How I Met Your Mother recap: Not a Legendary Episode

I was really disappointed with this week’s episode of HIMYM; maybe it was because I raised my expectations from the last two episodes or maybe it because it was just a filler episode. Nevertheless, I didn’t find this episode to be at all interesting or funny, it seemed to have nothing to add to the overall storylines, and even the stories this week weren’t that memorable and just overall boring.

Let’s start off with Barney’s story of the week, which is basically him finding new ways to sleep with multiple women, big surprise.  He tries to pick up women, through his usual ways but then realizes that he’s out of original ideas. Leading him to come up with the idea to pick up nannies, by manipulating them through an interview process. This really disappointed me because I was expecting him to be a little distraught over the ending of his engagement, and to mourn the relationship for a little while. Since his whole relationship with Quinn was a big step for him, finally settling down and all. But he went back to being “Barney from season 4”, a womanizer, don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I didn’t enjoy his antics from earlier seasons. It just feels like he took 5 steps forward within the last few season and then took 10 steps back, which in a way, is undoing much of the way his character has developed throughout the last couple of seasons.

In this episode we also saw the return of Mickey, Lily’s absent father. I wasn’t too pleased with his return because I’m not the biggest fan of his character and his storylines never really interest me, they even annoy me sometimes. Anyways he came back because he burnt down his house and came to stay with Marshall and Lily for a while, which I hope doesn’t mean all season. Now lets talk about the main reason why this episode is called nannies, which has to due with Marshall and Lily finding a nanny for little Marvin. Throughout the entire episode Marshall and Lily were interviewing people to fill the nanny position for when Lily returns to work. Unfortunately they couldn’t afford the Mary Poppins type nanny – until Barney decided to pay for it, which I will talk about soon – and the ones they can afford aren’t very qualified, where Mickey subtly implies he would be perfect for the job. When they finally find one that they like and afford, Barney ends up sleeping with her, which is not surprising at all. As Lily yells and gets upset, Marshall plays with a train set, before they storm off. The next morning they get a knock on the door, and it’s the nanny set from heaven, (HIMYM’s version of Mary Poppins) however Lily as a bit of an attachment issues and is unable to give up baby Marvin. A few hours later, Marshall comes home to find a sleeping Lily without Marvin and they have a bit of a panic attack, but then Grandpa Mickey comes in with Mickey. He then as a sweet moment with Lily, where he shows her pictures from her childhood and explains how he used to take care of her. She then “hires” him to be Marvin’s nanny and then it shows us pictures of the future, showing Mickey as a good grandparent, being there throughout Marvin’s life. This was probably my favorite moment of the episode, because it repaired any damage between Lily and her father, which is something that they needed to do before the show’s end.

However, this episode wasn’t all bad though I did somewhat enjoying the Ted-Robin storyline, where they ended up self-sabotaging each other’s relationship, to a degree. This story made me laugh once or twice, especially when we found out that Victoria keeps tampons at Ted’s place, thereby beating Robin in the first round of “who’s relationship is better”. In the next round they talk about going on vacation with their boyfriend/girlfriend, which made me cringe a little, since it probably isn’t the best idea to plan a trip that far into the future isn’t a good idea, especially knowing how soon they are going to break up (have they forgotten Barney’s rule!).  But when they realize all the faults in their significant other (Robin’s boyfriend is to emotional and Victoria is messy, which are pretty big issues for the both of them) they begin to panic. Although, once Barney comes to the bar beat up by the nannies he scammed, they justify their partners faults so they wouldn’t face the single life again. They even believe that they’ll be together for a long time, but then Future Ted reminds us, that both relationships implode within the month. But overall it got old towards the end of the episode, but this was probably the funniest story out of the three.

Overall, I wasn’t a fan of this episode, even if it was just a filler episode. It did nothing to push the story forward. If this is the last season, I don’t think they can waste episode on random stories. It was probably the weakest of the season so far and I hope they step it up in the next episode.