(SPOILERS AHEAD, so proceed with caution, you Mother lovers!)
Season Nine, Episode 12: “The Rehearsal Dinner”
Written by: Chuck Thatham; Directed by: Pamela Fryman
It’s time for the rehearsal dinner, and if previews are true, then Barney has planned a laser tag rehearsal dinner (the first of its kind?). After last year’s bachelor party surprise, Barney is ready for another elaborate surprise from Robin. Yet everyone claims that no surprises or laser tag games are in store. Who is lying? And will there be an elaborate reveal at the end? This is HIMYM after all.
Quick Breakdown
Saturday 8 p.m., 22 hours before the wedding.
As Marshall finishes the last leg of his trip, Barney is spending his rehearsal dinner in jail. Well, not a real jail — he’s handcuffed to a pipe in the Laser Tag Security Office, with Robin in a gold-colored dress pacing the floor. He urges the officer to press the button on the animatronic jazz-playing cow with the words “Let’s Get This Party Started” stenciled on its base. Robin tells him not to, annoyed because Barney always has to press the button.
But why is he handcuffed in a Laser Tag Security Office? Months ago, Robin vetoed Barney’s idea of a laser tag rehearsal dinner, not long after he vetoed her idea for a wedding in Canada. But after that elaborate bachelor party last season, Barney is convinced that Robin is planning a surprise laser tag rehearsal dinner — although she and the others vehemently tell him that it’s not the case. Barney being Barney, he doesn’t listen.
One hour before the rehearsal dinner, Robin is scurrying around the Farhampton Inn, making sure everything is ready. Barney still believes it is a decoy. When there is a problem with the ice, Barney assumes it’s because he’s meant to drive to the nearest place with ice, which will be right next to a “laser taggery,” where the surprise rehearsal dinner will be.
Lily is slowly growing annoyed with Barney’s obstinacy and the fact that no one will tell her a secret (because she’s such a blabbermouth). She gets so annoyed that she distracts Robin by spilling Marshall’s secret to her and Ted. Yet not even this news can distract Robin, who has learned that Barney is arrested and awaiting the arrival of police at the nearby laser tag place — for threatening to dunk the snack bar attendant’s head in a vat of nacho whiz.
With the security officer all caught up on their story, Robin remains furious with stubborn Barney. But suddenly he’s slipped out of his handcuffs and dramatically presses the button on the animatronic cow. The walls of the office rise to the ceiling revealing an ice skating rink decked out with Canadian paraphernalia. Barney packed the building with Canadian clichés and callbacks to old jokes, including the reappearance of Alan Thicke (who sings with James). Looks like Barney will always be the master of surprise.
Rating
B+
This was another episode delightfully stuffed with callbacks to earlier this season and earlier this series. While Barney is frequently (always?) boneheaded, his elaborate surprise is actually very romantic, further proving how much he belongs with Robin. Everything else in the episode, not related to Barney and Robin, however, feels forced and uninteresting. (Do we really care about Lily’s drama when we know that Marshall is so close?) Overall, though, this is a great episode to propel us to the mid-season finale (in two weeks).
Now for some random thoughts and my favorite moments of the night…
Robin gives Barney a look and tells him to memorize her “Pretty Mad Face.” Barney retorts that it looks an awful lot like her “Pretty Hungry Face.”
Gluten-free edible panties — one of Barney’s worst ideas (according to Lily).
As the gang riffs on Robin’s dreams of a Canadian wedding (Ted: Are you registered at Tim Horton’s?), a couple in the background at McLaren’s gets engaged, pregnant, congratulates their son on his graduation, and faces the end of their lives. Seeing a gag like this took away from the main characters and made me start to wonder if this entire season itself wasn’t just one big gag.
Robin argues with Barney, saying that she wants a “marriage built on honesty and trust and all of that Lily & Marshall crap.”
An unfunny running gag throughout the episode has Ted dressed as Liberace and learning to play the piano. I pretty much ignored it, though.
