How I Met Your Mother: The Broken Code (9x04)

This was an episode that was mostly just average, but had one large problem which unfortunately impacted the whole tone of the story, and made it hard for me to be overly enthusiastic about this one.

So. Barney confronts Ted about his moment holding hands with Robin in the rain, but Ted immediately assures Barney that it meant nothing. Barney appears to accept this instantly, and all is well. However, Barney starts to abuse Ted's job as best man and have him fulfill a series of insane tasks. Initially, Ted is willing to remake fancy place cards and store doves in his basement room and do all sorts of other unpleasant things. However, when he discovers that Barney has started a special poker game without him, and makes Billy Zabka his new best man, Ted realizes that Barney is still upset.

In order to mediate the tension between them, the two turn to Marshall. Lily has turned her famous "Marshpillow" into a more advanced model by attaching an iPad to the head with Marshall skyping in from the road. He determines that Ted holding Robin's hand is only weird if it's weird to hold any friend's hand. To test this theory, the three guys (or two guys and one pillow contraption) go outside and sit on the ground. Ted and Barney hold hands. Barney agrees that it's not weird, since of course Ted doesn't still have feelings for Robin. When Ted is unable to confirm this, Barney is understandably angry.

Ted makes a promise that he will try to move on and that he would never do anything to hurt Barney. There's a serious moment where Barney debates whether he can forgive Ted for this and move forward. And the next thing we know, they're playing poker together and all is right with the world. This quick turnaround was the major flaw of the episode for me. A lot of tension has been building about Ted's feelings for Robin. If this is the only outcome of all of that, I'll feel seriously cheated. At the same time, it would be silly to pretend to resolve Barney's resentment only to raise it up again later. It would have been so much more interesting if Barney had been unable to forgive Ted for at least a few episodes. We could have explored the tense relationship between them for a bit longer.

The Lily and Robin plot was barely worth mentioning, honestly. Robin is upset that Lily threw such a lame bachelorette party for her. Nobody came except for Patrice. At first, Lily says that she made a mistake and forgot to invite people, but later she tells Robin the truth - the reason there were really no girls at her party was because Robin doesn't really have girl friends. This ends up upsetting Lily, who doesn't want Robin to be without girls when she goes to live in Rome. Robin is coached on making friends by Lily, and actually ends up hitting it off with one girl who is into sports like Robin is. However, Lily then becomes jealous and scares the girl off.

There was nothing particularly wrong about this plot line, but not much right about it either, if you know what I mean. There just wasn't anything special to sink my teeth into. And that goes for most of the episode, to tell the truth. Most of it was just average. The five friends behaving like they usually do. Also, as I mentioned, I was really hoping to see more come out of the Barney and Ted conflict.

6/10