How I Met Your Mother - Girls vs. Suits

Network: CBS
Time: Mondays, 8:00-8:30pm
Cast: Josh Radnor, Jason Segel, Cobie Smulders, Alyson Hannigan, Neil Patrick Harris

Summary: Barney must choose between his suits or a hot new bartender.  Ted gets closer to meeting "the mother."

Review: Now, I admit I came a little late to the How I Met Your Mother game.  So when I say this is the best episode I've seen, you have to take it with a grain of salt.  It'd be more accurate to say this is the best episode I've seen this season, I suppose.

So I'll say it: this is the best episode I've seen this season.

That said, I think HIMYM is on its way to winding down.  We're so close to meeting the mother now that I can't imagine how many more ways they can tease the audience.  I'll be sad to see it go, and I certainly think it can last at least another year or two, but the hard truth is that they're going to run out of ways to drag it out soon enough.

OK, on to this episode.  So many things to love about it, and they don't all center around Neil Patrick Harris and his awesomeness.  Though he is awesome.  And I guess I have to start by saying any episode where he sings and dances automatically ranks higher than an episode without it.

The episode focused on two things: Barney's obsession with a hot bartender who won't date a guy who wears a suit, and Ted's date with his future wife's roommate.  Both stories were strong, funny, and ultimately very sweet.  I'll start with the Barney story, since I've already been talking about it.

Seeing Barney dress in something other than a suit was worth watching the episode for, even if nothing else had been good about it, but watching Marshall and Lily argue about the bartender was actually sweeter than it was funny.  Marshall refuses to say that the bartender is hotter than Lily, no matter how much she tries to convince him.  You can tell in the way he says it that he truly believes Lily is the hotter one, and something about that was so sweet that even I fell a little in love with Marshall.

Of course, the nice moment is ruined by Barney's escapades.  He is so devastated by not wearing his precious suits that he runs into the bathroom to wear one for just a few minutes and accidentally rips it.  In horror, he runs to his personal tailor (whose identity I refuse to reveal because every show deserves some secrets).  The scene that follows is so hysterical that it is easily in my top three favorite scenes of the episode.

Of course, the bartender ultimately finds out that Barney's really a suit-whore, and she tells him he has to make a decision.  Which he does.  With song.  And dance.

Then there's Ted's story.  He goes out on a date with a PhD student he meets on campus, Cindy, who turns out to be the roommate of the future mother of his children (which young Ted obviously doesn't know, but older Bob-Saget-acted Ted makes abundantly clear).  Cindy clearly has roommate issues, and she spends most of the date trying to keep Ted from liking her roommate, though older Ted keeps pointing out that everything she mentions is something he loves about his wife.  As much as Ted tries to convince her that he doesn't want to date her roommate, he ruins the effect later, when he tries to tell Cindy how much they have in common and instead points out the only things in her room that are really her roommate's.

Like Modern Family, I find the real draw of HIMYM to be the interaction between the characters, not the jokes, despite its sitcom status.  This episode had the perfect combination of funny moments and sweet moments.  I feel like they got rid of some of the awkwardness that always seemed to be around when Barney and Robin were dating (sorry, 'shippers, but that relationship never really worked for me... not in the canon sense, at least), and the characters have settled into a fun, relaxed state.  Like I said before, my fear is that, as Ted draws nearer to finally meeting the mother, the show is going to run out of places to go.

But for the time being, the show seems to be thriving, and I look forward to seeing what antics the group will get up to every week.

Favorite line:
Ted (to Cindy): "I promise I will not fall in love with your roommate."
Older Ted (VO): "Oops."

Rating:
[5] Excellent
[4] Good
[3] Average
[2] OK
[1] Bad