Sadly, the best part of tonight’s episode came after the credits in the hint of what is to come.
Full spoilers ahead, as always.
Marshall is desperate to keep Lily from learning about his judgeship before he can tell her at the right time, so he enlists the help of Ted, Barney and Robin to infiltrate her room and delete the damning text before she can see it. Unbeknownst to any of them, each owes Marshall a “no questions asked” favor to repay ones they had asked him for in the past, so each puts a harebrained plan into effect to break into Lily’s room. Of course, nothing works and all it does is lead to Lily eventually having to check her phone to call Marshall for legal advice against the annoying night desk clerk. Ted comes through in the end by calling on his own no questions asked favor for Lily and makes her smash her phone before getting Marshall’s text. Marshall realizes that he has never kept anything from Lily in the past no matter how big, so he finally gives her the big news, and she reacts about as expected — namely that she’s going to kill him when he finally gets to the hotel.
Nothing really worked tonight, and the epsiode was a major misstep from what we’ve seen over the past few weeks. What started out as a funny/spooky Halloween episode (Lily’s room is apparently haunted by either a serial killer or a male prostitute) quickly abandoned that plot thread and instead focused on the shenanigans of everyone else trying to break into Lily’s room. Unforunately for us, none of those attempts were nearly as fun or interesting as they could have been, and Ted’s pulling a Deus Ex Machina on Lily at the end, made the whole thing a waste of 20 minutes. Sure the flashbacks about how everyone owed Marshall a NQA favor (Robin’s especially) were cute and perfectly in line with the characters, but those short vignettes shouldn’t have been the highlight of the story. Not to mention that it was all for naught due to the fact that Marshall fessed up to everything in the end anyway.
Can we also be done with all the “learning” Barney and Robin keep doing leading up to their wedding? Sure, people are going to get the jitters and cold feet before they get married, but their continual butting of heads over the parts of their personalities they know have always been there is just getting old, and it’s about time they stop focusing on them.
The one really bright spot was a quick mention in the “Next week on …” spot after the credits made light of the fact that the Mother will return and meet another member of the cast. Like I said last week, I want more Mother, and it looks like I’ll get it next Monday. Finally!
Thankfully, almost the whole season until now has been great and really entertaining, and I’m hopeful the show will get its groove back next week. Nothing can be perfect, and I don’t expect that from shows that I love either; let’s just not make tonight a continuing trend.