Happy 100th Episode, everyone!
I’m not usually one to pick up a show right from the beginning. Especially on CBS. After all, what’s the point if all the ones I like tend to find themselves cancelled before they have a chance to explain everything. My M.O. is to pick up six weeks in and hope that it’s not too late. What can I say? I was burned by Moonlight, Jericho, and Reunion.
But, it was different with How I Met Your Mother. I was there right from the beginning, and 100 episodes in, the newlywed shine still hasn’t worn off. The episode was sheer brilliance. I just can’t believe how well they were able to keep THE BIG SECRET by focusing on the big song and dance number.
Last night’s episode starts off with a bang. Well a beer, actually. Ted catches three underclassmen hitting on Cindy (Rachel Bilson) by telling her that they’re going to get trashed on the roof. Claiming that they’re underage (hello, boys, he didn’t even bother checking the IDs), he confiscates the good beer, leaves them with the Hard Lemonade, and picks up the girl. She’s a PhD candidate in finance, and she recognizes him from the Econ class to whom he tried to teach architecture on the first day of class. Ted reminds the kids that their mother thought he was a “complete idiot,” and then Cindy tells him “I thought you were a complete idiot.” This, of course, means that Cindy is most likely NOT Mom, since there’s no way they would ever be that obvious about the whole thing. Right?
Ted’s in love already. He tells Robin, Lily and Barney that he has a date, and immediately hears a rousing ovation from outside. The girls look outside, announce that there’s a huge line of dudes outside the bar, and Barney accurately points out that there are only two things that could cause that kind of commotion: boobs.
The new bartender is a first for McLarens: hot and female. Lily and Robin aren’t impressed. Lily thinks this means that “now the sidewalk’s gonna smell like pee-pee” while Robin ‘s jealous since she’s no longer the hottest girl in the bar. Barney is psyched, though, he’s been waiting for years to bed a hot bartender. Marshall claims that new girl is nowhere close to being as hot as Lily, and despite Lily’s efforts to get him to drop the sweet-talk act, is sticking to that story.
Barney’s got a plan. He’s going to head to the bar, wait for her to pretend to be all sweet and then shoot her down. This is an interesting plan, to say the least. Too bad it doesn’t work when he end s up being the only guy that she’s overtly rude to.
Ted walks into Cindy’s apartment and tells the kids that even though he’d never been there before, he felt like it was right where he was supposed to be. He even tells them that it was the first time he’d ever seen their mother’s little yellow bus (the one that’s sitting behind them as he tells the story). In the story, he points out the bus’s cuteness to Cindy, and that’s when she goes, “That’s my roommate’s.”
See, I was on to something, there. But I never saw the roommate factor coming.
Ted asks Cindy what the roommate’s like, and Cindy tells him, she’s a whore and she just might be a dominatrix Not really a glowing recommendation for one’s future wife, but I suppose that if you didn’t know she was your future wife, it might roll off the back. And remember, Ted didn’t have a clue then. Just as quickly, though, Cindy backs off of that. It turns out that guys are always falling in love with the roommate, and Cindy’s a little jealous. Ted promises that that will never happen. Oh Ted, so innocent….
Meanwhile in Barneyland, Robin’s trying to convince everyone that she’s hotter than the bartender. Marshall has also found out why the bartender wasn’t a fan. Since her last two boyfriends were jerky Wall Street guys, she vowed never again to date a man who wore a suit. When he reports this back to the group, Barney shocks them by vowing that he’s going to give up suits.
On their date, Ted’s learning more and more about Cindy’s roommate via her constant complaining. Over the course of the evening he learns:
- She’s got that little yellow bus
- She does “bizarre” paintings of robots playing sports
- She makes breakfast foods sing show tunes, like “Memory” performed by an English Muffin
Unfortunately, the next day Ted learns that Cindy found out that the school’s policy on professor/student dating means that she could lose her scholarship. He thinks she’s overreacting, the rest of the gang think he needs to let it go.
Barney’s finding it equally hard to give up the suits. Even though the bartender starts talking to him when he “suits down,” he’s haunted by his old constant companions. They whisper from the closet, and Barney starts going into DTs when Marshall approaches him with a suit on in the bar. He even keeps an emergency outfit in the Mens Room at work. Sadly, when he puts the emergency outfit on, it rips. Despite the best efforts of Tim Gunn himself, the suit dies. Barney decides to “organ donate” the buttons, cries into Tim’s arms, and cremates the remains.
But he’s not giving up the cause to bed the bartender, and neither is Ted. What if Cindy’s the girl he’s supposed to marry? Is he going to let some policy hold him back from his dream of a house in Westchester, two adorable kids, and a triplet of Schnauzers named Frank, Lloyd, and Wright? Hell no! He heads to Cindy’s house with the yellow umbrella, knocks on the door, and tells her that while the university rulebook tells them that they can’t date, it also says that Ted shouldn’t teach drunk and he does that all the time. He knows that their paths were supposed to cross, and he doesn’t want to miss out on knowing her. He starts looking around the room and finds all the things they have in common, all of which belongs to or was given to Cindy by the roommate:
- The Unicorns album
- World’s End by T. C. Boyle
- Plays bass (in a band)
Cindy throws him out, but he catches a glimpse of Mom’s foot as he leaves. He also accidentally leaves the umbrella behind.
Thanks to his little urn of suit remains, Barney finally gets somewhere with the bartender, which changes when she opens his closet door and finds all the suits. She tells him that it’s her or the suits…and the song and dance number begins.
Of course, he tells her that he chooses her and that he’s giving up the suits first thing in the morning. Sure….
