Staff Writer
I just finished watching the How I Met Your Mother one hour season premiere and it was so much better than I could have imagined. It had flashbacks, flash-forwards, and of course what everyone has been waiting for, getting to know the mother. The episode was filled with just enough to satisfy you while still keeping you watching.
The episode starts off saying that it’s 55 hours before Barney and Robin’s wedding at 11am on Thursday with future Ted stating that the wedding weekend was a life-changing one for all of them. The scene than changes to Lily and Ted driving to the wedding in Farhampton and to sum everything up, Ted is driving Lily crazy with his driving antics. He drives slow, insists on wearing driving gloves, and has planned out a whole fun filled book of facts about Long Island for their road-trip.
It then cuts to Barney and Robin in their car heading to the wedding as well, but they are being driven by the beloved driver, Ranjit. The conversation between the two leads to them talking about their family members, and they realize they might have just invited a whole bunch of ‘wild cards” to the wedding. All they can think now is that their wedding will be ruined; it’s just a matter of who is going to ruin it.
The storyline than moves on to Marshall, who we find is on a plane to New York from visiting his family in Minnesota with baby Marvin. He thinks he’s going to ruin the wedding when Lily finds out about him hiding the secret that he got offered his dream job to be a judge in New York, just when she found out she was offered her dream job. He won’t stop talking which really annoys the passenger next to him, guest star Sherri Shepard, who is trying to sleep. As he’s waiting for the flight to take off he gets a notification on his phone that his mother has posted a picture of himself and baby Marvin. The update is a picture of Marshall holding a banana like a gavel and looking at baby Marvin with the caption “Marshall’s gonna be a judge”. This leads to Marshall freaking out since he hasn’t told Lily and he knows that if he’s seen the notification that Lily has gotten the notification too.
It then cuts to Lily who has the notification up on her phone, but Marshall gets lucky as she decides not to look at it going on a rant about how she doesn’t like his mother’s posts. Lily’s frustration finally boils over as Ted sets her off and she makes him take her to the train station so she won’t have to be in the car with him anymore.
We’re now back in the car with Robin and Barney who are making up a list of who they each invited to the wedding that might be wild cards. When they both discover they each have a cousin named Mitch and after a HUGE bombshell they realize both of their Mitchs are the same person and that they might actually be blood relatives if Mitch is a blood relative of both of them!
Now we’re back with Lily who is on the train to head to Farhampton without Ted. As Lily takes her seat on the train the camera pans out and we see that Lily is on the same train as the mysterious mother!
We now find ourselves back with Marshall on the plane frantically calling his mother to have her take down the picture of himself and Baby Marvin. A simple task turns difficult as his mother is having trouble getting the picture off of the site and Marshall freaking out hoping Lily hasn’t seen it yet.
It then comes back to Lily who is fighting with herself over whether she should look at the photo of Baby Marvin since she hasn’t seen him in a week. She’s taken out of her thoughts though as Lily meets the mother when the mother asks her if she’s okay since she looks stressed out and offers her a cookie that she’s made which turn out to be called “Sonbitches”.
With one stressed situation down we now come back to Robin and Barney who are in MAJOR panic mode thinking that they might be related. They start calling everyone in the family to try to get to the bottom of it.
The scene cuts back to Marshall who is still on the phone as the plane is trying to take off. He’s yelling at his mother and a plane attendant comes up and says that he needs to turn his phone off. Marshall doesn’t and it leads to him and the passenger next to him getting kicked off the plane.
Back to Lily and the mother on the train. Lily is filling her in on how annoying Ted was with his driving and the conversation leads to us learning some of her similarities with Ted, like wearing driving gloves, weird roadside attractions, and a nickname that she gave him, Lady Tedwina Slowsby.
We than come back to Barney and Robin for a few minutes as they are still freaking out about if they are related and what they are going to do if they actually are.
Back to Lily and the mother, the conversation turns to the mother suggesting that he might have planned to have her storm off, and a realization hits Lily. She thinks that he might have gotten the locket back from Stella in California and was going to the wedding to try and win Robin back before it starts. She thinks he ditched her so she couldn’t stop him.
We’re now back with Marshall who has gotten the password to his mom’s account to take the photo off and he’s having just as much trouble as she was.
Relief finally comes to Robin and Barney as Robin’s grandmother clears up that the cousin was adopted. This means that he isn’t a blood relative of the two. Barney than declares that he’s no longer worried about a wild card being at their wedding anymore. Barney’s response is one of my favorite lines he has ever uttered. He simply says “legendary”. Robin asks him why he doesn’t say wait for it and the response is, “I have you, I don’t have to wait for it anymore”. Such a cute moment from these two!
We than see Lily trying to call Ted, but he’s ignoring her phone call and Lily is freaking out because the mother takes her phone as she promised not to let her look at the photo. Meanwhile Marshall is freaking out as well as he can’t get the picture taken off and everyone in the airport is giving their two cents on how to do it. Lily and the mother are now sitting calmly after fighting and just as she’s about to look at the photo Baby Marvin saves the day as he somehow gets the photo deleted from the page just in the nick of time.
We finally see Ted again as he’s arriving in Farhampton carrying a small gift in his hand for Robin. Lily arrives at the same time and tackles him to the ground. He gives Robin the gift anyway and it turns out to be a photo of their group from 8 years ago.
The first half of the episode ends with Marshall finding out that there is only one seat left on a plane to New York and he’s going to have to fight with Sherri Sheppard’s character to get the final seat. We also find out that Ted did go to California to look for the locket.
The second half of the episode starts off with 54 hours before the wedding and finds the gang waiting for their rooms at the inn for the weekend. Lily and Ted are checking in with the front desk man, Curtis, who keeps reminding Ted of how depressing the weekend will be for him since the inn mostly has couples staying there. Lily gets a call from Marshall and she’s now upset that he missed his flight and might not make it to the wedding at all now. This leads to Lily to head to the bar and paying the bartender, Linus, to make sure she has a drink in her hands the whole weekend if she’s going to survive without having Marshall there.
We now see Barney talking to Marshall and telling him he needs to start acting like a “New Yorker” and get mean if he wants to get to New York. It looks like he’s going to have to quickly rent a car when he finds out the airports are being shut down because of a storm. He rushes to the car rental place where his antagonizer, Sherri Sheppard’s character, is trying to get a car as well. Marshall somehow ends up with the last car beating her out and starts mocking her. As he realizes that he needs a car seat for baby Marvin, she offers to take the car and go get a baby seat for him and then come back to pick him up and they’ll drive to New York together. He agrees but soon wonders if he should have as he’s waiting for her to come back.
We then learn of the Stinson curse that started back in 1807, a curse that causes all Stinson’s to become horny and be unable to remain faithful. Barney however now thinks the curse is broken since his brother, James, is happily married and has made him believe that real love can be possible. Barney gets a phone call and a bombshell is dropped from James to the rest of the group as he reveals that he and his husband are getting a divorce after James cheated multiple times. Robin doesn’t want James to tell Barney that he’s getting a divorce because she’s afraid that Barney won’t want to get married if the only couple that’s made him believe in love is getting divorced. Barney comes back to the table and Robin tries to keep the secret but a drunk Lily spills the secret as James tried to cover it up.
It then comes down to Ted to confront Lily about what just happened. He decides that she needs to be cut off from drinking, as she’s already drunk before noon. Trying to cut her off is harder than he expected since Linus keeps handing her drinks.
Now back to Barney and Robin. We see that Robin has followed Barney to the front desk to confront him as she thinks that he will now want to go to a strip club because he’s freaking out after finding out about his brother’s divorce. We find out that Barney was just going to the front desk to get the key to James’s room because he had set up an anniversary surprise for James and Tom’s wedding complete with flower petals and an erotic cake in the shape of the two men. Robin sees what Barney did and says that it’s the “weirdest thing that anyone has ever done for their sibling” and that she loved him. Barney reveals that he’s bummed his brother is getting a divorce but that he doesn’t need someone to believe in love anymore since he has Robin now.
We find out that Robin and Barney cleaned the stuff out of James’s room and we hear a voiceover from future Ted saying that “When you believe in people, people can come though”. This segways to Marshall still waiting. Just as he’s given up hope Sherri Sheppard’s character comes back finally to pick him up like she said she would. We find out that her name is Daphne and after some agreements Marshall and Daphne find themselves on their way to New York.
We then move back to Ted who is still waiting for his room and working on a crossword puzzle as a flash forward occurs, one year in the future actually. We FINALLY get some Ted with the mother scenes and let me tell you, their first scene together is completely adorable. It’s one year since Ted was sitting there doing his crossword puzzle and this time he’s there with a girlfriend, the mother. The chemistry with those two is something that makes you want to believe in love seeing how cute those two are together and how well they know each other. Not only do we get a sweet conversation and a sweet kiss.
Now back to present day Ted who is finally getting his room at the Inn and is on edge as the front desk man is still bugging him about being single in the inn. When Ted finally gets to his room, it’s revealed that all the stuff that was in James’s room for his anniversary was moved into what is now Ted’s room. Ted’s response to everything in his room… “I need another drink”.
That’s the end of the one hour season premiere and to me it’s everything you could want in a How I Met Your Mother episode. With the first two episodes down in the first hour of the season plenty has happened. However, you can bet with 18 episodes left we still have plenty of adventures with our favorite gang to look forward to. So until next week!
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