‘Rent Crocodile Dundee 3. I caught it on the cable last night, it totally holds up’
S06E14 Jeez, these were some emotional two weeks on How I Met Your Mother. Or rather, last week considering it was pretty much fun and games until the last two minutes of the episode, then the heartbreak carried over into this week. Yay!
Marshall’s father’s funeral takes the whole gang to Minnesota. They’ve each been assigned a role around Marshall. Lily of course tries to take care of everything with his mom, but she is lashing out. Robin has taken it upon herself to come armed with everything needed to make a funeral go smoothly. Mostly drugs and alcohol. Ted and Barney are in charge of making Marshall laugh. But its no use. Marshall really cared about his dad and nothing is working.
‘I really, really, love you guys. Now I’m gonna go drop a deuce.’
What’s got Marshall so hung up is his father’s last words. “Go rent Crocodile Dundee 3. It still holds up” is not exactly the quote you want your hero to be associated with, but it’s what Marshall has. Upsetting him further is the fact that the rest of his family has decided that the “theme” of the funeral will be last words/memories and that wreaks havoc on him until he discovers a voicemail message his father left him a few days before he passed. Reluctant to listen, Marshall waits until the most appropriate time (right at the end!) to play it. It’s a pocket dial.
Visibly upset, Marshall lashes out at god, questioning how he could take his hero from him and how he could leave him with a pocket dial, but the file keeps playing and eventually his dad leaves the sweetest message. Of course it’s pure luck that his dad left the message, but dammit if I didn’t tear up a little. With the pocket dial static playing through the whole scene, it was on par with HIMYM distinguishing itself from traditional sitcoms. That sound is familiar to anyone with a cellphone, but playing over the dialogue it becomes haunting and mesmerizing. Bravo HIMYM.
‘Let me know if you find my foot cream. That fungus thing is acting up again.’
Since this is an ensemble show, everyone else had to have their moments with their father as well. Marshall challenges them to remember their last words with their old man. It was all fairly funny, if a little sad (and was this also the big hubbub that got Neil Patrick Harris so upset on twitter a few weeks ago?). We don’t ever really know what our last words with people will be, but let’s not focus on the melodramatic. The plot point that foreshadows episodes to come is that Barney is ready to meet his real father. It’ll probably be really emotional and all, but oh this is just too much emotion for one day. Let’s move on. No, I’m not crying again. Shut up.
This episode perfectly blended the raw emotions of funerals. It was funny, heart felt, sympathetic, cheerful and everything else that goes through your mind at a funeral. Barney and Ted tried their best to cheer Marshall up with synthetic laughs but they failed. While Robin was their to help, her grab-all bag couldn’t make him feel better in the end. Even Lily knew better to than to try, so she focused her efforts toward Marshall’s mom. But the thing that brought him out of the funk in the end wasn’t anything anyone else did. It was the memory of his dad. By bringing the laughs, but also having the balls to let Marshall explode, the episode presented one of the best funerals you could possibly hope to film.
Now I’m going to go drop a deuce.
