Ahoy, Jenn here steering this ship tonight!
This episode felt very out of sequence for me despite portions of it supposedly happening a year and a half ago. Hello where’s any mention of Jeannette?
The episode boiled down to how one evening at an Art show went. The version Ted recalls after eating a sandwich. The version Robin recall after getting drunk at a “meeting.” The version Barney recalls…oh wait. And the way the night actually went as told by Lily.
We learn that Lily served up her Aldrin Justice by stealing the Captain’s ashtray after he told her she was just an art teacher with no real taste or appreciation for art. The Captain’s comments about Lily just “just being an art teacher” sting hard and causes Lily to nearly meltdown like she did at the end of Season One when she broke off her engagement to Marshall to go to San Francisco. In the end Lily got offered a job by the Captain to be his new art consultant. For such a long built up, I found it to be a let down.
The good news is my friend George is the lead writer of next week’s episode. He had a great episode last season, so I’m excited about next week. Too bad I’ll be in Orlando so won’ be able to watch it until I get back.
Legendary Lines
Ted: That’s weird I have a message // Marshall: That’s weird you still have an answering machine.
Barney: An Art Garfunkle gallery concert
Ted: Anyone with this kind of ashtray money, probably has an island where he hunts people, probably in the Caribbean. I bet there’s good snorkeling.
Marshall She’s Boats, Boats, Boats and he’s the Captain. That’s sweet I’m happy for those two. Ted you suck.
Robin: Nothing Happened // Barney: Uhhhh that means hand stuff
Marshall: Just some one of them could say Iceberg straight ahead
Robin: Can you please hold a minute // Captain: Dropping anchor
Barney: Because crazy stories are my thing. You have architecture. Marshall has the law. Lily has art. Robin has pleasing me sexually. You have a passion that drives you. Well I have a passion it’s taking life and turning it into a series of crazy stories, if you can do that me then I don’t even know who I am anymore.
Marshall: I know that we role play conjugal visits a lot, but I can’t do that for realsies.
Moments of Awesomeness
I’ve missed the Captain’s red pants
Ted’s high pitch screams upon seeing the Captain
Barney’s “Daddy’s home” entrances at the art show
Ted “snorkeling” with the ashtray
NPH’s delivery of “me neither”
Marshall and Lily’s agreement of an “Indecent Proposal” for sex with Lily
Robin’s make out into a pass out
The Re-Return
The Captain
Boats, Boats, Boats Becky
Sandwiches
ALDRIN JUSTICE
The Playbook play
THE REAL RE-RETURN
The Royal Archduke of Grand Fenwick
Lingering Questions
What’s with Ted’s old technology? VCR, answering machines…yeesh.
Just seeing Zoey made me mad. Anyone else?
Did everyone notice all of Marshall and Barney’s “contraband” in Ted’s apartment? arcade game, popcorn machine.
Where’d I leave my Prussian military costume? I thought it was just laying around the house.
Where are your best and most exciting days? Ahead of you or behind you?
Ahoy! Nicely done on legendary lines. I too have an appreciation for the red pantaloons.
Great recap as usual. I hate to say it, but episode was not great for me. I found myself losing interest throughout, but I did enjoy them wrapping up the Lily career storyline. I didn’t realize it but all of the characters had gone after their career goals except for Lily. And I completely agree with you about it feeling out of place.
Here’s why I enjoyed this episode so much.
-Season 6 is one of my favorite seasons (it’s probably number one although season 4 kills) and so the call back to Becky/The Captain was welcome. This also showed once more why the Zoey storyline was so important. If it weren’t for Ted dating Zoey, they never would’ve had reason to talk to The Captain at the Art gallery and Lily wouldn’t have gotten the job offer. More on that later…
-It makes total sense that Ted would backslide to Becky at least once during the summer after dating Zoey. Zoey was this super intelligent, conniving woman who had almost ruined Ted’s career, why not go for her polar opposite, a blissfully sweet, if simple, girl?
-It’s classic HIMYM story telling to have one story that threads the entire and adding twists to it as it comes from different points of view/different enunciations of dialogue to change meaning. Finding out that Ted was high made me laugh (one of my favorite gags ever from season 7 was the episode that turned out to be two minutes long-Tick Tick Tick), finding out that Robin was drunk and ready to raise the Captain’s mast was equally funny. It also explained why the two of them had different POVs and casted themselves in different lights.
-The Lily of it all. Many people have said that Lily became a plot device for a baby, or she never really got her own storylines, but they are finally presenting them. I’ll admit that it came a little prematurely, perhaps some struggle, or maybe some glances from Ted when Lily would talk about baby Marvin would have given this some depth, but the truth of it all was that Lily found herself again. I’d recently been watching some of the earlier seasons and wondered, but what about your art Lily?
-The just a elementary school teacher line seems to be taken the wrong way. She’s not saying it like she’s sad that she is one, she’s saying that she’s sad that’s all she is. She has other dreams, other ambitions, and she doesn’t want to settle for just one. When you’re young, you can have the world at your disposal. Lily dreamed for everything and while they are great things, she only ended up with some things. She wants more before it’s too late, not dissing what she’s already done.
-I’m excited for the new career for Lily and what that means for the Eriksen/Aldrin family!
-Barney’s insertion of himself into the story and his reasoning why was golden. He was used to being the crazy story guy. Those all came from his one night stand adventures. That’s what he looked forward to telling the gang about. But what now? He’s got to find something new to talk about. I also like Barney’s declaration of being over one night stands not lasting. It was borderline if not a sex addiction for years. Just because you meet the right girl doesn’t mean that your habits are going to change, he’s going to have to fight that. He’s going to earn monogamy, not just declare it.
What I Didn’t Enjoy as much
-I wanted more Jeanette, mostly because I want to see her in the group more. I know she’s crazy, so maybe next time they’ll explain that she’s still locked away in Ted’s house and he’s been living somewhere else to hide. Actually, they ended up at least making out last episode, I want to know where she is now.
We’ll Get To That
-I wonder what The Captain’s role truly is. While he has hired Lily as his art consultant, I feel like that’s going to lead to Lily really going for her painting, and if The Captain values it, maybe Lily will strike gold?
-Ted/Jeanette/The Mystery of the Burned Apartment. Is this going to cause Ted to move to his house? Is he going to live back in the apartment one more time before he meets the mother? How exactly does she get Ted to settle down?
-Marshall and his Judgeship.
Anyway, I give this episode a B mostly because it moved the storyline but not in great strides for everyone like these last few A rank episodes did.
I loved the episode. The Captain is hilarious and I hope with Lily’s new job we’ll see him more often. The increasingly menacing versions of The Captain’s voicemail was great. Lily’s storyline was a nice continuation of the scene between her and Ted where she said sometimes she doesn’t want to be a mom.
“Boats boats boats!” “What is this even a commercial for again?”
SPOILER ALERT:
Next Episode:
“When Ted and Jeanette break up, Barney tries to help him land a new girl
by using the infamous playbook Robin thought he had destroyed”
All of our theories that the playbook wasn´t destroyed by barney and it looks like “confetti” when he burned it were right…Great work! 🙂
Yeah this was just an okay episode but better than last week’s. The saving grace was that we finally see some more growth in Lily’s character and her moving towards doing something more meaningful (not that being a mom isn’t meaningful but her most developed moment all season came when she broke down and admitted to Ted how exhausted she was and that sometimes she wishes she weren’t a mom). I’d like to see: Marshall getting back to storyline taking on the polluters; Barney and Robin clearing up the issues from their past and what screwed them up before; Lily balancing teaching, art and mothering; Ted taking time off from dating and some self-discovery apart form his search for “the one”.
I don’t think that we are going in the direction of Lily becoming an artist. Just like Ted pursued architecture and found his calling as a professor of architecture, I think we’ll see Lily find more satisfaction in her new art appraisal than being an artist. And I like that idea because that’s how life generally works out – you are happy in ways you didn’t predict.