that can be found elsewhere. So I’m honestly a little disappointed to see that it’s the series’ creators and executive producers who scripted this flat half-hour. It makes me wonder if there was something about this story that was particularly worthy of their talents, because it doesn’t seem it on first glance.
And perhaps here we need to lay blame on Alicia Silverstone and Britney Spears, as the latter’s arrival on the scene two episodes ago scared away the former from a three-episode guest stint, replaced by a quick one-off from the referenced, but unseen, Sarah Chalke in the role as Stella. Long and short of it, chances are this episode had to go through a re-write, so maybe it isn’t surprising that it ended up feeling like the awkward post-strike 30 Rock we got last week.
Even then, though, the same probably would have happened with the episode two weeks ago, but that one was one of the best of the season – then, really, the blame lies on the writers for severely marginalizing Marshall and Lily after their wedding. The show has never really found a great storyline for them, choosing to bounce them around romantically for much of the second season if only because it shook up the monotony.
Here, we see something we’ve seen before: Marshall’s anxiety over working for a corporate firm, and their crippling financial problems incurred by Lily’s over-spending and their crooked apartment. As a story, it was fairly simple: Marshall gets anxiety at work, everyone tries to help, Barney inspires him to quit in advertantly, Lily is understanding and Ted sells off his new “I got a raise!” car to help them stay afloat. I don’t think this is a particularly awful story idea, but it just never clicked for me.
I think it’s because of the writers’ insistence on the various cutaways to our group of characters telling the boss how the screaming made him feel. It felt wholly unnecessary, and I felt like we could have seen more of Marshall’s actual views on this if we could have just seen him and Lily in bed talking or even seen the apartment for more than a few seconds. While McLaren’s is always a good spot to allow plots to play out (“Ten Sessions” used it to great effect), I got bored of it here: and jumping into Ted’s car provided a few nice lines but nothing to sustain the actual story being told.
And Barney’s Chain (Or Circle, or Pyramid) of Screaming has the same problem – it made for a funny visual, and I’m all for semantics arguments on prime time television, but did it really help us understand his, Marshall’s, or Lily’s characters? I don’t mean to be one of those people who refuses to let comedy be comedy, but in an episode so prefaced on a huge personal decision I felt that we never really got to spend quiet time with Marshall, if you will. Even in “Ten Sessions,” we got to see Ted interact with someone on his own – here, I always felt that the gang was over Marshall’s shoulder pulling the strings of it all.
The result is an episode that just didn’t flow: I didn’t connect with Marshall’s plight, I didn’t buy the heartfelt conclusion for Marshall and Lily, and I am more convinced than ever that outside of the Sparkles variety Robin is pretty much irrelevant to the show. I don’t think that was the point of the episode, though, so I’m hoping that its end result of an empowered Marshall, even if I don’t buy the transformation, can put us back on track to the central questions we abandoned for the week.
Cultural Observations
- It’s kinda frustrating, but not surprising, that after multiple weeks of multiple hints of who the Mother might be, we have an episode devoid of such discussions. I still don’t think it’s Stella, but I do want us to return to that question ASAP.
- Marshall’s attacks on Barney went from his slutty Mom to Bob Barker not being his father, which at least shows the series’ commitment to continuity – it still felt kind of odd, though, can’t place my finger on why that scene didn’t click.
- Neil Patrick Harris’ kerfluffle over the Britney situation (You can read his quasi-retraction, quasi accusation of misquoting, at EW.com) is interesting, because his AP comments aren’t really as volatile as people (or the AP) made them out to be. Even if he said those things, he’s ultimately right: if a show doesn’t have to cast Britney Spears, it shouldn’t. However, I think most critics (myself included) agreed she did a fine job, so I doubt he was damning her and instead the practice in general.
- EDIT: So I forgot my favourite thing about the episode: “The Ninja Report” and the group’s reaction to it. Bonus points for that one.
Cultural Learnings 