interesting line by Marshall: “it’s all that seprates us from the elbows on the table Wisconsonites”
I don’t think Wisconsonites have a reputation of being ruder than Minnesotans, though I could see Marshall thinking so
As a Wisconsonite, I can assure you that elbows on the table was frowned apon.
Brian
I thought it was a strong episode. Some really good laughs, and the kind of clever storytelling that is a hallmark of this show at its best.
However, I just don’t like Zoey. Never did. She just bugs me for some reason, and doesn’t seem to mesh with the rest of the cast. And they’ve been telegraphing so blatantly since about her first 30 seconds on screen that she and Ted would eventually hook up, that I was almost sure – or at least hoping – that they’d subvert that expectation somehow. But nope.
Oddly, I like Ted better when he doesn’t have a girlfriend.
Do we know for sure she’s not, though? Ted could be giving her a fake name and/or changing key details while telling the story to his kids; it wouldn’t be unprecedented. (Not that I’m hung up on solving the “Who’s the Mother” question at all. Despite the title, that really isn’t what the show is about.)
He’d have to have been lying pretty heavily to make that work. We know the mother is a grad student and was the room-mate of a economics grad student, but Zoey was married to a rich older man, it wouldn’t make much sense for her to have a room-mate.
Also, I think he said he met the mother at a wedding. I can’t recall how Zoey was introduced, but I’m pertty sure it wasn’t at a wedding.
The same. I’m just glad they broke up her marriage all on its own rather than making Ted the “other man.” Especially since we know that she’s not the mother (not in the econ/“architecture” class; didn’t have the roommate).
They really need to get on with meeting the mother very soon.
The Mother is going to end up being Zoey’s stepdaughter, mark my words. (And the wedding we saw in the season premiere will be Zoey and the Captain getting back together with Ted’s help.)
Yeah, they revealed at the start of this season that it would a wedding that he was a best man at, and it hasn’t happened yet.
I’m fine with Ted dating random girls, because we know those will just be one episode things. But at this point, serious relationships are a little pointless because we’ve narrowed the “mother” field down.
I thought the stepdaughter was really young. Wasn’t she getting her a stuffed animal or something?
Kids, this is the story of How I Met Your Mother… and How I Nailed Your Step-Grandma along the way.
Also The Captains weird, but it would be pretty strange for Ted to be his best man.
Actually, there’s a pretty limited number of people that would choose Ted as best man who aren’t also already married
Thank you. I liked Zoey better as Ted’s nemesis.
I’m guessing that she is going to somehow be instrumental in getting Robin and her future husband together, so Ted can be Robin’s best man.
There was a stuffed animal, which suggests a younger stepdaughter, but her age was never stated – all we really know is that she and her stepdaughter don’t get along. I can easily see Zoey having no idea of an age-appropriate Thanksgiving (?) present for a mid-20s stepdaughter if their relationship is strained and they don’t see each other much.
The show does have a lot of fun with the whole unreliable narrator conceit, but I don’t think that extends to the definitive clues about the mother.
I think for that to really work, they would have had to have made the premise more like the movie Definitely Maybe, where the father is telling the story of his serious relationships with three different women, with the daughter having to guess which one ended up being her actual Mom.
A big part of that though, was Zoey’s lament about being unable to figure out an appropriate gift. Given the Captain’s age, a daughter in college could be a possibility.
Yeah for some reason, I didn’t mind rooting for Ted with Robin or Victoria or Stella even though we knew they weren’t the Mom. But now it seems a little weird.
Hopefully the writers have more planned for Zoey than just her being someone for Ted to date. I’m guessing she ends up being more important to the overall storyline.
I think the best thing they could do is pull a Definitely Maybe scenario with the wedding - Ted meets a few women there during the season finale, and tells his kids that one of those women was the mother, but not who. Then next (and last) season we can explore his relationship or friendships-leading-to-more with these “final candidates”. They’ll have to be careful of course, steering around the clues. Perhaps the roommate graduated, and so it’s not obvious that she’s the roommate right away, for example. But it could be a lot of fun knowing it’s definitely one of these women, and rooting for who we want it to be. It could also be fun watching for new clues with each woman, and inevitable red herrings.
I’ve asked this before but cant remember the consensus… Do we know whether or not Future Ted is still with The Mother? I have this theory that we’ll find out who the mom is but then there will be a twist that she’s dead or they’re divorced (or never married). So in the end we get something along the lines of “That’s how I met your dead mother, but now say hi to your stepmom Zoe.”
I thought Katy Perry did a great job with the role. She certainly didn’t detract from the episode.
Oh, who played Marshall’s brother? Because he looks and sounds a lot like the actor who played their dad (Dauber/Patrick Star… Sorry, can’t be bothered to look up real name). Anyway, any chance he’s that guy’s real son?
The problem there is we already know so many key details about the mother, that both Narrator Ted says and what we see will have to go to great lengths to avoid that.
We know she plays bass in a band, so either ALL OF THEM will have to play bass, or the whole time we are left guessing which one it is it can never be mentioned. Same thing with the yellow umbrella, and being the roommate of that other girl, and being in that econ class he started teaching by accident (though that one is at least plausible that it could be all three.)
The big problem with that flash-forward wedding is that, as someone else mentioned, there aren’t a lot of people on the show that we have met that aren’t married and would have Ted be best man, AND have Marshall also in the wedding party (he was also in a tux in that scene.) Punchy is very likely to have Ted as best man at his wedding, but why would Marshall be in it?
There’s a chance it could be Robin and/or Barney’s, though. A minor spoiler regarding barney (not related to him getting married or not, of that I have no clue)
In an upcoming episode, he will meet his father. I also know who plays the father, if interested, check the next spoiler box.
John Lithgow. I’m hoping for Twilight Zone, Third Rock from the Sun, and Dexter references…maybe a Cliffhanger one, if there’s time. 
You’d sort of expect Barney to choose his brother as best man, and Robin having a best-man would be rather untraditional, though I guess she did joke about it in one episode.
Also, if its Barney and Robin marrying each other (which seems the most likely scenario), it seems weird that a random, presumably single, NYU grad-student would be a guest.
She’s in the band. Also notice how at the end of the flash-forward, it started to rain and Ted mentioned not having an umbrella? Perfect way to transition to the mother’s yellow umbrella that Ted “borrowed” for a couple seasons.
Heh, you beat me to it. I was just coming back to guess that she was in the band.
So yea, official guess: its Barney and Robin’s wedding, Ted is Robin’s best man, Marshal is Barney’s groomsman and the Mother plays the band.
Was there a thread about last week’s episode? I liked it better due to Robin being known as “someone who can get things” was a wink at her earlier role on Veritas the Quest.
This episode, while fun, pushed me further down the path to thinking HIMYM has changed and is dangerously close to losing that special something. In the early seasons Ted would have gone home with Honey only to realize upon waking up, with her exhibiting some sort of crazy behavior, that it was Zoey he wanted. Or Barney would have cleverly cock-blocked him and taken Honey home. He wouldn’t have broken down and cried in her bedroom like the damaged man-child that he is, he would salved his pain with her virtue(Oh yeahh…). They’re trying to make the characters deeper, and while I don’t shy away from deep characters, that’s something that should be done very carefully.
Writers have to let people dislike characters. That’s what characters are for, to be the black and white things we can love or hate as the moment dictates. Seinfeld was never my cup of tea, but there is no doubt the show was successful because they never tried to make the characters likeable.
There was a British show called Red Dwarf, written by a duo of guys, one of which was a romantic, the other a cynic. The show excelled at putting raw emotion on display and then cutting at your heartstrings with a sharpened spoon. Viciously funny stuff. Then the team split up and the cynic left. The romantic started doing things like bringing back the main character’s dead love interest, and in general improving their lot in life. The show totally jumped the shark at that point.
I think HIMYM is in a pretty tough spot. They have so much invested in each character now that they can’t do what they did in the beginning and let them be awful people and play them for laughs. I’m not sure how to navigate these waters, but the kind of episode where everybody has to be shown to be good, if damaged, people waters down the humor factor IMHO.
Enjoy,
Steven