HIMYM: The Betting Box

by Amy K. Bredemeyer

I'm going to start by commenting on the final scene... SO MANY YELLOW UMBRELLAS!! Longtime viewers definitely got the joke, but I bet it came off strange to the casual audience member. Now, for the rest of the episode... I don't think that the title was all that fitting. I think that the writers are getting their money's worth on that whole "it takes 46 minutes to get from the bar to Lily and Marshall's" thing. I don't know why we had to have Robin go to Moscow, unless someone actually read about some butter festival and wanted to write that in. I'm shocked that Barney ended up breaking the VCR in the end... I didn't think anything could stop him from watching it. That's actually a side-problem I had with this episode... why do Lily and Marshall still have a tape if they don't have a player for it? Either chuck it or have a player, guys. You know you're not going to pay someone to transfer a sex tape to DVD! Of course, maybe that's just my own thought process... I couldn't get rid of my VCR... among other things, my skydiving recording is on VHS! Anyway, at long last we can put the Robin-and-Ted thing to bed, and hopefully the show will return to Ted's search for "the mother." I predict a string of one-date experiences... you?

How I Met Your Mother "No Pressure" (S07E17):  We pick up where we left off last week... Ted says "I love you" to Robin, and they talk about the reason they broke up five years ago: they wanted different things in life. Well, here we are and they're both still here. Robin doesn't really get a chance to respond immediately, though, since she needs to leave to cover a butter festival in Moscow twelve hours earlier than she thought. They kiss before she leaves. [um... ok. whatever. Let's love the fact, however, that Ted calls Marshall to the bar before 8am!] Ted fills in Marshall, and Marshall tells him that he knows of his love for Robin. [Marshall is just weird sometimes.] Robin and Ted have dinner at the blue french horn restaurant when she returns. [nostalgia up the wazoo, guys!] It's looking iffy, but by the end of the night, it's clear that it isn't going to happen between them. Robin says that it's not because of Barney, it's because everything is so crazy in her life. [who buys this? not me.] She reminds him about their deal for "when they're 40," but he says that he can't do that anymore... time isn't going to change how she feels about him. [he's right, so I'm glad that he actually got that out.] Marshall tells Robin that she's got to move out of Ted's. [well this will change things a bit. Last time Robin lived elsewhere, Marshall and Lily were still around. Now that they're gone, will MacLaren's continue to be the center of the show?]

Barney has taken to staying over at Marshall and Lily's if he gets stuck after the drunk train. Well, he's not completely "with it" when Lily tells him not to mess up the house when she leaves, so some selective hearing causes him to ransack the place, looking for a sex tape. Luckily, Barney has a clean-up crew available to fix everything he does, since he tears the place apart. [sadly, we only see one room of mess, which I think was a cheap cop-out.] He finds a box of "long term bets" and reads a few... Marshall and Lily bet on the others! [love it. could have seen it coming. the decoration of the box, however, was overkill.] Barney heads to the bar to show the box to the group, and we learn that Lily bets Marshall that Ted and Robin won't end up together. [I half-love, half-hate the idea that Lily and Marshall sometimes say things simply because it'll help their respective bets pay off...] Another one says that Lily bets Marshall that Barney will find the sex tape one day, so Barney flies out to get back to Long Island, where one of the cleaning ladies finds

Photo: Ron P. Jaffe/FOX

the tape. [of course.] Barney high-tails it to Ted's, since he has a VCR. Ted realizes that Robin loves Barney, and Barney tells him that Robin broke his heart by choosing Kevin, so he's through with her. [...really, tho?] Marshall tries to talk Barney out of watching the tape as Lily pushes him to do it (just to win the bet at that point), but Barney breaks down and slams the whole thing to the ground instead. [what was he even doing holding the tape player and not just the tape?] 

The episode ends with Lily asking Marshall to pay up, since Robin and Ted won't end up together... but Marshall says, "not yet." [cryptic, much? why is Marshall holding out on that one?? and even if Ted and Robin both marry other people, couldn't they someday end up together anyway? So when would this bet pay off, when one of them dies??]

Random Mother Clue: The first time Ted told his wife that he loved her was outside a movie theater. It was raining, and they had planned to see The Wedding Bride III. [haha for loyal viewers... can you believe that Ted would see the threequel to that horrid movie??] We also learn that Ted isn't going to say "I love you" to any other women before he says it to "the mother."