How I Met Your Mother Review: "Natural History"
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After a tough episode last week had me wondering if this show was in danger of becoming extinct, the gang from How I Met Your Mother roamed with dinosaurs, ducked the rope of mediocrity and snuck in a good episode last night.
The half hour had all the key elements: Lily and Marshall shared funny yet tender moments; Robin and Barney teamed up again; and a witty, yet not pompous, Ted Mosby stole the show.
Marshall fell in love with Lily when she dressed like a Goth and spelled ‘woman’ with a Y (womyn), but in this week’s episode Lily found herself searching for the man she had fallen for. She could not seem to accept that Corporate Marshall might never become a tree hugging environmental advocate.
She feared she had lost the “sandwich” loving, nonconformist she fell for back at Wesleyan. They made up in the end like they always do, but I never seem to tire of these two and their bond. Like Lily said, they always seem to find a way “to make it work.”
Barney and Robin, meanwhile, made like Claudia and Jamie Kincaid of From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, as they ran amok in the museum.Instead of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, though, they were in the Museum of Natural History, complete with hysterics on relics. These two need to end up together. From stroking statues to opening beer bottles on the Saber Toothed Tiger, they looked as if they never skipped a beat.
I absolutely loved Robin casually strolling through the party in an animal pelt and carrying a spear. The scene where the security guard read aloud the Blue Whale incident report may go down as one of my all-time favorites. Robin uttering no after no in that amazing blue dress, capping off Barney’s Sho’nuff reference from The Last Dragon, had me floored. “Who’s the master, Leroy?”
Speaking of teeth, Ted squared off with Zoey once again and while she would never receive a rose in my Bachelor ceremony, Ted showed me why he is such a focal character by delivering some amazing lines and, dare I say, unseating Barney as the Quote King for a week.
When he called Zoey a spoiled trophy wife, I may have thrown a fist pump in the air, and I have to admit I did laugh out loud at his well timed “Hershey squirts.” I agree with The Captain: you are a good guy, Galactic President Superstar McAwesomeville.
Kyle MacLachlan was great and did not over do his role as The Captain. I thought we were getting a Trey MacDougal reference when Zoey, explaining to Ted that she hated her marriage, said she liked The Arcadian because it was something big and solid. A stretch perhaps, but not a stretch to say this was a great rebound from the Halloween episode nightmare.
I don’t usually focus on, nor do I really care, about the little storyline hints - like how a man named Jerry Whittaker previously thought to be Barney’s uncle might in fact be his father.
But I did like when after Robin said to Barney that maybe the security guard had it wrong and that you never know, he answered with “but you do know, you do know, that’s the thing, you know, he’s my dad.” While it was a touching moment, Ted put it best when he said, “but that’s another story."
Ted’s crossword Saturday may have been ruined, but my How I Met Your Mother Monday - largely thanks to these quotes - surely was not.