How I Met Your Mother – Recap & Review – The Stinson Missile Crisis

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How I Met Your Mother
The Stinson Missile Crisis

Original Air Date: Oct 3, 2011

Caitlin – Associate Staff Writer
caitlin@thetwocentscorp.com

How I Met Your Mother makes use of flashback a lot, and tonight it took up the majority of the episode. The whole thing was narrated for us in the present by Robin, sitting in the office of a therapist played by Kal Penn.

No, don’t worry. It’s all casual and her choice to go and express her feelings. Except that, actually, it’s court-ordered therapy because she attacked a woman in the street. So you probably should worry a bit.

Obviously, it had something (everything) to do with Barney. After watching him treat Nora like a queen and breaking down under her desk, she was wearing thin. Now, there’s still some reason for concern between Nora and a Barney who poses as a breast reduction specialist, so she offered to help him out. That totally doesn’t scream “What could possibly go wrong?” In the present, she also tells of how Marshall and Lily were dealing with Ted’s interference with their rather lenient baby doctor, eventually cutting him out of co-parenting.

Later, Marshall reconsidered their position and asked Ted to help them out again- against Lily’s wishes. As far as I’m concerned, the person who’s body the baby is in should get the biggest say, but the men wound up at an ever-increasingly awkward birthing class without her while Robin moved from being actually helpful to awkward with Barney. Eventually, she suggested a night on the town together. As much as my shipper heart liked that, it was a bad idea. But that didn’t make it any less depressing when Nora showed up to interfere.

Robin was sitting in the bar alone when a woman came up to her looking for Barney, called by a phone message that he had set up pre-Nora and accidently sent her that night. She sent this interference after the couple, hoping to ruin their date. But as Marshall and Ted finally realized they shouldn’t get in the way of Lily’s wishes (though I do think a full bottle of wine sends a bad message), she changed her mind. The attack happened because she went after the woman and jumped her to save Barney and Nora’s date against her own desires. Angst!

My first question is, how does all this play into Ted’s comment last week? It certainly seems likely now that it will have more to do with Robin and Barney than Robin and him, but that doesn’t change the fact Victoria saw something between the two of them. And yet, again, we know that relationship can’t go anywhere. Anyway, while I still don’t hate Nora the way many of my fellow shippers do, I also haven’t changed my mind about her with Barney. He just doesn’t act like himself around her.

I liked this episode because, in the end, I think it will be a significant one in Barney and Robin’s storyline. And hearing more of Marshall and Lily’s pregnancy- especially with that interesting little flash forward to the birth itself- got me excited for watching them during the rest of the season. It’d be nice for their baby to be born in a world where his or her Uncle Barney and Aunt Robin were already together, but I might be getting a little bit ahead of myself. Hopefully just a little bit!

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