What Happened, Yo!:
-We open with "Future" Robin telling her two children the story of how she met their father and deciding to start by recounting the moment she told him she was pregnant.
-Robin is a week late for her period, and since she's never late she worries she's pregnant. And since she hasn't slept with Kevin yet, that means Barney is the father. Much to her surprise, Barney is happy about this, because he wants a baby.
-When Barney and Robin help Lily go shopping for baby things, Barney tries to change Robin's mind but she keeps getting terrified, and Barney gets turned against the idea himself when he finds out his old best friend has become a dad after a one night stand and a shell of himself.
-Dr. Sonia informs Robin that she is not pregnant, and both she and Barney dance for joy. Later they go back to just being friends.
-Later on though, Robin learns that she is infertile and can never have children. Even though she never wanted kids, Robin takes the news hard and is surprised by how she's reacting.
-Because she doesn't want to deal with the reactions from her friends though, she lies and tells her she's upset because she can never be a Pole Vaulter for the Canadian Olympics. This causes the exact same reactions she was hoping to avoid.
-Back at the baby store with Lily, Robin becomes overwhelmed and runs off crying.
-The gang deduces that Robin's really upset about something else and Ted thinks she's upset because she can't go back to Canada for Christmas.
-Ted gets Robin a plane ticket to go with him to Cleveland for Christmas, but she turns him down saying it's not his job to cheer her up and she'll be fine spending Christmas alone with her eggnog.
-On a walk through Central Park, "Future" Robin contemplates on how she never really wanted kids anyway and that's why she's glad her kids aren't real. At this point Robin's "kids" and the house they were in fade away and we see Robin is all by herself in Central Park.
-She returns to the apartment, where Ted has set up an AC/DC light show for her and tells her that he's never going to stop trying to cheer her up.
-As they hug, Future Ted tells his kids that Robin never became a "Pole Vaulter", but she achieved many other things, and most importantly, was never alone.
-Meanwhile Marshall bonds with a kid who lives across the street from his new home and lets the kid help him put up Christmas lights.
-The kid traps Marshall up on the roof and has a big party at Marshall's home.
-He tells Marshall he looks up to him as a father, and Marshall lets the party continue for another half an hour, but he continues to go wild (and desecrate a stocking Marshall's nana had made him before she died.)
-Lily arrives and gives the kid fifty bucks for helping Marshall, not aware what the kid had done until she enters the house to find it a wreck and sees Marshall on the roof.
I Liked This: Holy crap! Holy crap! Holy crap! How I Met Your Mother got me again with another ingenious twist. There are probably plenty of people out there who are going to be upset that they screwed with us like that. That they seemed to end the mystery of who Barney got together with once and for all before revealing it to be a lie. But I loved it. It comes as a total emotional punch in the gut, and then really adds to the emotional weight of the final scene with Ted. When Future Ted tells his kids that Robin was never a "Pole Vaulter", but was also never alone, I choked up a little. I'm choking up now simply typing about it. Cobie Smulders truly delivered some amazing work this week and I'm more drawn into Robin's storyline than other.
Of course, the episode was also really funny. I enjoyed Marshall's bonding with the kid, and the sudden turn with Marshall getting stranded on the roof while the kid threw a party and "ate sandwiches" was great. Also great was Robin imagining how her friends would react to her bad news, only to have them react the exact same way to her fake bad news. And Barney getting shocked by what happened to Crazy Dwayne was a good way to reset the character a little (at least to get him back from his "I really want a kid kick". Great work this week, HIMYM.
But...: One little thing. This episode could have benefited from a bit of Kevin. Not a lot, but maybe a scene or two. Just saying.
The Bottom Line: A big twist works well and paired with some excellent acting from Cobie Smulders and some good laughs, it all leads to one fantastic episode of How I Met Your Mother.
Grade: Zounds! (Almost Perfect)
Memorable Moments
Future Events Set-Up Alert: At one point, Robin was briefly a bullfighter.
-Barney starts the episode by waking up. Not because Robin's news had caused him to pass out, but because his response was "are you sure you're not just getting fat?", causing him to be punched out. He quickly gets punched out again when he says no one told Robin's boobs she was pregnant.
-I laughed whenever Robin went on about not ever wanting kids, only to have "future" Robin interject "Sorry Kids" to her offended looking "children".
-Past Barney: "Here's twenty for picking up a girl with only one word and here's another twenty for that word being boner."
-Kid Who Trapped Marshall on Roof (Scotty, I think.): “I don’t think of you as some dummy I trapped on the roof. I think of you like my dad.”
-Ted: "You can't fire me. I'm union, Bitch."
-"Future" Robin: "So kids, I settled in for Christmas alone. I appreciated that Ted wanted to cheer me up, but honestly, it wasn't necessary. So I can't have kids. Big deal. This way, there's no one to hold me back in life. No one to keep me from travelling where I want to travel. No one to get in the way of my career. If you want to know the truth of it... I'm glad you guys aren't real."
-Future Ted: "Kids, your Aunt Robin never became a pole vaulter. But she did become a famous journalist, a successful businesswomen, a world traveller. She was even briefly a bullfighter. That's a funny story. I'll get to that one later. But there's one thing your Aunt Robin never was: she was never alone".
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