What a brilliant idea - take the hackneyed old "clip show" format and use it to present highlights of episodes that never existed. While this is clearly a love letter to the hardcore fans who instantly get the joke, it's also a fantastic exercise in story telling - developing a commentary about becoming stuck in the routines that can characterise relationships. It's also a sly dig at television sitcom lazy storytelling. First the episode subverts the inherent cheapness of the clip show format itself (they probably spent more time and treasure making this pretend clip show than another show would spend making an original single-story episode), and then it demonstrates how easy it is for the audience to fill in the story-telling blanks from sitcom cliches when presented with nothing more than a few visual punch lines. (The "trapped in a western ghost town" bit alone is at least as old as The Brady Bunch.) Oh, and the acting is superb! Bravo, everyone involved.
