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2011-04-19
Never thought you’d see the day Barney Stinson actually considers growing up? Yeah, me neither. But last night on How I Met Your Mother, Barney may have taken his first step towards accepting that he can’t party hard for the rest of his life.
“Hopeless” saw the return of guest star John Lithgow as Barney’s estranged father, Jerry. Throughout the episode, Barney strived to pull the fun-loving “crazy Jerry” out of his dad in hopes of reconnecting. Jerry invited Barney along on a fishing trip with his other son, but Barney suggested he join the gang for drinks and a wild night instead. In typical Barney style, he gave the others cue cards to indicate the “minor improvements” he had made to their identities for the night in order to ensure a more “awesome” time.
Following this, we witnessed one of the best opening sequence ever seen on television, which featured Barney, Ted, Robin, Lily and Marshall’s “band” performing the show’s theme song. How could that stupendous moment be topped, you might wonder? Only with the most amazing “Who’s on First?” homage, which featured the group trying to choose a hip drinking scene. All of the club names were mistaken figures of speech like Was, Where, Lame, Hopeless, Okay, Shut Up, Focus and Closed. Quick-witted and pure genius.
Lily and Marshall proved, once again, why they are one of my fave TV couples when they challenged each other to pick up five random people before the night’s end. Lily won and shared her prize with Marshall: sex in the club bathroom. Ted, on the other hand, proved once again why he is one of my least favourite TV leads when he announced his fake engagement with Robin to the club crowd in order to spitefully ruin her chances with her “crush” (guest star Michael Trucco). Shout-out to the red cowboy boots’ rebirth, though — another ridiculous aspect of Ted’s character.
Meanwhile, Jerry and Barney set off on their own for father-son drunk bonding, which included trying to fight a motorcycle hoodlum, ripping a lamppost out of the sidewalk, and getting arrested. But Jerry revealed that he had been faking his intoxication all night because he is just too old to party. In a hilarious moment, where Jerry called up one of his driving students (an old lady) to chauffeur Barney and himself home, he gave Barney some seriously grown-up advice that our seemingly eternal bachelor took to heart. He told him that settling down would be hard at first, but he could start with meeting the right girl.
But an episode of HIMYM could not end on a solemn note, of course, so we were left with the final hilarious image of a suited-up Barney in a fishing boat with his dad, sitting in silence until: “This … suuucks!”
How I Met Your Mother airs Mondays at 8 p.m. ET on Citytv/CBS.
Do you think Barney is serious about getting serious? Comment below.
