Some of you may recall that Britney Spears recently appeared on “How I Met Your Mother” as a semi-crazy receptionist who fell in love with Ted, and was eventually taken advantage of by Barney.

She will be making a return appearance in the near future, which isn’t terribly surprising since her first guest spot on the show garnered huge ratings.

What will her return involve? Don’t have a clue at this point, but my guess would involve some kind of retribution for Barney being…well…Barney.

Dowisetrepla (se03ep07)

This week’s episode of How I Met Your Mother seemed to be one of those shows that was necessary to move the plot into a new direction at the expense of being all that funny. Lilly and Marshal get a new apartment. That’s the entire episode. Everything is focused on that, with the foreshadowing that it is a mistake.

There is is a bit with Ted where he pretends he’s a CSI investigator, and another bit with a comically large bottle of champagne, but the majority of the episode is spent reminding us that Lilly had tons of credit card debt, and that Marshal will call buying this apartment one of the 3 biggest mistakes of his life.

So, you can expect this apartment to play a role in the rest of the season (assuming there is one - what with the writer’s strike). All in all, there wasn’t much going on this episode, and what was going on was moderately funny, but nothing special.

Grade: B-

Everything I praised How I Met Your Mother for last week was completely thrown out the door this week.

This is the biggest problem I have with this show - and it may be something that no one cares about but me - but this episode was filled with highly inappropriate stuff to be telling your kids. Last week weed was replaced with sandwiches, so that the kids listening to the story that their father is telling (the entire premise of the show) won’t know what he’s talking about - this week, Ted spends the entire episode telling his kids about the lovely world of pornography.

From Barney finding a porn with Ted Mosby in it, to the gang actually attending a porn convention - there is a ton of stuff in this episode that Ted just flat out shouldn’t be telling his children. This inconsistency is something I find really annoying and hurtful to the show. It can be played to great comic effect, like it was last week, but as soon as the writer’s feel like they can’t write around it, they just throw the premise of the show out the door.

The second plot for the episode, though, was much better. Marshal has to choose between his dream job of saving the environment, or being a sleazy corporate lawyer that makes the big bucks. His seduction into the world of being a corporate lawyer was very funny, evne if it was pretty predictable.

Overall I found this episode to be pretty disappointing.

Grade: B-

Season 03 Episode 05

This is the second “how everyone met” episode of a show I’ve seen this year. The first being that episode of My Name Is Earl a few weeks ago. The Earl episode was good…but the How I Met Your Mother episode was great.

In this episode Ted brings a new girl (who older Ted remember the name of) into the group, and they end up telling this crazy woman how they all met. One of the things that I’ve found the most interesting about the show this year is how they’ve started really playing on the fact that Ted is telling this story to his kids. Having Ted and Marshal “eat a sandwich” in college really played well, and it’s the type of thing they need to do more often. I’m also a big fan of going into the future, which they’re doing more of this season as well.

The different origins of how they met are all entertaining, and Barney has a few choice moments in this episode as well - particularly his on screen “hot vs. crazy” chart.

Good stuff.

How I Met Your Mother is continuing to be a strong, entertaining show, and I’m glad to see that the show is firing on all cylinders.

Grade: A