How I Met Your Mother - 7x02 - The Naked Truth

Not much to say about this one. Martin Short finally gets back to Marshall about that dream job at the environmental legal agency of dogooding, or whatever. Everything is set to go, they just have to do the background check. Of course a background check will inevitably pull up a YouTube video (really? again?) of Beercules, Marshall's college-era drunk streaking alter-ego. Actually I kind of like this pattern of YouTube alter-egos. Ted has Schmosby, Marshall has Beercules, Robin has Robin Sparkles...Lily's next right? I don't think we want to see what alter-ego Barney would commit to video tape and put up on the internet...

That's a future Supreme Court Justice, our favorite lawyer
is petitioning there...

Anyway, this leads to a frantic quest to convince the uploader, Pete Durkenson best known (to me) as Liam McPoyle from It's Always Sunny in Philadelpha, to take it down. He shall remove it only upon being bested in a game of Edward Fortyhands. If I tell you that Durkenson is as perpetually trashed as an airline pilot, and that the game doesn't involve forty actual hands, you can pretty much guess what it entails. Marshall fails, and ends up producing a sequel to Beercules, but it actually doesn't end up mattering, as Martin Short is cool, yo!

You've stopped whining about not being married
for a whole 5 minutes!

There's some subplot about Ted managing to snag two girls on a date because of his magazine cover, and he has to decide which one to take to the Architecture's Ball. As much as it's nice seeing Ted being on the upswing of romance, for a change, in the end it matters not, since he takes Robin, since he's not really all that into either of them. We do get some nice jokes about pie charts and pro/con lists while he hashes this out though ("And kids, I swear, every body really did cheer over Pro/Con lists!")

"Aw, look at you. You think you have a soul..."

The meat of the story belonged to Barney's attempt to get Nora back. She catches him in yet another lie, so in order to give him a chance, she demands he tell her every single lie he ever told a woman to get her into bed. Oh boy. Why don't I just send you a link to The Playbook so you get a rough idea. Unsurprinsgly, by hour 47 or so, she gets tired of it, calls him a sociopath (which...well, yeah.) and makes to leave. But in order to PROVE HIS LOVE to her, he will stay at that diner, night and day, until she takes him back. I don't know how long it actually takes till she shows up and gives him another chance, but the gang had shown up by then, at the diner, of their own accord. Considering, statistically speaking, how often we've seen this group of people at an establishment that doesn't serve alcohol, I think it's safe to say that Barney waited at that diner until about half past the heat death of the universe, and what we're actually seeing is the Un-Barney from the anti-universe that emerged after.

"You think they'll pour beer over my waffles here?"

Oh! And I almost forgot, at the very end, while Robin is presumably trying to see if octogenarian renowned architect Leonard Kravetz can even play the harmonica, who does Ted spy catering the lovely affair: Victoria! Dun dun dun!

Seriously tho, dude, you screwed her over pretty badly. I say, take Lenny and Robin and get the hell out of there before she chucks a cupcake at your greasy head.

---

So, Beercules was amusing enough, I guess. But Jason Segel's age really shows in these flashbacks. Dude's changed since season 1. Other than that, it's okay. It's always fun to see a Jimmi Simpson being just as creepy somewhere outside of Sunny Philly.

Kind of hope they use that diner again. Only because I'm a big fan of diners. Go diners!

You know, you'd think the infamous Playbook would've made some sort of appearance or reference in the "all the lies I used to get women into bed" topic. Or at least the Matterhorn play. I chortled at the "Soul Man" though. I know I'm going to hell, but "Barnell?!?" Oh horrendously bad 80's movies. Never stop being you.