While this week's episode of How I Met Your Mother had Ted as merely a supporting character with absolutely no mother storyline, it was still classic HIMYM to us.

Why?  Because the episode used so many of the classic Bays and Thomas storytelling devices:

• Reminiscent of the sandwiches, Future Ted called the upstairs neighbors having loud sex, bagpiping.  We hope they make a clever reference to this in a future episode
• The clever Marshall and Lily fight sequence where copies of the couple fighting around the room appeared.  Felt very HIMYM to us.
• The entire sequence in which Barney explained how he would have handled Lily was nothing short of amazing.  Marshall then attempting to re-enact it?  Ever more amazing.

You can catch up on the full events with our "Bagpipes" recap, but trust us, you need to watch this episode.  Who cares if there was no mother or overall plotline development, it was classic HIMYM.

Now for some of the best How I Met Your Mother quotes from the episode:

Robin: Okay, this is ridiculous. I can't believe these two are still bagpiping
Ted: Enough! It's been six hours1 It must be that new tantric bagpiping that Sting is into
Robin: She keeps yelling at him to play the bigpipes louder, but it sounds like she's bagpiping him pretty hard. There's a glass of water in my bedroom that's vibrating like Jurassic Park
Ted: You have neighbors, so shut the bagpipes up! | permalink

Robin [to Barney]: Why is there bag of panties labeled "April 2006" in your closet?
| permalink

Barney: There are so many great things to do with the human mouth, why waste it on talking? | permalink

Eric Hochberger is the programmer of TV Fanatic, so please forgive his mediocre writing. His programming is far better. Follow him on Twitter and/or email him. Just don't request threaded comments. They're coming.