One thing How I Met Your Mother does particularly well is a round-robin treatment of scenarios. Because the characters are similar enough in nature to be a close-knit circle of friends, yet have starkly different personalities and motivations, any character finding himself in a wacky situation can effectively be swapped out for another, creating a product that is still feasible, but with an entirely different outcome.
As this week’s episode begins Ted receives a mysterious phone call informing him “The window is open.” Rushing down the sidewalks of New York, knocking over anyone in his path, Ted arrives at the doorstep of Maggie, a girl whom Ted has crushed on since college. Unfortunately, the popular lass falls madly in love with every man she meets, and has never been out of a serious relationship for more than a few days. After several close but failed attempts to be the next courtier, Ted paid Maggie’s neighbor four years ago to phone him immediately after Maggie’s next break up.
Taking advantage of the open window, Ted invites the heartbroken girl to McLaren’s Pub in an attempt to console her, impress her, and cement his place in her life. Unfortunately, the tunnel-visioned professor forgot he has a class to teach that very evening. Ted begs Lily and Marshall to keep Maggie occupied and isolated from available men until his return.
Marshall, already engrossed with his own plotline, does his best to drive off social vultures, but is distracted by a package sent from his mother. Marshall’s parents sent him a box of keepsakes and mementos from his childhood, gleaned from their basement. Among these knickknacks is a letter, written by fifteen year-old Marshall to his present self. In it, 1993-era Marshall demands of his future self to complete certain goals, such as drive the A-Team van, slam dunk on a regulation-height basketball hoop, change his name to ‘Vanilla Thunder Eriksen,’ and most importantly, maintain his dream of saving the world and never selling out to the corporate machine.
Marshall’s desire to save the Earth by working with the Natural Resources Defense Council is a callback to seasons 1-3. Marshall was dead-set on achieving his dream job, but abandoned his lofty goals early in season three after a series of bad financial decisions. Massive debts forced Marshall to accept a high-paying attorney position for a less-than-reputable company.
Since then, Marshall has changed jobs, but is still working in the corporate sector. Very little mention of his environmentalist aspirations have been mentioned between then and tonight. Realizing he has abandoned his endeavors in pursuit of the almighty dollar, shaming him and his teenage self in the process, Marshall storms out of McLaren’s in disgust.
Ted, rushing through his lecture as fast as possible (“There are six main types of bridges: beam, cantilever, arch, suspension, and two others”), is appalled to learn Lily has also abandoned Maggie at the bar to chase after her husband, who she fears is about to quit his job. Lily tries to calm Ted, explaining she has left Maggie in the capable hands of Robin. Robin claims she is the perfect safeguard for Maggie. In her own words, “I know a little something about man-magnets. (Maggie) may be able to hold up a picture of your kids on the fridge, but I’m one of those magnets that can pick up cars in a junkyard.” However, in the time it took Robin to brag about her awesome skills, Maggie’s co-worker Jim has swooped in and begun to lay the moves on her.
Doing her best to distance Jim from Maggie, whilst subconsciously trying to verify her own self-image and sex appeal, Robin drags the unwilling Jim to an art show entitled “La Chien Erotique,” which makes me wonder frightfully what either party was expecting. Maggie is left with the remaining cast member, Barney. Barney reassures Ted he will respect his bro’s claim, already sidetracked by his own pursuits. After mocking a pair of overalls found in Marshall’s box, Barney challenges himself to wear the stone-washed garment all night until successfully bedding a woman. So far, Barney has had understandably unsuccessful results. While genuinely trying to preserve Maggie for his best friend, Barney relapses after she compliments his peculiar fashion sense. Throwing the Bro Code into the wind, Barney gives Ted ten minutes to retrieve Maggie before the window closes again.
Returning from his awkward experience with Robin, Jim squares off with Ted and Barney over who rightfully gets Maggie as his own. The entire scene is akin to the climax of There’s Something About Mary, but with fewer Green Bay Packers. Seeing Maggie being treated like an auction prize, Robin sympathetically puts the poor girl in a cab, sending her home. The three bachelors push and shove each other as they race to Maggie’s doorstep, only to discover she has reacquainted with Adam, a childhood friend she hasn’t seen since her teenage years. Maggie and Adam tell their tragic tale of lost love, which Future Narrator Ted calls the second greatest love story he’d ever heard (the first being his own, of course). In a video montage, we see young Adam and Maggie grow up together until Adam and his family moved away at age thirteen, breaking the poor girl’s heart. Realizing they couldn’t possibly beat such a long-coming reunion, Ted, Barney and Jim back off. It’s a touching cap to this episode, but a bit over-the-top, considering we’ve never seen these Adam and Maggie characters before, and likely never will again.
As for Marshall and Lily, Marshall didn’t storm out to quit his job. He simply found a nearby basketball hoop, and was attempting to complete one criterion from his list, justifying his life, choices and marking him as not a complete sellout. Unfortunately, due to his Dancer’s Hip, Marshall misses the slam dunk opportunity entirely, leaving him frozen on the cold concrete below. After a pep talk from Lily, Marshall realizes his actual accomplishments (graduating law school, marrying Lily, cutting off his stupid rat tail, etc.) weren’t what he dreamed of at age fifteen, but were noble achievements nonetheless.
As the last laugh, Marshall writes a letter to his sixty-year-old self, reminding him that as long as he’s with Lily, things will be all right. And as is Marshall’s way, he asked his elderly self to send him a sign if time travel was possible. As he writes the sentence, a plate of hot wings is delivered by Lily, claiming they were returned by an elderly man, complaining of their heat. The camera pans over to reveal sixty year-old Marshall at another table looking longingly at his thirty year-old counterpart and his wife, explaining to his waitress, “the wings weren’t too hot, (he) just had wings earlier… Much earlier.” This was done for laughs, of course, but I still love the notion that time travel will be a canonical actuality in the How I Met Your Mother universe.
As stated earlier, tonight’s episode succeeds due to stellar performances by the cast. As each character plays hot potato with Maggie, we see how radically different yet eerily similar our five protagonists are. Each ably plays the pros and cons of their respective roles comically, but also sympathetically. But, while this week’s episode was rife with sentimentality, it was stock sentimentality. It’s a special sentimentality produced in bulk and sold at Sam’s Club. The writers try to tug at our heartstrings, but they simply recycled two frequently recurring motifs: Ted shunning his fears and doubts and deciding he is ready for a serious relationship, and Marshall and Lily realizing they will always be happy as long as they have each other. Reinforcing these themes isn’t necessarily bad, it just doesn’t add anything new. But as long as new episodes of How I Met Your Mother are being produced, that window will always be open.
