Well … hands raised if you saw that coming. 
I liked this episode so much more than last week’s. There’s an interesting breakdown of the episode here. I thought that NPH and Josh Radnor were so funny with the bro-parenting bit … pet cobra and all. And Hurricane is an awesome baby name. I was waiting for Marshall to call dibs.
SPOILER ALERT
And how about the ending? In regards to the timeline, I’m assuming there’ll be some questions about the baby daddy.
Did this episode give any real sense of how much time has passed over the last three episodes? Based on the way Ted and Barney were wallowing in his new singleness, it doesn’t seem like it was that far from the Barney’s breakup, which was only a day after them having sex, which wouldn’t be nearly enough time for Robin to learn she was pregnant from that encounter (assuming the show will follow real biology and not TV biology).
“However, for purposes of this story…”
I didn’t hear any mention of how long it had been since Barney’s breakup, but I could have missed that. I think HIMYM tries harder than most shows to maintain continuity, but they could certainly adjust their timeline to make paternity an issue.
I hate to say it but I disliked this episode even more than last week’s 
The Ted and Barney bro parenting thing was not only totally devoid of humor but I don’t even get where the concept came from. All of a sudden they’re both so desperate to have children that they’ve morphed into Dumb and Dumber? We’ve seen how much time devoted to all of the characters declaring their love and loyalty to the city and now Marshall and Lily suddenly want to move to Long Island? And to complete the trifecta we suddenly find Robin (surprise surprise) pregnant? Ugh. It’s clear that the writers for whatever reason have decided to turn this into a baby centric show and that is pretty much a deal breaker for me. At least there are constant reruns from when the show was funny.
Pretty much agree with all of this, except the Robin pregnant part. I think that’s a necessary plot device at this point. I thought the episode was dreadful.
If Robin being pregnant means that she marries Barney and that leads to Ted meeting the mother, it ties everything from the pilot to the mother-meeting together very nicely. If that’s not what happened, there better be something incredibly legen (wait for it) to happen instead -dary.
I’m going to go out on a limb here.
Robin won’t have the baby. Maybe it’s a pregnancy scare, maybe a miscarriage, maybe even an abortion, but she won’t have the baby.
Instead, what’s going to happen is that this moment will cause Robin to re-evaluate her life and her relationship with Barney. This will put wheels in motion, but not the wheels everyone here is assuming.
Who knows, maybe Ted will adopt “Aunt Robin’s” baby and the show will actually turn out to be How YOU Met Your Mother.
Robin will never…
…have an abortion. This is an American sitcom.
Of course the show has become baby-centric. It’s called “How I Met Your Mother.” What did you think was going to happen?
“Did Guy your guy guy get you a baby guy?”
I’m gonna ask my best friend to become bro parents with me.
I may have missed the message of the story…
Future Ted mentioned that Barney had been in a bad place “for a couple of weeks” so it’s long enough after the encounter that Robin would know she’s pregnant.
I’m not following your logic. Aside from the obvious connection that they are their mother’s babies, what does everyones’ baby drama have to do with the story Ted is telling his kids (and us, the audience)? I get that they’re all growing older and the family thing is part of that progression but I think the writers are going a little overboard / deviating from the original flavor of the show.
No because this is what happened. I mean, you can’t change history. Even future history.
Long ago I told my wife that Barney will probably turn out to be the mother of Ted’s kids - mainly because Neil Patrick Harris gets way more prominence in ads for the show than any other character. (And, yes, I realize that that’s partly based on the fact that he’s the most famous actor in the series.)
Anyways, I was nudging my wife and half-seriously saying “I told you so” when Ted and Barney were discussing adoption.
The premise of the show is Ted becoming a dad. As we all know, it’s extremely difficult for parents to remain friends with non-parents. Ted’s kids are familiar with Robin, Barney, Lily, and Marshall, therefore they’re all probably parents. Given the ages of the kids, if they’re all patents, they better start having kids soon. Viola, baby fever!
I can’t recall, maybe I’m dreaming this. But in the first episode where it looks like Barney is getting married, was he wearing the “Ducky Tie”?
MtM
I’m in about 99% agreement with you. HIMYM does not seem to be the kind of sitcom that seeks “groundbreaking” status. However, even in the world of American sitcoms, there are multiple ways to get around this plot complication.
If they wanted to get around it I could almost see them doing the think they did with some curse word (I forget the details) where it is revealed to the kids that every time the show had been saying X, in reality they had been saying Y.
So have it be a false alarm.
Then a season later reveal that “false alarm” meant “abortion.”
But, since Robin isn’t Bea Arthur, I doubt it will even occur to them to try an abortion storyline.
Here’s an interview with the producer of the show which is mostly ambiguous but say that the paternity issue will not be dragged out and on the Barney-Robin getting together issue does
suggest that that door is closed.
Nope. Ted even says something like “At least you’re not wearing the Ducky Tie.”