Written by Scott Clifford
Time is money so I’ll give everyone the gist. The Mother happens to be at the same train station as Ted. The train derails, she dies. Ted falls in love with her corpse and stores the Mother’s eggs in a locket. This way Robin can give birth to his child through artificial insemination after she marries Barney. Marshall and Lilly do a dance. It’s revealed that everyone is stuck on an island and it was all a dream. This is a bad joke. I am so sorry. Please help me!
Anyway, in case any of our readers have been living under a rock for eight years, How I Met Your Mother is about a show where a man named Ted Mosby (Josh Radnor) tells his kids how he, well, met their mother while living with his friends in New York City. The ninth season premiere continues where we left last season with the build-up of Barney and Robin’s wedding with two back-to-back episodes.
In “The Locket,” Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) and Robin (Colbie Smulders) realize their marriage may be an incestuous one while Marshall (Jason Segel) tries to teach his mother how to a Facebook photo that reveals he’s going to be made a judge in New York City so Lily (Alyson Hannigan) won’t find out; getting kicked off his plane while doing so. Speaking of Lily, she attempts to stop Ted from trying to find a locket that can win Robin back at the last minute. Lily also meets The Mother (Cristin Milioti) while taking a train ride to the wedding after being annoyed at Ted’s driving habits.
The events of “Coming Back” take place right after “The Locket”. Marshall has to find a car to get home after being kicked out of the plane to New York City along with the baby and a single mother named Daphne. Robin gets worried about Barney’s commitment to their marriage after his brother (Wayne Brady), who convinced Barney that monogamy is possible, reveals that he is divorcing his partner Todd. Meanwhile Ted deals with the fact that he’s alone at the wedding.
This was an entertaining season premiere for the show. It’s not earth shattering but anyone who is into the show will laugh enough to make it worth it. Ted’s eccentric driving habits and enthusiasm for obscure facts that no one cares about make me relate to him more than I’d like to admit. Lily’s back and forth with The Mother is entertaining although too much of a coincidence for me to really believe. As usual, Barney’s plotlines are the best parts of the show. Any season premiere that involves incest and a flashback sequence of an old gypsy woman cursing 18th-century versions of Barney and James to be horny while playing guitar solos in Moscow, Russia is a win for me.
My criticism of this show is the criticism that I’ve had for the last few seasons. Everyone involved is stretching out the overall Mother plotline in order to make more money. This would be okay if Ted was the most likeable character of the show. Unfortunately, he’s the least likeable character and everyone else has to be funny enough to overcome that fact. So either you’ve accepted it and you’re going to watch the show anyway or you didn’t and you stopped a while ago.
I say bring it on. I want to see another Slapsgiving before it’s over.
