How I Met Your Mother "Robin"; Dollhouse "Instinct"; Parks and Recreation "Practice Date"

Okay episode of HIMYM this week. Not a lot of laughs, though Ted's lecture to Barney on tips on dating Robin does give Cobie Smulders an opportunity for some nice comedic moments. Subplot of the barrel doesn't do much for me, and the tie-in to the main plot is superfluous at best. Nice to see Lily being a supportive friend to Robin though, in her crisis moment.

Dollhouse, I thought, had a good episode. Despite the telegraphed nature of the main mission-of-the-week storyline, I found myself engaged nevertheless. One part that left me confused though (in the aftermath of the reveal that Echo "remembers" her imprints)...does Echo retain her consciousness and the remnants of her imprinted personality are only in the background after a wipe? I.e. that she's completely her imprinted personality (without her original personality) prior to the wipe? Because she didn't seem to recognize Ballard when he came to take her back to the Dollhouse the first time. Good scene in Echo's heart-to-heart talk with Ballard in the park later in the episode about the tolls of taking down the Dollhouse while retaining her own personality juxtaposed with all her imprints, and offers more insight in that Echo seems to "feel" her previous imprints rather than remember them, though the scene does seem to reach for a higher emotional impact than what it eventually achieved.

Terrific episode of "Parks and Recreation", continuing its fine form this season. The one-upmanship competition among the staffers to see which of them could dig up the most dirt on each other was great, and had the awesome payoff of Tom catching Ron in his late-night jazz gig as Duke Silver. I like the main plot of Anne helping Leslie practice for her first date with Dave. Leslie's rambling of her awful past first dates was hilarious. All in all, a very enjoyable installment indeed. The next episode can't come soon enough!