How I Met Your Mother: "The Rough Patch"

Ahh... to try and review How I Met Your Mother. or even to explain its excellence.

I can't. But luckily this show is set up in the classic sitcom format, and therefore not overly serialized. So now that we're in Season 5, I can still mention some details about the show without ruining the entire plot line for someone who's not quite caught up.

And this week's installment is a great one. It doesn't have an especially memorable story line and despite a rather pivotal event in character dynamics, the episode doesn't carry a huge amount of weight.

Where they hit hard was the clever exchanges between characters and the delivery of excellent humor.

I must say my favorite moment of the episode was the referral to Lily as "The Kraken" by her very own fiance.
This comes about after Barney, now "happily" in a relationship with Robin, "voluntarily" gives Ted his big chest of porn. Once alone, Ted curiously tosses in a little indie film he finds in the chest titled ArchiSEXture, only to find that Barney has taped over it. But not with what one would expect Barney to be taping, this is a plea to GET HIM OUT of the relationship he'd undoubtedly have to be in if he was ever to give up his collection.







So once Ted and Marshall realize they need to extract Barney from the jail he's thrown himself into, Marshall recognizes the most efficient way to do so is to

Lily, known as "The Kraken" for having broken Ted up with SEVEN of his past girlfriends unbeknownst to him, simply because they didn't pass what she likes to call "The Porch Test", at first denies the guys' request. In an extremely awesome and perfectly acted scene, she declares herself "retired" and "out of the game"

But after Ted and Marshall make matters worse ("amateurs" that they are) and once she sees for herself what the relationship in question is doing to Barney and Robin








she pulls herself out of retirement for one last breakup.



And the plan is this:

To "reignite







the four biggest fights







they've ever been in







all at once."








I'll leave you to find out the results of the plan. But I will say that the episode goes on to contain a lot of classically excellent HIMYM moments.

And one big,







awesome,







AWESOME,







EVENT!