How I Met Your Mother – Recap & Review – Legendaddy

photo: cbs

How I Met Your Mother
Legendaddy

Original Air Date: Mar 21, 2011

Caitlin- Associate Staff Writer
caitlin@thetwocentscorp.com

We’ve been waiting for the guest appearance for seasons now. There was speculation all over the internet as to who would play the part. Finally, tonight, all is revealed. What, the Mother? No, Barney’s dad- played by John Lithgow, nonetheless!

But as it turns out, this episode wasn’t actually as lighthearted as it seemed from the promos. What we ended up getting what more serious, and provided more emotion and character development for Barney.

The gang is at the house that Ted, the Mother, and their kids will eventually live in. Fairly quickly, we find out they’re there for an intervention with Barney, and jump into a flashback. Everyone is watching television when the set breaks down. Barney, not knowing how to use basic tools, calls for help- and gets his father instead.

The others don’t see him until he returns from his first meeting with Jerry. According to him, it was great. His dad is just an older version of him. Understandably, everyone’s nervous this might not be what it seems. It isn’t, but not for the reason they expect. Jerry approaches them at the bar, saying he’s a driving instructor and now Barney’s not returning his calls.

It turns out that Barney and Jerry’s meeting didn’t go at all as Barney described it. Real Jerry drinks skim milk, has left his past behind, and has a family now. Barney maintains he’s upset that Jerry isn’t cool enough to be his dad, but it’s clear there’s more going on. Still, he’s eventually convinced to go to Jerry’s house for dinner when he says he’ll never talk to his dad again and Marshall calmly points out “No, Barney. I’ll never talk to my dad again”.

Unfortunately, he acts petulant toward the wife and son who are his father’s family now. He storms out when he learns the boy’s name is JJ- Jerome Jr. Outside, he starts trying to remove Jerry’s basketball hoop. When Jerry comes outside, he keeps talking about how uncool Jerry is until he finally yells “If you were going to be some lame suburban dad, why couldn’t you have been that for me?” Though his father pleads to let him try to make up for his mistakes, when they get the hoop down, Barney walks away.

Despite the unexpectedly solemn ending, there were a couple lighthearted threads through the episode involving everyone else. One was the discussion of the little knowledge “gaps” everyone has, inspired by Barney’s unfamiliarity with tools. Ted can’t pronounce “chameleon”, Robin doesn’t realize the North Pole and reindeer are real, and Lily can’t throw.

From that, Marshall also addresses how everyone’s been afraid to say anything insulting towards him since his dad died. He’s been testing them with increasingly absurd situations because he wants them to rip into him so he can feel more or less as he once did. Eventually they do, and although it doesn’t take away from the seriousness of Barney’s storyline, it’s nice to see that the writers remember this is still a comedy.