The Other Guy Looks at 103-111

Gonna respond bullet point style since there's a lot of ground to cover:

• "Sweet Taste of Liberty" -- Holy balls, that was only the third episode?! "WE ARE INTERNATIONAL BUSINESSMEN" is a line I hope to use during an interrogation someday.
• "Return of the Shirt" -- Really the episode I can point to as a defense against the "Why don't you want to get married as much as that guy on 'How I Met Your Mother' does?"-style questioning as this is the one that proved Ted had a shopping list and not an interest in love. Ted's the guy who wants something but doesn't know how to get it and then if he does somehow get it realizes he never wanted it in the first place; Barney knows exactly what he wants and gets it (except, according to Hobbes' tally, sex); Ted & Lilly want nothing because they have each other. This episodes "I know, right? Right? RIGHT?" was particularly annoying. All that said, I liked it quite a bit and think more shows should do past relationship explorations. High Fidelity is one of my favorite films and uses that exploration for its setup.
• "Okay, Awesome" -- *Probably* my favorite episode of season one. I have never seen a show make fun of clubs and clubbing before. That seems very anti-establishment, as most young people who watch sitcoms are brainwashed to believe by default that they can have fun at "Da Club." But not me. I'm quite boring, you see. This was just a tight, well-constructed episode that also showed off what the flashback/narrative style can do in a hybrid sitcom like this. There's a part where Marshall's about to have a celebratory "I escaped from a boring-ass party and now I can have some fun" beer when Narrator Bob Saget suddenly remembers that Marshall had dental work done just prior to that evening. Jason Segel's immediate switch from joy to pain is *as* fun as his dancing. That whole bit worked about as well as anything else in this gem. BUT, there is a big minus here: Samm Levine guests as a nerd who can't get into the club but there is nothing memorable or important about the character. Wasting Samm Levine isn't just something that sounds like a Comedy Central movie, it's also an entertainment crime.
  
• "The Slutty Pumpkin" -- More concept mastery at work here. I really think the show earned the right to its formula: (Outlandishly titled concept/event) + (Robin asking Ted/Barney/Marshall/Lilly to define outlandishly titled concept/event) = Funny episode. We want to know what the slutty pumpkin is and we are perfectly willing to buy that Ted is this desperate, since he told a woman he loved her on their first date already.
  
• "Matchmaker" -- Hobbes said it best: Camryn Manheim FTW.
  
• "The Duel" -- Another classic first season episode. I really, really liked this one, all the stuff about Lilly's apartment and its sudden conversion to a Chinese restaurant, the bit involving Marshall's mix CD, etc. That all worked great. It also had one of the biggest SITCOM JOKES I can recall, when Marshall says to Ted: "Your British phone booth arrived." Marshall gives Ted a pointed look, the audience roars, and the TV Gods are appeased for another sweeps.
  
• "Belly Full of Turkey" -- Probably funny, but definitely one I can't recall.
• "The Pineapple Incident" -- Now, this episode demonstrated (to me, anyway) that maybe the writers are trying a bit too hard to make HIMYM a *classic* sitcom in the same strata as Seinfeld or Friends. There are too many little gimmicks at play, but it is all forgiven because Winnie Cooper is gorgeous, Drunk Ted needed to happen and I'm a sucker for a comic mystery.
• "The Limo" -- For reasons I can't recall, it was with this episode that my crush on Cobie Smulders began.

Overall, this is a strong, strong stretch of episodes, and did exactly what it needed to do to build an audience: be funny, clever and unique. Maybe this show doesn't smack of pure originality, but it puts enough spin on the tropes of yore to make it feel fresh, and the performances really do raise HIMYM a cut above the rest.