How I Met Your Mother was back with double the episodes last night to kick off the 7th season of the CBS comedy. Picking up where last season’s cliffhanger left off and still not giving us much information (though we may have been given a clue…more on that later) Barney is asking Ted which tie he should wear. Worried that he’ll have the worst wedding ever, Ted remarks about how they’ve already attended the worst wedding ever…Punchy’s wedding. And so the flashback in the flashback commences and episode 1, “The Best Man” is underway.
Throughout the two episodes, we see Marshall ruin Punchy’s wedding by unknowingly announcing that the bride is pregnant, get his dream job and become “Beercules;” Ted grace the cover of New York Magazine, start dating again and have a plast from the past; Robin use her truth voice and Barney sleep in a diner in order to get a second date with Nora. Essentially Lily’s responsibility in the episode was to throw out some great one-liners.
So with the pros and cons and the color charts in last night's episodes comparing Ted’s possible mates, I thought it best to pro and cons out the episodes. Visualize the color chart for me, will you?
PROS
- Robin and Barney’s dance number: I love NPH. He is so great here. He and Cobie are perfect here but of course just as it ends, he gets a phone call from Nora (that type of lame horrible timing could make this a con as well).
- Robin feeding Barney lines to Nora: The one moment of the episodes that really made me feel. Cobie Smulders was fantastic in this scene. If only Barney would have turned around and see that she was talking about him.
- Lily: Girl was killing it with the one-liners tonight. See “Quips of the night” below.
- “Beercules”: I love Jason Segel. That is all.
- Barney revealing all his lies and staying at the diner: Though I am definitely a Barney/Robin shipper, I loved Barney actually showing his feelings and his need/want to change for Nora. It may be for the wrong girl right now but the character’s growth is more than welcome.
- The Cleveland Browns wedding theme: This was awesome and reminiscent of Massachusetts’ weddings I’ve seen rocking the sports theme. Hilarious and ridiculous. But how awesome would it be if it were the New England Patriots? (I'm a Boston girl, sorry!)
- Ted seeing Victoria: A shocking moment that I think was held under wraps pretty well.. As a disclaimer, I was a latecomer to HIMYM so I didn’t know all the history the pair held until reading about it on the internet. From comments and tweets I've read of fans, most people are excited.
CONS
- The “psych!” jokes: If they had done one more ‘this is how Marshall ruined Punchy’s wedding but didn't’ joke I may have poked myself in the eye.
- Barney’s plays for the ladies: A vampire? A Guinness World Record holder for longest fingernails? An escaped man slaughterer? These were just silly, and not in the good way.
- Ted sees Victoria: According to what I’ve read, what we heard in the episodes and confirmed by Alan Sepinwall, Victoria can not be the mother because obviously Ted met her long before Barney’s wedding. Though she won’t be a Zoey because of their aforementioned history, dealing with another relationship that probably isn’t going to pan out in the end is really not appealing to me. Just show us the mother already. Then again I’m not as invested in Ted and Victoria’s relationship as many others so it would be interesting to hear what y’all think??
The pros seem to outweigh the cons here and although the episodes were nothing spectacular, they weren’t all that bad. Now back to that clue I thought we got… towards the end of the first episode, Lily comes in the groom’s (Barney's) room and tells Ted the bride wants to talk to him, which clearly makes us think of Robin. Right? Right?
Quips of the night:
- “Whenever we board a flight you lick the plane”-- Lily to Marshall re: being superstitious
- “The last man to screw you this hard then disappear was LeBron James” – Barney re: his plan for the ladies of Cleveland
- “In 9 months I’ll be pushing a pumpkin headed Erickson baby out of my hoo ha, I think papa can manage a few extra cocktails” – Lily
- “This son of a bitch has knee dimples” – Lily
- “Honk away my friend, Honk away” – Marshall re: second base is not serious
I think there was another clue that may be bigger, though I don't know what it means–when Marshall is drunk again with Barney, Barney is on the phone and clearly shocked by whatever news he's just been given.