"How I Met Your Mother" manages a legitimately good episode

Despite a fairly inventive premise and a good cast, "How I Met Your Mother" has too often been content to simply be a standard-issue sitcom, exulting in boorish behavior and riffing on catch-phrases and eschewing anything that might be construed as genuine human interaction. No wonder Entertainment Weekly loves it so much.

(Hey, we've all been at this point somewhere in our lives, right? Am I wrong? Anybody? Or is everyone here just giving your average sitcom reaction shot?)

Last season left us with eternally earnest Ted (Josh Radnor) proposing to Stella (Sarah Chalke), and inveterate womanizer Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) realizing he was kind of in love with Robin (Cobie Smulders), if, in fact, he actually understood the notion of "love."

Tonight's season-three premiere finds Ted realizing, thanks to Marshall (Jason Segel), who's otherwise clueless but fairly attuned to women, that he knows precious little about Stella, and decides that they're only destined for one another if she loves his favorite movie - "Star Wars" - as much as he does. Meanwhile, Lily (Alyson Hannigan) advises Barney on how to win Robin's heart - but can a guy who's heretofore proven himself willing to sleep with anything that traverses his line of periphery persuasively convince anyone with a palpitating heart and something resembling a soul he's capable of change?

There are decent jokes at the expense of TV news's decadent exploitation (Robin's miserable job), and even the show's most simplistic characters are allowed some depth in tonight's episode. Harris is granted a pretty good soliloquy celebrating "bimbos" - a lot of people had him pegged to win the Supporting Actor in a Comedy Emmy last night, and he didn't, but this episode might grant him the opportunity to deliver an acceptance speech a year from now.

- "How I Met Your Mother:" 8:30 tonight, CBS (Channel 2).