Eric McCandless/FOX
SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, watch Star Wars one more time, then How I Met Your Mother.
So, yes, the whole Star Wars storyline was a little bit Diner. (It was fitting, though, both to Ted’s personality and his generation, that the movie would be his Baltimore Colts.) But Ted’s being engaged is working for me, as this show needed something to move it forward after its strike-foreshortened season. I’ll admit, I thought it was a little out of Marshall’s character that he would be willing to bust up Ted and Stella’s engagement over Star Wars, but he redeemed himself by letting Stella off graciously and covering her lie (which should haave been obvious to Ted, anyway). Also: how do they understand that walking bear?
Granted, we don’t technically know if we have met Your Mother. That’s the beauty of this premise: until the kids are actually born and we see the birth certificate, they can still pull that rug out from under us.
Barney’s love thing for Robin is also working for me for now. Last season suffered from his estrangement from the rest of the characters during his spat with Ted. I like seeing Barney trying to be sweet and normal. It’s smart, funny, beautiful, the whole package. It’s everything you’re afraid to let yourself want. In a joke.
And now, because I’ve missed it, the hail of bullets:
* “The only people in the universe who haven’t seen Star Wars are the characters in Star Wars. And that’s cause they’ve lived them, Ted! That’s cause they’ve lived the Star Wars!”
* Loved Robin trying to prod Barney into making an inappropriate joke. “He drilled me! He filled all my cavities!” “Your teeth look fantastic!”
* “I thought you’d called me over to uncuff you from your sex swing again.”
* Also love that there are actually cameras in Barney’s ceiling.
* “I was high-fiving 15-year-old me through the space-time continuum.” Everybody does that, right? No? Oh. Me either.