The How I Met Your Mother Blog

“See what I got going on here? They’re turkeys, but they’re also hands. Because, later, we’re going to eat turkey, and then I’m going to slap you in your face.”

Bear with me folks, this is going to be a long one. Tonight’s episode not only reaffirmed why I love the show but told a touching story of the enduring power of friendship. It also continued the tension between Ted and Robin that started in Dowisetrepla. It was also the best episode of not just this season but quite possibly the entire series. It was so good because, like all the best episodes of this series, it not only was hilarious and full of memorable quotes, but it had a ton of dramatic characterization. I’m too effusive to hold back so don’t read on if you haven’t seen the episode, spoilers follow. Continue reading…

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“Why do you think I call her Chewbacca?”, “I assumed because she’s loyal, wears shiny belts, and I resemble a young Harrison Ford.”

Over the weekend I watched a bunch of episodes from season 2 with my family. At one point my aunt asked “do people ever actually this close a group of friends?”. That led to a discussion of how idealized sitcom friendships are. Lo and behold, here comes How I Met Your Mother to prove this stereotype wrong. This episode saw Ted with yet another flawed girlfriend, but additionally pointed out the flaws of everyone else. Hilarity ensued and a great episode was had by all.

What Was Good

• I loved the dual-montage of Ted and his girl. The first time is was all romantic love, the second showed Ted shoving the spoon into the girl’s mouth and trying to run away.
• Marshall’s wispy mustache once he was done taking the bar.
• Robin in general. Her quips are excellent.
• Wow, Barney’s childhood sucked.
• The appearance of Lindsay Price who I first saw on Kitchen Confidential. John Cho was on that show too. Each week we’re getting more and more into the six degrees of How I Met Your Mother. I still think Nicolas Brendon is due for a guest role.
• Ted is a correcter! He’s even more like me now.
• Barney got me too. I didn’t see it coming with the Ka-ka-spaniel video he duped Marshall into watching.
• I love Marshall’s singing. He’s done this occasionally since season 1. They are surprisingly catchy.
• They called Barney out on his catch phrases!

What Was Bad

• This episode was funny, but didn’t do anything to move along the plot. Are Marshall and Lily still living with Ted? Their apartment was never mentioned.
• I’m still a little weirded out whenever Ted is just suddenly dating someone. I know we can’t meet them all in real time, but I’m not used to it yet.
• They’re starting to figure out how to handle Robin but she still needs more to do than just make quips.

Favorite Moments

This was a very quotable episode.

“You guys will love her. Lily, she knows all about art. Marshall, she’s open to the possibility of UFOs, Barney, she’s hot. Robin, she’s not hotter than you.”
“It’s a shopping list.”, “For who? A witch building a house in the forest?”
Ted’s “what if” scenarios:

• “One time, in 10th grade, as a joke, I told everyone that my English teacher had sex with me. He’s still in jail.”
• “So I volunteer at the pound. You can’t imagine the rush you get killing an unwanted puppy. I make bracelets out of their collars.”
• “He’s probably going to the urinal. I remember when I had a penis.”

“I was scared for her, I didn’t want her to choke. At first.”
“I’m surprised she didn’t tell you herself at some point. There’s only a finite combination of words in the English language.”
All the loud chewing metaphors:

• “Why do you think I call her Chewbacca?”
• “We had ribs and it sounded like Jurassic Park”
• “What’s in that cereal besides dry twigs and small animal bones?”
• “like a garbage disposal full of dry wall screws.”
• “like someone put a screwdriver in a pencil sharpener.”
• “where are those pretzels from, Ace Hardware?”
• “it sounds like cuff links going up a vacuum cleaner.”

“No, no, sometimes you just sing nonsense sentences like a stroke victim. And what’s worse, they’re catchy.”
“Apple orchard banana cat dance 8-6-6-3.”
“Lawsuit Up!”

Also, Maud, if you’re reading this, was that Miranda Kerr in the Victoria Secret Angel’s “Air Pushup” commercial?

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First, sorry I’m late. I was in NYC this weekend which was fun, but not How I Met Your Mother related. Now, onto the show!

“It’s this sort of inconsiderate, immature jackassery that makes me feel like I’m living in the Real World house. And not the early years when they all had jobs and social consciences. I’m talking about Hawaii and after.”

With that sentiment Marshal and Lily decided that, as a married couple, it was time for them to find their own place. This week’s episode was all about mistakes, Lily’s mistakes, Marshall’s mistakes, Barney being a mistake. The only people not making mistakes were the writers who gave us a tight, guest-star-free, classic How I Met Your Mother episode. Continue reading…

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“Lance Hardwood: Sex Architect”

This week’s episode might have been the best of the season so far. The A and B (and C) plots were all top notch. Much like Michael Scott just a few weeks ago, Marshall was faced with a mountain of credit card debt racked up by his lady. And Marshall could’ve used Jack Donaghy’s advice this week about being brave enough to work within the system. Ted Mosby is a porn star and John Cho is a guest star. It was legendary.

Welcome How I Met Your Blog readers.

Ben mentioned he might link to my recap this week since he’s been pretty swamped lately. If you are visiting here for the first time from his site, welcome! There’s some links on the left for first time viewers and I hope you check out the archives.

What Was Good

• I loved the pacing and format of this episode. It feels like the show is back to form. The two storylines were related and didn’t leave any one character out in the cold. Marshall was the only one sans regular cast member but John Cho is so awesome that it didn’t matter. Seriously, that guy rocks.
• In classic How I Met Your Mother form, this episode poked fun at a very real issue that faces people in their late twenties. Two issues really. The decision to follow your dreams or follow the dollar, and the down side of chronic shopping and debt.
• I liked the return to some classic HIMYM jokes. Robin’s jokes that aren’t funny and just won’t die. Finally an explanation for all of Lily’s boots, Marshall stressing over his career, the yellow legal pad.
• Wendy the waitress is back!
• The guy Marshall is going to work for seems like Barney Stinson #2. How great would it be if he became a show regular? He’d be a great foil for The Barnicle.
• Lily texting Marshall from the bathroom. Classic.
• Lily–and therefore Alison Hannigan–is becoming more and more the Lucille Ball of our times. She’s wonderful.
• The show continues to push the envelope. The entire Ted and Barney story was about porn. Some of the euphemisms were pretty risque for an 8pm comedy as well. Way to go CBS.

What Was Bad

• I can’t really think of anything that was bad. I have no complaints with this episode.

Favorite Moments

“Baby, I have some exciting news.”
“I hope it’s not that you won some kind of race here.”
“I know what kind of plane this is. It’s a BOING!”
“The place I’m taking you has Kobe Lobster. That’s lobster fed with Kobe Beef.”
“You know who else was considered crude and disgusting? Shakespeare. But his themes–love, lust, forbidden desire–were universal which is why his work has stood the test of time. And so will all this. Four hundred years from now some high school drama class will be doing a plucky, spirited production of Beef Party VII.”
“I was drunk and there was a haze of cigars and scotch and Swayze.”
“Yellow legal pad? I ordered fries. Maybe you should use this to write down people’s orders…”

Barney’s Vocab Word of the Week

Not so much a vocab word as a testament to Barney’s deep creativity, he helped create one of the best porno titles ever:

Lance Hardwood, Sex Architect.

Now that’s legendary.Make sure to check back in Thursday for the next thrilling head-to-head match up in Season vs. Season. Who will win?

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“I don’t care. I’ve been with one woman for too long and I need some strange.”

What Was Good

• Pamela Fryman is back!
• Barney’s chart is funny. It’s just pushing the “trying too hard” line though. Although I have a feeling the Mendosa Diagonal is going to enter the general vocabulary…
• The story of how Marshall and Barney met is my favorite. Tricking Barney into thinking he was trying to pick up that stranger was genius.
• We finally saw the scene where Ted and Marshall meet that was described in “Where Were We”. We also saw lesson four of Barney’s lessons for life the night he and Ted met which references back all the way to the pilot.
• I love that when Lily brings up the guy she made out with before she even met Marshall, over seven years ago, Marshall remembers through gritted teeth and when Ted brings up the girl that he made out with the same night Marshall remembers with a proud smile.
• The prolonged sandwich metaphor.
• A World of Warcraft reference! That hits a little too close to home for me. Although it puts me and Ted back in the “alike” column after last week’s hip hop mishap. I’m more than a little bit sad to admit that a) I saw it coming that the female avatar was going to be Ted because…I had a female avatar and b) Blah Blah was a Draenei Warrior and Ted was a Human Mage. Yeah…

What Was Bad

• I hate girls like Blah Blah. They’re not funny, they just make me mad. Who is willing to tell a guy’s lifelong best friend a deep secret at the drop of a hat? I suppose it’s really Ted’s fault, you can’t really blame the stove for burning you if you know it’s hot.
• I’m concerned the show is getting too self referential. It was funny when there was a joke about a character saying “no” a lot in repetition in last year’s finale, it wasn’t as funny tonight.
• With all the girls whispering sexy proposals into guys’ ears that makes them cave in on whatever secret/purchase/favor they’re holding out on has begged the question: what could a girl possibly offer that would make a guy do a 180 like that? Nothing I can think of. It’s becoming a plot device.
• Our favorite friends haven’t aged very well, have they? Although, this is pretty hilarious.

Favorite Moments

“Alright but spoiler alert: it ends with everyone saying ‘aww’. It starts with it too.”
“Dude this black-haired, goth chick stopped by today. WANNA TAP IT!”
“Let them drink their $1 beers. Try this, it’s a pinot noir from Europe. Yeah, I cut it with cranberry juice, it was pretty strong.”
“While you were busy majoring in being freaking beautiful I was starting my own line of handbags.”
“Lily, come on. Lily, come on. Lily…come on.”
“I’m your bro. I’m broda.”
and one of the best, if not most hand-fisted jokes in the series:

Barney: “And tonight you’re going to use The Force to get the hottest chick in this bar into bed.”
Ted: “He’s gonna use force? Because that sounds wrong broda.”

“I don’t need this. I design handbags. I’m a superstar!”
“Where’s my wife?”

Barney’s Vocab Word of the Week

Mendosa Diagonal

–noun

The 1:1 minimum ratio of hotness to craziness as plotted on a line graph a girl must fall above in order to be desirable. As craziness rises, so too must hotness.

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“But she doesn’t like field of dreams!”

This episode finally centered around a Robin storyline. Turns out that despite her best efforts, kids are just not for her. We even saw her as a little girl, refusing to watch cartoons because she just wanted to read Highlights and drink her juice in peace. No wonder she got Ted’s joke in the Milk episode from Season One. Continue reading…

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“No way, no way, no way, it’s a tricycle!”

This is about as wholesome an episode about having sex with two girls can be. Maybe that’s what you get with network TV. Or maybe that’s the way you’d tell your kids the story. Either way, I loved it. I have a history of loving plot lines where my boy gets the girl. And boy howdy did Ted get the girl. Girls actually. Continue reading…

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If you look closely at the epilogue of this week’s episode, which features an old Marshall breaking his promise to never read Lily’s “death letter” and being hilariously busted, you’ll notice a newspaper clipping framed behind his desk. With Hi-Def you can read the headline.

“NYC LAWYER CAPTURES ‘NESSY’”

How awesome. It’s good to know Marshall’s dream is finally realized in his twilight years. I love all these easter eggs the creators put in. Last year, in the episode “Stuff”, the astute viewer caught that the name of Barney’s play was “Suck It Lily”. You could see the title on the playbill during one of the shots of the audience. These details are why the show keeps winning awards.

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Well, tonight’s episode wasn’t quite as awesome as last week. Maybe it was because there wasn’t a whole summer’s build up but I just don’t think there were as many legendary moments.

what was good?

“I’m just jubilant my former paramor is jubilant.”

The gang switches to big words when Gael is around to keep him and his mediocre English in the dark. Ted loses his patience with the “New Yorkers” after a party goes wrong in a moment I’m sure will be an overnight phenomenon across NYC. Barney’s fake-name reminded me of Shawn on Psych giving Gus funny names every week. Marshall’s signature mix of puppy-dog love and deep, deep kink surfaced with his requests for Lily’s just-in-case-I-die letter. Robin has such a big ego that her sex dreams involve her.

what was bad?

The cold open left me a little… cold. While repeat viewings will surely prove me wrong, the guys exploiting Marshall’s superstition to hilarious effect didn’t make me laugh. I don’t know how I feel about Old Marshall and Old Lily. Robin’s storyline wasn’t as strong a B-plot, but it had its moments.

PS. Both Ted and Robin’s hair seemed different this week. Un-styled, and just a little bit puffy. Ted actually looked like I usually do. That isn’t a compliment.

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This was how I looked while watching tonight’s premiere.

So, there it is, “Wait for It”, the season premiere. Despite what other reviewers said, I loved this episode. We did pick up with the “-dary” from last season, but kept going right past it, this whole episode moved at a good clip. We saw Ted making hilariously bad decisions, we saw Barney get jealous over how seriously Ted takes his friendship, we saw Marshall and Lily put ball busting above sensitivity for Ted’s new…art, and we saw a pretty big clue for who the mother might be. I can’t contain the awesome so spoilers might follow. Continue reading…

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