HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER: Murtaugh
March 31, 2009 by Jen
Hey everyone, it’s Jen again, recounting last night’s HIMYM. Hopefully you all stayed up past Old Ted’s bedtime and were able to catch this hilarious episode.
Finally the inevitable happened: Barney was kicked out of Laser Tag. He is a grown man rough-housing with kids, and not in a cute way, but with venom in his eyes. He was a liability and he had to go. I’m sorry, I know I thought it was cute in the first two seasons, but Barney has gotten out of hand when he’s throwing kids around. He should be instead playing paintball, in a fatigue suit.
Upon hearing about Barney’s expulsion from laser tag and his desire to TP the arena, Ted pulled out his “Murtaugh list”. Based on a repeated line used in the “Lethal Weapon” quadrilogy, Ted composed a list of things that after a certain age you are just too old to do. The sheer brilliance of this list was captivating to me. After my last birthday, I have found myself saying that I’m too old to do a lot of things, and I’m only twenty-schmeelsugasuga…OK, fine, I’m almost 29. Like Ted, I have come to terms with my feeling old-at-heart.
After listening to Ted’s list, Barney decided that he would take on the challenge to conquer all the items on the list within a 24-hour time limit, with fear of a 3-hour architecture lecture from Ted. HUZZAH!
Meanwhile, Marshall was putting fear into Lily’s students. Lily was testing Marshall as a future daddy by having him coach her kindergarten basketball team. This part of the episode was up and down for me. Sometimes it got annoying: how many times can a grown man yell at children like that? And sometimes it was hilarious: Teen Wolf! I didn’t like that Lily was testing her Marshmallow. She knows Marshall will make a great father (the baby sock episode, for instance). I did like, however, that it brought up something in the near future, the fact that Lily wasn’t drinking the celebratory scotch. Are they alluding to a Lily pregnancy story (after Hannigan’s real-life pregnancy is over)?
Back to the Murtaugh challenge, Barney upped the ante. Ted had to complete a list of things he was too young to do and if Ted won, he would get to lecture Barney for 6 hour and Barney could never do anything on the Murtaugh list again. Barney was on his mission and Robin joined him. She found him admirable for wanting to stay young-at-heart. I, however, fell for Ted and his challenge list last night. He is right, there is something comforting in the knowledge that all of life’s uncertainties were solved. I enjoyed that Robin got in on the action. She and Barney have the same mentality about a lot of subjects, so it was good she wanted to help prove Ted wrong. Who didn’t get a twinge of Robarney happiness when they checked off “leave an annoying two-person message “on Barney’s phone?
I loved that Robin was totally into the rave clothes; she fit right in and had no problems while Barney was conceding from the challenge. But Ted, being honorable, admitted learning a lesson from an all-night “Lethal Weapon” marathon: while Murtaugh always muttered, “I’m too old for this stuff,” he would still do it. You can find a balance between becoming older and staying young.
What I liked about this episode is that there was no lying and no backstabbing; it was good, honestly enjoyable episode. What did you think? And most importantly: what is on your Murtaugh list?
Jen is our resident HIMYM aficionado. Her old-at-heart mentality is probably due to spending lots of time with her grandparents as a child. She learned three-point turns and parallel parking by driving her Nana’s scooter. She’s now patiently waiting for her social security checks to start rolling in.
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This episode was legen…and I hope you’re not lactose-intolerant cause the second half of that word is…dary! LOL funny episode. The part where Barney was playing laser tag was hilarious. I laughed way too hard there Haha. To the person who missed it, you can catch it online here…
http://watchheroesstreaming.com/season-3-episode-21-into-asylum/
I liked all the episode except the Marshall/Lilly basketball subplot. I thought they were both being idiots – Marshall a lot more than Lilly. (Marshall could probably be arrested for child abuse after his training regime.)
However, Barney and Robin were great. Ted was okay.
RE: Paintball – Yesterday a teenager lost an eye to a paintball hit here in Philly.
I though it was a great episode. Yes, I liked the Murtaugh plot better than the basketball plot, but the Teen Wolf scene made that whole thing worth it. Loved the phone message – these little hints at Robarney’s greatness are such a nice in-the-background way to lead up to what I hope will be an eventual pairing of the characters. Who wouldn’t love Barney and Robin?? The Canadian jokes are coming with more regularity – someone on the writing staff either really loves or really hates my country! 🙂
Hands down the best point of the episode: Ted saying Barney’s ear looked like a jack-o-lantern on November 3rd and later Robin calling Barney knowing that him putting phone to ear would hurt! Marshall acting like that does kind of throw you off on whether he will be a good dad but you have to remember episode after episode where Marshall wins every game from Zitchdog to Yachtsee to just about anything … so much so that he wasn’t allowed to play in the Game Night episode.
So yeah, cruel but the Teen Wolf reference and watching Jason Segel nearly break up laughing through his “That’s not running! That’s falling!!!” line made it very funny.
Awww, I liked the basketball plot! Probably because it wasn’t so far off my own childhood. 🙂 Plus, the pay off for me was when he told them to just do whatever they felt like because everything in life would be handed to them, like scholarships and jobs and promotions, so the important thing is having fun. Ohhh, I died. In the good way. 🙂
I really enjoyed the episode as well. I guess I liked the Lilly/Marshall storyline more than most…I thought it was pretty funny that Marshall felt that was the best way to motiviate and coach young kids – which makes sense from what we know of his upbringing with his brothers! I didn’t see it as Lilly testing Marshall – and if she was, I didn’t have a problem with it. Loved it when she yelled at him at the end to get him to change his ways!!
The “A” storyline with Barney/Ted/Robin was fantastic. Loved that Robin just went along with everything and always seemed to be in the background! Typical list for Ted AND Barney to keep, even though it was a pretty wild storyline (commiting a B&E?!), I thought it worked well and I enjoyed it thoroughly!
I missed the piece about Lilly not having the scotch…sounds like a season ending storline! How many episodes left for us??
I wanted to clarify that the reason I, personally, wasn’t crazy about the Lilly/Marshall story wasn’t because Marshall was too mean – I actually thought that was really funny (obviously, if this was happening in real life I’d probably look at it differently, but c’mon a LOT of what goes on on HIMYM wouldn’t be kosher in real life, :)). It was more Lilly’s rainbows and sunshine that I found annoying to listen to (apologies to Alison Hannigan) – probably because I know a few parents who aren’t too far off the mark from that and it’s completely ridiculous over-indulgence…but I digress. Marshall’s tirade about promotions and scholarships was hilarious.
I must have missed the scotch thing too…when was it in the ep?
The scotch wasn’t in this episode, but one pretty far back–maybe early this season or late last season. Basically it was the whole gang deciding they were awesome, drinking scotch at the bar, but when all the rest were drinking, Lily just sniffed her glass and decided not to drink it.
By the way, am I the only one who think the Canada jokes have overstayed their welcome? I didn’t like Old King Cole as much as other episodes this season, and when they were leading up to it this episode I just groaned and thought, really? At this point the Canada jokes just look like lazy writing to me.