One of the downsides of watching a traditional sitcom like How I Met Your Mother regularly is that the show recaps itself for the less serious viewer. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, after all most people might not be able to watch a show every week on the dot and they may need the refresher. They might have to take the kids to soccer practice or meet up with friends while being social (what a bunch of losers, talk about not have priorities in check, am I right?). This only becomes a problem when you’re a handsome television viewer (you have to be handsome to read this recap) and you’re already aware of everything.
Like this week. We remember Marshall’s dad died. We remember Barney is having father issues as well. Ted and Zoey have a fundamental difference about the building Ted is designing. Granted, I know this is a sitcom and viewers who don’t tune in every week need the reminder and more serial shows like Breaking Bad (as opposed to the episodic HIMYM) don’t recap in show. This was just a little thing I noticed this week in fairly weak episode. But fear not! The producers have some special stuff planned for us in the weeks to come.
“The only debate we’ve had about Tommy Boy is whether its awesome or super awesome. That’s love, bitch.” -Lily
The big story of the week was Marshall finally manned up and quit his job at GNB. There was a position open at the environmental firm and Lily gave him the go ahead to take it. The only problem was that by the time he took the job the position had been filled and he was forced to take an unpaid internship. But his enthusiasm was more than enough to carry him over.
Meanwhile Zoey and Ted are still dating (guess we all sort of forgot about that) and apparently they fight all the time. Like about everything: hanging up the phone, literary allegories in Tommy Boy, sex. But since Ted is the douche he is (though a lovable douche) he accepts it all as a “challenge.” Like the small stream that slowly wears away at the mountain, Ted’s resolve eventually reaches a limit and he realizes that he needs some support.
“Is that how support feels? It feels so warm and wonderful.” -Ted
That’s all fine and dandy, but the real star of this episode was Lily. Lily managed to tie everything together in a very prominent role that we haven’t seen her take much this season. She was there to support Marshall but she could only do so much. And her support of Ted was so warm to him that it made him realize he needed someone who supported him. It was such a deeply sweet and well written role in the story that I’m almost willing to overlook the superficial problems I had with the episode.
On the other side are Barney and his daddy issues. He apparently took Marshall quitting very roughly and Robin was convinced he had abandonment issues on top of the daddy issues. But Barney didn’t. He just really wanted to get Marshall back with an exploding meatball sub. That’s one of the reasons I really like Barney as a character. He’s genuinely superficial, he very, very, very rarely shows his true emotions and all the other characters realize that. I love it. But as we learned, that might change soon as we get closer to the finale. And it’ll be all the more dramatic.
We’ve been teased with some big changes coming to HIMYM. And since not much happened with this episode that just means the remaining four episodes will be that much more jam-packed.
