Ongoing "How I Met You Mother" thread of doom...

[Volpone]

OK. This may ramble a bit. Lot of ground to cover to set things up. Loved this series when it was on the air. I do think I missed the first season or so, but I caught up. Then I started working nights during the last season so I missed the ending. The consensus is that the ending was terrible. I'll get to that. The upshot is that no one shows it in syndication because of this. Until LaffTV got it to shore up its 23 hours a day of "That 70's Show" coverage.

Laff is a crap station. It is run by chimpanzees and retards. They run a 3 hour block of the show 7 days a week (unless they decide to show "Son In Law" or some similar movie on the weekend with no notice). So they burn through a decade long series in, like, a month. BUT! They had the sense to move it to right after "Jeopardy!" So I watch the news, switch to "Jeopardy!" and then roll to HIMYM. AND they: Show a teaser of the next episode during the ads and: Go straight from the end credits of the last episode into the open of the next with no commercial break. So it is very easy to blow 3 hours watching the show. At this point I've still probably missed a few episodes (the whole 21 episodes a week thing) but I've got a pretty good feel for the series.

I always say my measure of a good movie is how long it takes before you start noticing the holes in it. Because there ARE holes. But it it's good, you let them slide. Then, after you've seen it a few times you're like "Hey!..." Or as you're walking out of the theater. Or...[looks at the watch]...20 minutes in. Yay "The Last Jedi."

ANYWHO....

I've watched the series enough that I've not only picked up the holes but want to analyze it; its storytelling technique, what it does right, what it does wrong. Quirks, concessions, idiosyncrasies, etc. And this is where I shall do it. And now, without further ado...to the thread!

TO THE THREAD!!!

 

[Volpone]

So. To recap: The premise of the show is that in 2030, 20something architect Ted Mosby decides to sit his teenage kids down and tell them how he met their mother. It takes around a decade to tell this story and around 9 years to actually get to their mother. Mostly he apparently wants to regale his teen kids with tales of drinking and whoring in early 21st century NYC with his degenerate friends.

Speaking of "Friends"... There are people who would argue this show is an attempt to cash in on the NBC juggernaut "Friends"--a bunch of pretty white 20-somethings, hanging out in NYC at the cusp of the 21st century. HIMYM premiered a year after Friends wrapped. But in between was the BBC series "Coupling." "Coupling" started about midway through "Friends" run and wrapped around the same time. It was done by Dr. Who wunderkind Stephen Moffat. IIRC, its tagline was "It's like 'Friends,' except they're all 'doing it'." HIMYM really has a lot more in common, IMO, with Coupling than Friends. There was an American Coupling, but unlike the American "The Office" no one ever saw it.

But back to the show! Ted's best friend and roommate is Marshall Ericson, a law student from St. Cloud Minnesota. Marshall proposes to his college sweetheart Lily Aldridge in the pilot. Ted and Marshall live in an apartment above a bar called MacLaren's, where they all hang out. At MacLaren's, Ted has been coopted by Barney Stinson, a confirmed womanizer with more issues than "The National Geographic." While they're all hanging out, Ted spies Miss Robin Scherbatsky, a Canadian TV reporter he falls in love with.

Ted asks Robin on a date, screws it up by telling her he loves her--on the first date--steals a blue French horn from the restaurant they ate at to try to get back with her, and does--but does NOT kiss her when he clearly should've. Robin gets added to the gang.

 

[Volpone]

I'm going to come back and flesh a lot of things out later, but for now let's get the basic framework of the story down. Ted, with the help of Lily, is making ground with Robin. Invites her to a wedding. They're on the way out the door when Robin gets a call. Her station's anchor is out so they need her to do the news. It's the opportunity of a lifetime. Ted lets her go and winds up stag at the wedding. OH! I forgot. He was sure he did a +1 on his RSVP but the bride says he didn't. He tries to get Robin in and very nearly breaks up the wedding before Marshall fixes things. In the end, when the bride and groom want to see the date who very nearly ended their relationship and he admits she didn't come, they show him his RSVP, which shows he didn't do a +1. As Teddy Westside ponders this fact and Barney tries to hook up with a 16 (two 8 bridesmaids), he gazes abstractly across the room and locks eyes with... Victoria.

 

[Volpone]

Ted had an amazing night with Victoria, but screwed it up by not getting her number. After some borderline stalker things, he tracks her down, much to her delight (this comes up much later in the series with what's creepy and what's sweet) and they become an item. Robin becomes increasingly jealous of Victoria while Marshall and Lily plan their wedding. Things come to a head when Victoria gets a prestigious pastry scholarship to Germany (she's a pastry chef--that's the capacity she was at the wedding in, which led to earlier hijinks because she was NOT on the invite list). Independently, Ted decides to tell her to go and she decides she's going to stay. Then, when they get together, he asks her to stay and she says she has to go. They decide to do "the long distance thing." That doesn't work out.

Robin has some sort of crisis and invites Ted over after 2am: "Kids, your grandmother always said 'nothing good happens after 2am.' She was right." Ted tells Robin he and Victoria broke up. But then he...goes to the bathroom? And leaves his phone on the table. Victoria (who was supposed to call him about something important but didn't) has called. Unfortunately Robin thought it was her phone and answered. Now Ted has lost both Robin AND Victoria.

 

[Volpone]

Some things happen. (I'm going totally from memory here.) Anchor Sandy Rivers has been introduced. Probably The Pineapple Incident (I may or may not get back to this). Ted decides he wants Robin. So he breaks into her apartment with a string quartet of blue instruments, candles, and roses, and proclaims his love. She shoots him down.

He'd decided this was his last play for Robin. So when it fails...he decides to make another play for Robin--much to his friends' annoyance. Robin starts to reconsider but she's got a big company camping trip coming up for the weekend, where there's a chance there will be a campfire and she'll get a chance to sample Sandy Rivers' delicious wiener.

Oh, and...Oh, and... Marshall has passed the bar. Because he's from semi-rural Minnesota he, of course, wants to be an environmental lawyer [rolleyes]. But Barney has wrecked his only suit just before a big interview and offers to take him to his tailor. It turns out Marshall's new suit is amazing--but obscenely expensive--it was all a trap to lure him into working for Barney's company. What does he do? "Please." Anyhow, Marshall rebels--until he finds out Lily has a shopping addiction AND has ruined an obscenely expensive wedding dress. So Marshall goes to work with Barney--which doesn't suck, but more on that later.

Meanwhile Lily starts to doubt the wedding. She feels like she missed out on a lot of dreams and has applied for an art program in San Francisco. She goes to the interview in Marshall's Fiero but gets a flat and calls Ted, who has a big date with his "perfect woman." (He has very specific interests in a perfect woman.) He shows up, changes her tire, and after thinking he's talked her out of her insanity, she peels off to the interview, abandoning him. After trying to get a ride back for his dream date, he winds up calling Robin, who shows up in the news van. As she drops him off he realizes he wants her, not the "perfect wife" and blows off his date. Meanwhile Lily gets accepted into the art program and, after a big fight, leaves Marshall to go to San Francisco (where the program is).

OK. Caught up. Ted doesn't want Robin to bone Sandy in a tent so he enlists one of Barney's conquests to teach him how to do a rain dance. Because if it rains hard enough, a camping trip will get cancelled.

You can't do a rain dance to get a girl.

But he does. And he gets the girl. Gives her sweet, sweet love. Goes home. To learn that Lily has dumped his best friend.

This is probably a good stopping point. Eventually Marshall and Lily get back together as Ted and Robin break up, but that's another story we'll get to.

 

[Colonel Kira's Left Tit]

Exactly how drunk are you?

 

[CaptainWacky]

I like Cobie Smulders.

 

[Colonel Kira's Left Tit]

All joking aside, I liked the show, but that last season long wedding escapade was annoying.

 

[Volpone]

:shrug: I really need someplace to talk about the artistic and technical aspects of this show and I've already gone on too much about it on Facebook, so I'm going to stick it here. And maybe I don't need to get the framework of the series down before I get to talking about the subtle nuances, parallel plots, and storytelling devices from the particular episodes, but I want to.

Anywho, Season 2 has Robin and Ted together and Marshall broken up with Lily. Everyone tries to help Marshall through this difficult time in their own way and we learn that Robin is a "gun nut." Barney decides to take him under his wing-man, but keeps stealing his girls (this is actually one of the bits I wanted to talk about. In the end Barney takes Marshall to a bar called "The Scorpion and the Toad," which is a fable where a scorpion gets a ride across a stream from a toad, but stings the toad to death even though it means he'll drown because it is his nature. And Barney apparently steals all of Marshall's girls because that's his nature). Eventually Lily comes back (actually a few episodes earlier but this episode is where she asks him to take her back) and pretends she's happy but it turns out she's miserable and misses Marshall. She tries to get back together but he rebuffs her.

Later Marshall has a date with a hot barista. Ted and Barney warn him off because she has "the crazy eyes." Things happen to make everyone think she is, in fact, crazy, but it turns out a jealous Lily is behind them. As she apologizes to Marshall, they reconcile, but they forget about the hot barista, who trashes Ted and Marshall's apartment, revealing she is crazy after all. Then we ramp up to the wedding. Ted plans a tasteful bachelor party which Barney coopts for a debaucherous hotel room stripper, ruining the evening. Marshall furiously blows up at him and Lily reveals that, when he heard about their breakup, he immediately flew to San Francisco, tracked her down, scolded her, revealed he'd been cock-blocking Marshall to keep them together, and given her a plane ticket back to New York. All is forgiven and Marshall makes Barney co-best man.

The wedding goes horribly awry before returning to their dream wedding at the last minute. Barney reveals himself to be more of a romantic than he pretends to be, and Ted and Robin reveal they broke up. Somewhere around this point, Barney starts to realize he has feelings for Robin--although hooking up with her would be strictly against the "Bro Code" because she'd dated his bro, Ted.

 

[Volpone]

All joking aside, I liked the show, but that last season long wedding escapade was annoying.

See, it's just the opposite for me. Maybe in part because I only saw the first part of it when it aired, but to me the finale pulls everything together and wraps it all up. I mean, then it rips it wide open and shits on it (or at least that's the prevailing opinion that I'll talk more on later) in the last half hour or so, but I quite enjoy the last season.

 

[Volpone]

Anyhow, I do have to backtrack for a few things. At first I skipped them because they aren't the major points, but thinking about it, they're relevant enough that they need to be addressed:

Barney's origin: Back when Ted was dating Victoria, a videotape surfaced of Barney, back before he was awesome. As a hippie barista on his way to join the Peace Corps, a Yuppie suit stole his girlfriend and the video was of him proclaiming his love for her. Barney storms out and eventually surfaces at the bar where he agrees to tell his tale of woe in exchange for embarrassing stories from the rest of the gang. In the end, he reveals he went out and nailed the girl and is now going to continue being awesome. This episode (I think) introduces Marshall's tendency to create games for the gang to play.

Barney's Dad, Bob Barker: So Barney's Mom was a whore and as a kid he didn't know who his dad was (this does get retconned a bit, later in the series). "The Price is Right" is on TV so his Mom tells him Bob Barker is his dad. Barney has decided to go on "The Price is Right," win everything, and then reveal himself to his dad. In the end, he just congratulates Barker on his long and successful run as the show's host. When his friends ask him why he changed his mind he says "You go through your whole life believing one thing, it would be kind of hard to suddenly find out it wasn't true. I couldn't do that to Bob." But they all know what he's really saying.

Slap Bet: Barney offers to take the gang to a new Sharper Image to buy them useless expensive gadgets, but when Robin realizes this entails going to a mall, she refuses to go and will not say why. Marshall surmises she was married at a mall and has a secret marriage while Barney figures she did porn (I forget how a mall factors into that). Barney wants to make a bet for some obscene amount of money but Marshall demurs, so they settle on a "slap bet"--the winner gets to slap the loser. Lily thinks this is childish--until they agree to make her the Slap Bet Commisioner. Barney eventually tracks down a video that clearly appears to be porn, but when Robin realizes that's what he thinks, she makes them watch the rest of the video. It is a music video. As a teen in Canada, Robin was "Robin Sparkles," a pop star in the vein of Debbie Gibson or Tiffany and she was forced to go on an extended shopping mall performance tour. Having slapped Marshall prematurely after thinking he won the bet, the Slap Bet Commisioner decrees that Marshall gets to slap Barney 5 times at any point in the future.

The Atlantic City wedding that wasn't. When Lily realizes how ugly her wedding is going to be after she ran off just before their first planned wedding, they decide to elope to Atlantic City. They round up the gang, only to find out that Atlantic City isn't like Vegas and you have to wait to get married. They almost convince a judge grant an exemption to marry them until he realizes they had split for a time the previous year. Then they realize a ship's captain can marry them in international waters. The catch is that it will cost $3,000 to hire the ship. Barney, having a previous gambling addiction, proceeds to play a bizarre game against a number of middle aged Asian businessmen. In the final play, Marshall has figured out the game and realizes that if Barney splits his chips and picks the jellybean he can double his money. This turns out to be true, Barney wins, and they are all set to be married at sea when Marshall and Lily realize they need to do a real wedding. The captain misunderstands and marries them, but ad hoc "un-marries" them.

Before Robin and Ted broke up, Ted had planned to move into Robins. Barney did not approve and stole the moving van with all Ted's stuff. Living together, Ted realizes Robin has control issues and, when he recovers his stuff, he moves back in with Marshall and Lily who, it turns out, were not able to survive without him. Later, when they were on a date and talking about their plans for the future, Robin and Ted realize they have radically different goals and don't work as a couple. This will come back into play later in the series.

 

[Volpone]

After Ted and Robin break up, Robin goes to Algeria--and comes back with Gael, a hunky hippie masseur dingbat. Ted is jealous, Barney tries to talk sense into her, and Marshall & Lily...fall in love with him, in spite of their best intentions. Long story short, Robin realizes she's overcompensating (or whatever) and ditches Gael and goes back to being her old self. Meanwhile, Ted goes out hooring in response to Robin's new boyfriend--and comes back with a hangover and a butterfly tramp stamp.

[DISCLAIMER: I HAD TO CHEAT AND LOOK UP WHAT HAPPENS NEXT HERE--THIS PART ISN'T ENTIRELY FROM MEMORY]

Robin reveals an ex from Canada, Simon (James Van Der Beek), who dumped her, is in town. He's now a loser in a dead-end job and she's all set to show him what he missed--but when he shows up, she falls for him all over again. It turns out he was in a video with her. Barney points out he wasn't in "Let's Go To The Mall" and Simon says he was in the follow up single. This, of course, leads Barney to madly dash out of th ebar in search of said video. He fails to find it. Simon breaks her heart again. She's left drinking alone in the bar after everyone--including Ted goes home. Barney shows up and comforts her. So she takes him back to her place, where she shows him the video, "Sandcastles in the Sand" (ROBIN SPARKLES 2, Y'ALL!) And they watch it over and over..."until they stopped watching it." Barney and Robin hook up.

[And now we're back]
Next day they both agree this was a terrible mistake and never to talk about it again. Nonetheless, Barney is wracked by guilt for violating the "Bro Code" by sleeping with a bro's ex. He enlists Marshall to find a loophole but Marshall can't find one. Feeling guilt, he shanghai's Ted from his birthday for a Vegas trip of debauchery. Ted reveals he knows because Robin told him--and ends his friendship with Barney.

Later, Ted gets in a car accident. Everyone drops everything to rush to the hospital, where Ted is revealed to be miraculously unharmed, but when Barney gets the news, he drops everything and, not being able to get a cab, runs the entire way to the hospital. Within sight of the hospital...he gets hit by a bus. At this point Ted and Barney patch things up...and I may have to look up what the next significant milestone is. That or just jump forward to Ted and Stella.

 

[Volpone]

[BRIEFLY CHECKS THE CHRONOLOGY] No, yeah. Definitely Ted and Stella.

As you recall, Ted got an ill-advised butterfly tramp stamp. And the dermatologist(?) he goes to to get it laser removed is cute and witty and interesting. Everyone explains that it is a terrible idea to pursue her with an "Inception" style nesting string of stories of bad ideas the gang pursued. Nonetheless, Ted goes after her. There are hiccups. You can't date a client. She has a kid so she has no time. She lives in (gasp) New Jersey--and has no desire to live above a bar in New York, but they manage to make it all work. Ted proposes--but he insists on bringing Robin to the Wedding. Robin is living in Japan as a foreign correspondent at this point (and I see I need to back up on this). When Stella finds out, she demands Ted uninvite her but Barney sabotages this because he's hoping to hook up with Robin again. In a Tedlike attempt to fix things, he instead invites Stella's ex, karate instructor Tony to the wedding. When Stella puts her foot down, Ted agrees to uninvite Robin while Stella sends Tony on his way. While Robin agrees that it is super weird for her to be at the wedding, Stella disappears, having patched things up with Tony and left Ted at the altar.

Oh, yeah! Robin is a TV news anchor. How'd she wind up in Japan? I'm glad you asked. Turns out Robin's job was terrible. So she quit it. (Shit, that doesn't tie together the way I thought it did. Oh well.) She thought she had another job lined up, but it turned out she didn't. But while she didn't get that job, she got an offer to work in Japan. That job sucked, her co-anchor was a monkey. Didn't really go anywhere. BUT! At a later point, she finally gets to going through her fan mail from the old job and finds something from the Department of Immigration, telling her that if she doesn't find work in a short time--in her profession--she'll be deported.

When Marshall considers her marrying and American, Barney starts to get down on his knee to propose, but quickly recovers when Marshall realizes that would take too long. At this point he suggests an *awesome* video resume like his--which he then shows the gang. Amazingly, he seems super cool in it without actually doing anything--and all the off-camera voices sound suspiciously like him. Since she has nothing to lose, Robin asks him to make her a video resume.

When this turns out to be silly, Robin makes the hail Mary pass and applies to be the Lotto girl. She doesn't get it. The gang is sad that she has to go back to Canada while Barney feigns indifference. Then he keeps her on edge with a tale of how he finished her video resume, shopped it around, rejected some offers, and eventually got her a job on a new morning show, "C'mon, Get up, New York!" This leads to new adventures, but we'll get to them in another post.

 

[Fun Lovin' Dave]

This show was never more than a half-effort watch. Never spun my wheels.

 

[Volpone]

It's tricky to try and do a quick synopsis of this series, because I want to stick to the high points, but keep needing to backtrack when I realize some important point was set up earlier in the series.

For example, even before Lily went to San Francisco, it was Marshall's dream to be an environmental lawyer but Barney trapped him into working for his company (which is loosely defined early in the series but winds up being Goliath National Bank).

After Ted and Robin broke up, Robin ran off to Algiers. Or Argentina. Something with an A and a G. She comes back with dreadlocks and a hunky hippie massage boyfriend named Gael. This eventually ends and Robin goes back to her old self, but in the process Ted goes out and gets hammered and hooks up with a girl who talks him into getting a tattoo. Just before blacking out, Ted realizes the tattoo artist is the girl's ex. He wakes up relieved that he doesn't have flames on his bicep--and later horrified, much to his friends' amusement--to discover he has a butterfly tramp-stamp.

This is worth mentioning because ultimately he goes to a dermatologist named Stella to get the tattoo removed and eventually woos and wins her. Meanwhile, Barney hooks up with Robin and feels terrible about it because he broke the "Bro Code." He hires Marshall to find a loophole but there isn't one. Ted finds out and ends their friendship.

Ted gets in a car accident and everyone rushes to the hospital to find him basically unscathed. When Barney finds out, he can't get a cab so he runs the entire way there--only to get hit by a bus across the street from the hospital. This makes Barney and Ted patch things up.

Things happen. Ted is Ted. Stella has a kid and lives in New Jersey. Ted hates New Jersey. He drags the gang out to Stella's house and there's a big fight because Ted thinks Stella's going to move to New York. They have a fight before they patch things up and Ted agrees to move to New Jersey to be with Stella and her kid. Meanwhile, Robin hates her job and quit it, thinking she had a different job. Turns out she didn't--the had an audition that she didn't get. But she did get a job as a foreign correspondent--in Japan.

So Robin's in Japan. Ted's getting married to Stella. Barney wants to get back together with Robin. Ted invites Robin to the wedding. Stella finds out and forbids it, but because Barney's plans to nail Robin involve her being at the wedding, he neglects to stop her from getting on the plane when he calls her. Somehow, Ted decides the best way to fix this is to bring Stella's ex, karate instructor Tony to the wedding. Stella is outraged and is set to send them both home but Ted wants to break it to Robin. Robin turns out to be relieved and everything seems back on course--until Ted finds a letter from Stella. She still had feelings for Tony and left Ted at the altar to go back to New York with him. Barney almost managed to hook up with Robin, but instead wound up in a BDSM threeway with some skank and Stella's sister.

 

[Volpone]

OK. I see I've covered Barney roping Marshall working for an evil megacorp instead of becoming an environmental lawyer. I did forget to mention that Ted's architecture firm had landed an important bank building in Spokane that they were in danger of losing because their senior partner's plan looked like a giant penis. Well when all seemed lost, Ted whipped it out (his plans, not his penis--for a building that did not look like his--or anyone else's penis) and saved the deal. Just about this time, Barney's evil megacorp acquired Goliath National Bank and were looking for someone to design their new office building. Barney put in Ted's name but then tried to renege when a Swedish competitor was going to put his office in the head of a giant steel Tyrannosaurus that breathed fire if a button on his desk was pushed--and had a strip club in it. In the end, Barney did the right thing and Ted wound up working with Marshall and Barney.

So. That. The project got killed. But Marshall didn't want to tell Ted, so they cooked up an elaborate ruse to make Ted think he still had a job until the contractual period ran out. Meanwhile, Robin, having quit her job in Japan, finds out she will be deported if she doesn't get a job in broadcasting in...2 weeks. Barney offers to make her a video resume and she takes him up on it, but then walks out during the filming. With no other options, she applies to be the Lotto girl, but bombs the audition. As she prepares to be deported, Barney reveals he completed her video resume, shopped it around, and got her a job on a new morning show, "C'mon, Get up New York!" Marshall and Barney try to find something to keep Ted around at GNB but he screws it up by being Ted and gets fired, but he uses this as impetus to go out and start his own design firm.

 

[Volpone]

Again, I'm getting ahead of myself. For reasons I can't remember--probably because she's just back from Japan (Robin moves in with Ted (Marshall and Lily have bought an apartment with slanted floors that is downwind from a sewage treatment plant). But they aren't getting along. Then they realize that if they just have sex their life will be tolerable. This all drives Barney nuts because by now he's realized he's in love with Robin.

Later, Ted starts his own design firm--run out of the apartment. He hires an intern. Barney is thrilled because he expects Ted to hit her like Monica Lewinsky--but then apalled that Ted has hired a dude. And even more appalled when Robin starts hitting the intern...like Monica Lewinsky? Shit, I don't know where the story goes after this. Robin gets a cohost named Don but I think I may have to cheat and go see what else happens with the story.

 

[Volpone]

They changed the lineup around on LaffTV so I'm not binging on this anymore, so I've lost a lot of my interest in talking about the show, but in the name of completeness, I shall soldier on:
Ted and Robin did not work out, freeing up Barney and Robin. This has to eventually fall apart too...because the show kept getting great ratings so it kept getting renewed and they had to keep coming up with stories. So Barney and Robin break up. Then Robin gets a co-anchor, Don. At first she idolizes Don but then she realizes he's given up and she is disillusioned. But like everyone else, Robin wins Don over so he tries to become a better person and eventually Robin and Don hook up.

...

Crap. Where does it go from there? There's some stories but nothing really happens until Robin gets a plum anchoring offer in Chicago. She decides to pass it up so she doesn't have to break up with Don--so the offer goes to Don, who takes it. Distraught, Robin moves back in with Ted, getting Marshall and Lily's old room. (I can't remember if they're in their apartment at this point or at the house Lily's grandparents gave to her in Long Island.

Meanwhile, did I mention Ted became an architecture professor? Ted became an architecture professor. And then the Goliath National Bank Headquarters got brought back and Barney coaxed Ted into coming back as its architect.

Which brings us to Zoey and Norah and Kevin and a bunch of other stuff leading up to the home stretch, but I think I'll get to that later.

 

[Volpone]

While I'm sketching out major plot points and lines, I realized I needed to backtrack a second to a couple things that factor into the rest of the story from when Robin and Barney break up: First off is The Playbook. Up to this point in the series, The Bro Code has been Barney's key reference--how bro's should behave toward one another. He briefly loses Ted's friendship for violating the bro code by hooking up with Robin. Well for the second half of the series, we find out about The Play Book--Barney's tome of pickups to score with women. This will come up later.

The other thing, Barney goes back to his old ways of one night stands while Robin is still coping with the breakup, so she sics a relationship author on him to drive him crazy. She has a rule of no sex until the 20th date--or somesuch--so Ted helps Barney devise a "Super Date" which will pack all the romance of 20 dates into 1 night. Robin is just about to go on her first date with Don when Ted lets slip the Super Date. This upsets Robin because Barney never did anything like that for her so Barney fixes it by sending Robin on the Super Date and promising not to have sex with the relationship author. This drives her so crazy that she makes increasingly tempting offers to the point where Barney has to jump into the river to save his sanity.

OK. Now that that's out of the way:
Zoey. Ted is designing the new GNB, which will be built on the site of the Arcadian Hotel, a decrepit old eyesore. Unfortunately Zoey, a crazy chick with a rich husband, is leading a protest to save The Arcadian. Ted met her before realizing this and developed a crush on her. Oh, that reminds me, Marshall has quit his job with GNB because he wants to fulfill his dream of being an environmental lawyer. More on that later. Ted is in danger of screwing up the project over this girl so Barney outs him to her. In spite of this, they continue to date. Zoey eventually hires Marshall to sue to save the Arcadian, but we may get to that later. Ultimately, though, the Arcadian will be demolished and Ted and Zoey will break up (after Zoey has left her rich husband for him).

Meanwhile, around this time Robin is having an un-Valentine's Day get together with some workmates and Barney attempts to pick up one of them, Norah. Robin tries to push them together despite Barney's protests. Barney eventually agrees and becomes serious with Norah. At this point Robin realizes that she still has feelings for Barney and becomes increasingly jealous of Norah, which ultimately leads her into court ordered anger-management counseling with Kevin, who she winds up dating--after they get over the impropriety of a psychologist dating his patient. As all this happens, Marshall's Dad has died of a heart attack and Lily is pregnant with their first child.

 

[jack]

:shrug: I really need someplace to talk about the artistic and technical aspects of this show and I've already gone on too much about it on Facebook, so I'm going to stick it here. And maybe I don't need to get the framework of the series down before I get to talking about the subtle nuances, parallel plots, and storytelling devices from the particular episodes, but I want to.

Anywho, Season 2 has Robin and Ted together and Marshall broken up with Lily. Everyone tries to help Marshall through this difficult time in their own way and we learn that Robin is a "gun nut." Barney decides to take him under his wing-man, but keeps stealing his girls (this is actually one of the bits I wanted to talk about. In the end Barney takes Marshall to a bar called "The Scorpion and the Toad," which is a fable where a scorpion gets a ride across a stream from a toad, but stings the toad to death even though it means he'll drown because it is his nature. And Barney apparently steals all of Marshall's girls because that's his nature). Eventually Lily comes back (actually a few episodes earlier but this episode is where she asks him to take her back) and pretends she's happy but it turns out she's miserable and misses Marshall. She tries to get back together but he rebuffs her.

Later Marshall has a date with a hot barista. Ted and Barney warn him off because she has "the crazy eyes." Things happen to make everyone think she is, in fact, crazy, but it turns out a jealous Lily is behind them. As she apologizes to Marshall, they reconcile, but they forget about the hot barista, who trashes Ted and Marshall's apartment, revealing she is crazy after all. Then we ramp up to the wedding. Ted plans a tasteful bachelor party which Barney coopts for a debaucherous hotel room stripper, ruining the evening. Marshall furiously blows up at him and Lily reveals that, when he heard about their breakup, he immediately flew to San Francisco, tracked her down, scolded her, revealed he'd been cock-blocking Marshall to keep them together, and given her a plane ticket back to New York. All is forgiven and Marshall makes Barney co-best man.

The wedding goes horribly awry before returning to their dream wedding at the last minute. Barney reveals himself to be more of a romantic than he pretends to be, and Ted and Robin reveal they broke up. Somewhere around this point, Barney starts to realize he has feelings for Robin--although hooking up with her would be strictly against the "Bro Code" because she'd dated his bro, Ted.

This is why I like you, and often read your whole posts. You do go on, but that's what this forum is for.

Good on you.