How I Met Your Mother – Recap & Review – Zoo or False

photo: cbs

How I Met Your Mother
Zoo or False

Original Air Date: Apr 12, 2010

Faye O – Senior Reviewer
faye@thetwocentscorp.com

After a few weeks hiatus, How I Met Your Mother came back with a bang! This episode focused on Marshall, which is something that I feel hasn’t been done in a while. He’s such a great character, and I miss him when he’s in the background. The episode also provided a lot of togetherness for the characters, having them all in the apartment, at the bar, and at Robin’s work throughout the episode.

Let’s start at the beginning. Robin is sick and tired of her job. Every person she interviews is boring, and she just wants one person to come on with an interesting story to tell the world. Ted has offered time and time again to come on with his giant model of the Empire State Building, in which he likes to play with tiny dolls and reenact scenes from When Harry Met Sally. Robin keeps telling him that nobody would be interested in this, and therefore is still in search of something to put on.

Barney is trying to convince his friends that lying is the best way to get girls to sleep with him. I laughed so hard when he convinced a girl that he was Neil Armstrong; the first man to walk on the moon. Later on, that same girl sees him while he’s trying to pick up someone new and keeps calling him “Neil” to get his attention. He turns around to say “My name’s not Neil, its Barney” but realizes who she was. I found it hilarious that he was saying that Neil wasn’t his name! But that’s probably just the kind of dork I am. Did anyone else find that funny? Anyways, he attempts to use Marshall’s story (which I’ll get to in a moment) and pass it off as his own, but keeps changing the details of it. In the end, he’s convinced that lying works, even though in every case, it failed. Oh, Barney.

Okay, let’s get to the Marshall story. The gang has ordered pizza for the evening, and Marshall was asked to pay. He claims that he shouldn’t pay since he doesn’t like pizza. Everyone’s reaction to this, including the delivery boy’s, was priceless. This is when Marshall confesses that he was mugged. Lily decides to take the proper precautions to stay safe and later decides to get a gun. Marshall definitely doesn’t want her to do this, so he changes his story, and tells the gang that he was mugged by a monkey at the Central Park Zoo!

Everyone found this hilarious, and this is finally the story that Robin had been waiting for. She invites Marshall to tell his tale on the show; but before that airs, Marshall kept changing his story. This brought up the question of truth versus lies. Nobody could tell what the truth of Marshall’s story was, and I think that after a while, neither did he. When he learned that the monkey would be sent away, and separated from his mate, Marshall goes back to his armed gunman story, but when Lily claims again that she’ll get a gun, he goes back to the monkey story. Finally, in the end, he decides not to tell his story on Robin’s show, and to keep everyone wondering what truly happened to him. Ted finally got his chance to show his Empire State Building, but not before the monkey escaped from his cage and reenacted the scenes from King Kong!

I loved this episode! What did you all think? Leave your TwoCents in the comments! I’ll see you all next week.