How I Met Your Mother Review: And The Band Played On
With Robin having agreed to marry Barney, it was time to start planning the wedding this week on How I Met Your Mother.
Lily - already on edge thanks to Marvin's stubborn bowels - did not respond well to having her thunder stolen by Ted and so the battle to book a "Band or DJ" began.
While the momentum of the episode was a slow build, culminating with a great Mother teaser at the end, the main cast took awhile to hit its stride. Lucky for us, Robin's father is now fun! Ray Wise had some of my favorite How I Met Your Mother quotes of the episode, displaying a surprising new side to Robin's usually hard-nosed father.
Barney did his best to keep things light by dying his hair and saving Fluffernutter's life, but tonight's episode blindsided us with some somber subject matter.
As Lily got Ted to admit that he still was not okay with Robin marrying Barney, I think I could hear a collective sigh ring out from Mother fans everywhere. While Ted's inability to move on was tiresome and nothing we haven't seen before, Lily's admission about sometimes not wanting to be a mother blindsided me. Fans may be critical of this left field statement, but it did give Alyson Hannigan the opportunity to show off just how good an actress she can be.
Thankfully, in the end Ted, seemed to come to his senses and was able to just be happy for his two friends - but not before we were treated to a great montage of the times he was most hurt in his life. My favorite of which was the spilled matzos ball soup incident.
Robin got to show off her serious side, too, as she reprimanded her father and pleaded with him for some sort of normalcy. I also liked how she was so moved by Barney's ability to get her father to apologize to her for the first time.
Marvin finally got some relief at Marshall's expense. I'm sure the smile of satisfaction on his little face mirrored that of fans as we were treated to another glimpse at Ted's future wife when he watched her play bass at Robin and Barney's future wedding.
Initially suspect, after looking at the episode as a whole, I was rather pleased with the show's first night back in the new year. What did you think?
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February 4th, 2013 5:18 AM
please so more round tables for himym! i love the reviews on this site for all my favourite shows but i'm always a little disappointed that there is no round table for this show, they are always entertaining. specially since gossip girl got weekly editions, and this show definitely deserves more recognition! just a thought.
Rank: Guest Star
January 16th, 2013 10:12 PM
Did anyone noticed the girl standing next to Ted in the train. She was the same girl Robin set up with Barney one episode where she was his wing man but Barney left her and went with Robin to her apartment to play Battle Ship. LOL!!!
Solid episode. Ray Wise was the highlight. Other than that only a few laughs. At least we get to see a mother hint at least.
Rank: Recurring Character
January 16th, 2013 1:36 PM
Great episode ! I particularly loved the "confetti" incident lol (holy confetti !) and the emotional scene on the roof with Lily and Ted. And I think you guys are quite severe with Ted, he thought that Robin was the one, and it can be really hard to move on if you still haven't met anybody else good enough to replace "the one", I can relate to that.
Super excited that we now know how the Mother and Ted run into each other and still find it weird that Robin and Barney are getting married, but it seems it's really happening as Robin and her father are dancing at the wedding !
Rank: Regular Character
January 15th, 2013 4:35 PM
Still god awful but there's the promise of improvement in the future.
January 15th, 2013 3:56 PM
Ted your a douche move on from robin and you and marshall need to better friends to barney,whats happened to you?! & barney and robin u were awesome cant wait for next week :)
January 15th, 2013 11:47 AM
It was great finding out the mother in the band was so cool
Rank: Guest Star
January 15th, 2013 11:07 AM
this was one of the funny show's glad bareny did not killed the bunny.
my heart broke when liiy siad some times wish was not an mother
Rank: Regular Character
January 15th, 2013 10:52 AM
First of all - Ray Wise was great, but I just can't mentally accept anyone besides Eric Braeden as Robin's dad.
Second - The best scene was undoubtedly Lily and Ted on the roof. That was probably one of Alyson Hannigan's best pieces of work on the series, she NAILED it.
Third - that being said, talk about 1 step forward, 5 steps back. It's like everything that the last episode accomplished was undone by this episode. I was finally beginning to root for Ted again and there he went, pining and whining for Robin again...
Fourth - given that we already knew that the mom was at the wedding, really, finding out she was in the band at the wedding didn't really gratify me. At this point, I need more than the crumbs the writers are throwing at us.
Rank: Regular Character
January 15th, 2013 8:46 AM
Cobie Smulders, have some DayQuil and fix your voice!
January 15th, 2013 7:25 AM
I feel like I'm an in abusive relationship when it comes to this show. Ted is becoming more and more unlikable by the episode and I find myself caring more about the rest of the cast than him. And that's saying a lot given the mostly sub-par performances given by Segel and Hannigan this season. I feel as if they're playing Hangman with the mother and throwing out one appendage at a time and I find myself not even intrigued by this recent mother teaser; instead I find myself annoyed that I've been strung on this long.
If they renew this for yet another season after what's already been confirmed then that's 9 years down the drain... At which point I'll find myself only tuning into the confirmed final episode of this massive time suck. Heck at this point any mother reveal will almost certainly be a letdown after all this build up because let's be honest here, the person Ted has described all these years, wouldn't fall for the Ted they've developed.