It’s the beginning of the end for HIMYM, and despite having a few off moments, the episode was incredibly enjoyable and this season could turn out to be the best one yet!
Full spoilers for the episode are ahead.
Barney and Robin spend the time being driven to their wedding by trying to figure out which one of their crazy family members will be the ‘wildcard’ who could do something insane to ruin the event. As they are listing off their various relatives, they are horrified to learn that they both have the same cousin, which leads to much distress over trying to figure out whether or not they are related by blood and thus about to enter into an incestuous marriage. After many frantic phone calls, they find out he was actually Robin’s adopted cousin, so crisis and possible wildcard averted.
Marshall is flying back to New York with Marvin after spending a week with his mother in Minnesotta, and is worried that he will be the one to ruin the wedding since he hasn’t yet had a chance to tell Lilly that he accepted the offer to take on a judgeship, thus derailing their plans to move to Rome together. To make matters worse, his mother posted a picture of him and Marvin on Facebook breaking the news that he is to become a judge, so Marshall scrambles to help her delete the picutre before Lilly sees it. Unfortunately, his mother gets distracted by a gay porn pop up, and Marshall gets in a fight with a female passenger which results in the three of them getting thrown off the plane. The picture gets deleted just before Lilly goes to check her phone, but they find out that there is only one more flight to New York, and both Marshall and the passenger he fought with race off to claim the final seat.
Finally, Lilly, completely annoyed with Ted’s behavior on their road trip upstate, decides to ditch him and take a train instead. Visibly upset at not having seen her son for a week, she is comforted by a stranger in the seat in front of her who turns out to be none other than the Mother. After bonding over cookies (tastefully called “sum bitches”) and trash talking Ted, Lilly realizes that Ted purposely made her take the train in order to deliver the lost locket to Robin in a final attempt to win her back. Desperate to stop him, she gets to the hotel where the wedding will take place just moments after he does and tackles him before he can give Robin his gift. Which really wasn’t the locket, we find out. Ted simply wanted to give her a picutre of all of them from years ago when they first met. Ted reassures Lilly that he and Robin are over, and that he wasn’t planning on doing anything stupid to mess up the wedding. The episode ends with a flashback to a few days earlier where we learn that Ted flew out to California to recover the locket and is indeed planning on doing something crazy and dumb during the wedding weekend.
There was a lot to love here, but the best moments definitely came during the time spent with Lilly and the Mother as they bonded. The two actresses have great chemistry together, and one could easily see them being best friends in real life and not just on the show. Also, watching Lilly freak out and go all Dark Phoenix on the mother when the sum bitches run out had me laughing harder than the show has in probably the past two seasons, and I had to rewind and watch it at least five times. I’m hoping they’ll continue to have each character meet the Mother independently before finally introducing her to Ted.
Marshall’s desperation to get the picture and announcement of his being a judge off Facebook provided a lot of fun as well, especially his mom’s reaction to seeing gay porn on her computer and his fight with the other passenger on the plane. Marvin accidently deleting the picture when nothing else would work felt contrived, but it worked to kick that plot reveal further down the road.
What really annoyed me, though, is the continuation of the “Ted is still in love with Robin” plot point that should have been left behind a few seasons ago when it appeared they finally got over each other. There is really no reason to continue with this subplot aside from making Ted look like a douche sometime during the weeding, and the whole thing just feels tired and stale.
All in all, it was a great episode that had enough funny and great moments to get me excited for the series again — something I was worried about since last season was kind of a drag. Here’s hoping they can keep it just as fun and fresh for the rest of the year.