How I Met Your Mother: Intervention

Posted by Mike
Synopsis: The episode begins with Barney testing an elaborate pick-up technique, in which he disguises himself as an old man from the future and tries to convince a hot girl at McLaren’s that she must sleep with the present-day Barney Stinson in order to save the world in the future. After watching the whole thing inexplicably play out according to plan, Ted, Marshall and Lily retreat upstairs with Robin to continue packing their stuff for their impending moves. In the process, Ted finds a brand-new “Intervention” banner (the old one had been burned up during the intervention to stop Barney from doing magic tricks involving fire.) It turns out the gang had planned to prevent Ted from marrying Stella. While they had since changed their minds about the marriage, their initial concern puts doubts in Ted’s head and he decides not to get married and move to New Jersey, starting a chain reaction in which Marshall and Lily decide not to move into their new apartment and Robin bails on her plan to move to Japan. Their fear of change eventually subsides when they see their future in Barney — decked out in a bow tie, wrinkles and liver spots — hitting on girls at McLaren’s, and they all decide to move on with their plans to, um, move on.

What We Liked:

– “They’re like love letters or yearbooks or someone’s ashes — they just take up space.” — Robin’s cold analysis of photographs

– “All your stuff is stupid” — Lily explaining the lesson all men learn once they move in with their significant other

– The reasons for past interventions: Marshall’s Dr. Seuss hat, Lily’s fake British accent, Robin’s spray-on tan, Barney’s magic tricks, Ted’s pretentious pronunciation and, best of all, their own interventions.

– Robin’s Seussian intervention letter to Marshall: “I do not like that stupid hat. I want to beat it with a bat. Or maybe stab in with a fork. It makes you look like such a dork.”

– The flashback to the night Robin drank a twelver of Molson and got all super Canadian. She was nuttier than a Tim Hortons maple log, and threatened to give Lily summer teeth (summer here, summer there).

– “She’s French. That’s like playing tennis with the net down.” — Robin, dismissing old man Barney’s successful pick-up while dissing the French

What We Didn’t Like:

– Barney, dressed as an old man, attempting to pick up girls at McLaren’s with butterscotch candy as a lure. Very creepy.

Ted’s douchey pronunciation. And that’s douchey, not douchay

What We Wish We Had:

A robot cookie jar named R2 Sweet Tooth and a pair of signed Bernie Kosar cleats


Best Barneyism:
“Marriage is stupid. Every year there are a million new 22-year-olds walking into bars and, call me glass-half-full, but I think they’re getting dumber.”