How I Met Your Mother: Noretta

How I Met Your Mother uses a lot of gimmicks. It's just that kind of the show. Lots of them work and some don't work. Last night's gimmick of the gang (mainly Lily and Marshall) envisioning each other as their parents was... well pretty creepy. But other than that the episode worked pretty well, with more on Barney's relationship with Norah, plus more on the idea that Ted and Robin are too close (plus a Weird Al cameo!).

We also briefly saw Barney's black brother James, who appears at the beginning of the episode to both set up a joke that the booth is too crowded with the gang, Norah, Kevin, and now James all at the same place and also to set up the main idea with the episode: the people we end up with tend to be like our parents. See, James was bothered by some of Norah's mannerisms, which were similar to his and Barney's mother, Loretta. Kevin points out that this is actually a common thing in relationships. Meanwhile Lily is feeling unsexy and Marshall is trying to turn that around. But when his idea to fix this is a board game, Lily can't help but picture her father trying to seduce her. And while Marshall assures her that the theory is crazy as she is nothing like his mother, he later realizes that she's kind of like his father. Creepy images. Creepy images.

Meanwhile in a much less creepy story, Barney is going skating with Norah, and it looks like they're finally going to take their relationship to the next level. But a bunch of comic misfortunes keep getting in the way and ruining the mood. First Norah breaks a tooth during ice skating. Then, after Barney takes her to an all-night dentist he knows, a rat climbs into her hair. Then after getting back to his apartment, where they take in the view with champagne, they see a suicide jumper. Of course Barney is still determined to turn things around and it looks like it's working, but then he notices Norah is like his mother without even hearing Kevin's theory. He still sleeps with her. He just doesn't look at her face. Oh Barney.

And in the third story, Kevin is getting bothered by how close Robin and Ted seem to be. Robin insists it's because Ted is lonely and in a fragile state, but after Ted interrupts their alone time to get them to watch a coin collecting documentary, gets Robin to give him a massage and invites her to a concert, Kevin can't take it anymore and confronts them on their closeness. Of course, it turns out that Robin is not the first person Ted has asked to come to this concert (It's a Weird Al Yankovic concert.). In fact, he's asked pretty much everyone he knows, including some people he doesn't really know before asking Robin and Robin is probably going to bail on him too. He really is a fragile, lonely guy. So Kevin pretends he's a big Weird Al fan and agrees to go to the concert with Ted, even though he has to put up with Ted referencing many of Weird Al's songs.

So all in all, despite the creepiness of the whole "getting romantically close with your parents" image, this episode works pretty well. It's not perfect, but it's solid and should be enough to hold me over until the long-awaited arrival of the Slutty Pumpkin next week.

Grade: Awesome! (Good)

Memorable Moments

-Ted complains that Kevin was standing in the apartment in his boxers. Turns out that was just because Kevin was shocked that Ted was walking through the apartment in only a bathrobe and spilled coffee on his pants.

-Apparently in the HIMYMverse, Ted gave "Weird Al" the idea for Like A Surgeon in a letter. This is shown in a great flashback to 1985, with "Weird Al" himself appearing. I love "Weird Al" so this appearance was more than welcome.