How I Met Your Mother S8/E05: "The Autumn of Break Ups" Review

The second of the three promised breakups during How I Met Your Mother's Autumn of breakups occurs in this aptly named fifth episode: "The Autumn of Breakups." 

The veneer of perfection over the relationships between Ted and Victoria, and Robin and Nick begins to be wiped away as Victoria and Nick gain a greater understanding of the priorities of both Ted and Robin, and how strong a role their exes still play in their lives. Victoria's distressed that her and Ted seem to have something standing in the way of their moving forward with their relationship, and as usual it all comes back to Robin. Robin consistently prioritizes her friendships with Barney and Ted over spending alone time with Nick, and it is beginning to frustrate him. In addition, Barney gains a new canine wing-man who may just be the "bro" or "brover", as Barney so christens him, he has been waiting his whole life for and Marshall is being groomed by Lily to be a sassy advice giver in the vain of Oprah.

The A-plots of this episode are both solid and move the story along quite nicely, an issue from past seasons that seems to have been remedied in potentially the last year, and definitely earn the emotional payoff towards the end. Though, like in seemingly every episode thus far this season, the plot focusing on Marshall and Lily is groan inducing and takes away from the episode as a whole. These side-plots, could take up around a third of the screen-time they do and still use some trimming, which is truly a shame because Jason Segel and Alyson Hannigan give it their all. Barney's subplot with his new furry friend works better than it probably should, and  manages to add quite a few laughs in between the heavy nature of Ted's plot, and the just plain unfortunate nature of the Marshall and Lily plot.

Regarding the episode's writing, it is demonstrative of some of the show's issues in recent years: the emotional resonance and slow burn nature of the early seasons remain, but the subtlety that characterized the writing in those same early seasons is all but totally gone. The resolution to the episode regarding a choice Ted has to make about Victoria and Robin is hardly unexpected, but a certain wrinkle to it is, which should set up more drama later on in the year. In addition, the acting in this episode was very well done by all parties, particularly Josh Radnor as a Ted legitimately torn on what to do.

How I Met Your Mother is starting bring things to a close, and is starting to resolve plot threads left dangling (some of which have been unresolved for the better part of a decade), and is doing it well, the show just needs to start giving the entire ensemble solid material to work with as it heads towards, what I'm assuming is, its conclusion.

7/10

Additional Notes:

• Having Nick (the Bad Boy Chef) be the star of cooking show that is struggling to find a suitable catchphrase was pretty funny. "Who's poppin' a chub for some grub?"
• The scenes with Barney helping the dog get laid were much funnier than they probably should have been, notch that one up to Neil Patrick Harris' comedic abilities.