Posted by Mike
We’re a little late with this week’s recap. We’d promise to do better next time, but since this is the season finale, the next time will be in a few months. And we’ll have forgotten about that promise by then. The good news, though, is that there will be a next season — which never really should have been in question, but it was. On with the recap …
At the open, we’re promised the story of a cab ride that changed Ted’s life. We get the first few seconds of the ride, during which the Radiohead song “(Nice Dream)” plays — which is only life-changing in a Natalie Portman/Shins/Garden State way. And then we get an abrupt flashback to Ted and Stella having breakfast, where Stella invites Ted to her sister’s wedding — in six months. And with that Ted breaks up with her. Flash-forward and the Radiohead cab is involved in a car accident. Marshall, Lily and Robin rush to the hospital to find Ted … eating JELL-O.
Ted isn’t hurt, but he does realize that breaking up with Stella was a mistake. Marshall tries to make him to acknowledge the miracle of walking away from an accident without a single scratch — which leads to a debate over the existence of miracles. Marshall cites an incident at McLaren’s, when he, Ted and Barney were throwing pencils into the ceiling tiles, and a pencil fell from the ceiling, bounced off the table and lodged itself into Barney’s nostril. Robin chalks it up to “a drunk jackass with a box of pencils.” Marshall corrects her, calling it “a drunk jackass called God and a box of pencils called destiny.”
Lily calls Barney with news of Ted’s accident. Barney hangs up, which Lily takes to mean that he doesn’t care. Instead, Barney races to his bedside. Before he gets there, Ted reveals that as his life flashed before his eyes during the accident, he realized that Stella was the thing that mattered most to him. At this point, Marshall recalls Miracle No. 2: going through customs after his trip to Amsterdam, just as the stoner cop arrives for a shift change.
A visitor arrives at Ted’s room, but it’s not Barney. It’s Stella. She and Ted agree to forget about what happened at breakfast. Stella looks at his chart to make sure he can handle it, then proceeds to dry-hump him on his hospital bed — which, of course, Marshall sees as another miracle. That reminds him of the time he got lice from trying on tiny hats in Lily’s kindergarten class — which prevented him from getting back a job that he didn’t want and that would have placed him at an SEC raid. Miracle. Stella comes out of Ted’s room, and it’s revealed that she didn’t know Ted had broken up with her. She thought it had just been a fight. She heads back into the room, and let’s just say … no more dry-humping for Ted. Stella breaks up with him.
Barney finally makes it to the hospital — or at least across the street from it. While making those last few steps, he gets hit by a bus. And he gets more than a scratch or two. Ted agrees to be friends — no, brothers — again, and there’s a lot of weeping, some of it over Barney’s ruined suit. The subject of miracles comes up again, and Robin tells the story of how she became so cynical. When she was a kid, her dog Sir Scratchewan, had an experimental procedure performed on him that saved his life. The only side effect, was that it turned Sir Scratchewan into a turtle. Or at least that’s what Robin was told.
Ted is released from the hospital and goes to see Stella. Marshall asks Barney what flashed before his eyes before his accident, and while Marshall and Lily take turns guessing varying combinations of suits, boobs and money — and while “Here Comes a Regular” by the Replacements plays in the background — it becomes obvious that what Barney loves is … Robin.
We close the episode — and the season — with Ted tracking down Stella, and asking her to marry him. Didn’t see that coming, to be honest. Is Stella the “Mother” in the show’s title. We’ll have to wait until the fall — or possibly later — to find out.
Other Highlights: Robin calling Bruce Springsteen “the American Bryan Adams”; Barney having his arm set in the high-five position while in his hospital bed.
Best Barneyism: The date/time continuum, which states that you never make plans with a girl further in the future than the amount of time you’ve been going out.
Photo: Eric McCandless/CBS ©2008 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.
