How I Met Your Mother - 7x05 - Field Trip

Yay! Kumar's back!
Ew! He's dating Robin!

Yay! Ted's doing something different with his hair!
Ew! It's the hair on his chin.

Yay! It's another simultaneously pretty great, disturbing, and educational episode.
Ew! Kumar's still dating Robin. His patient.

Join me on this roller coaster ride. I promise Ewoks.

"I'm so sorry, I didn't recognize anything in this
neighborhood sober."

So (presumably) two sessions into her court-mandated therapy, Dr. Kumar tells her he can't be her therapist anymore, because he's moving to Alaska. In what is a shock only to people who have no idea how much it costs to get a guest-star like Kal Penn, she runs into him days (weeks? years?) later at our favorite little diner. Turns out he just told her to get lost because he was attracted to her, and ethically, he couldn't continue to be her therapist. Dude, I hope you at least left her with a list of referrals. It was court-ordered therapy after all. I'd love for this season to end with Robin in jail for not following the terms of a suspended sentence, because she was so wrapped up in her whirlwind romance. After a not-quite-cute sequence where they try to non-date by having breakfast at that diner every day for a week, they finally decide to make it official after Robin was late one morning because of rain and a subway issue. Wait, what?

1. She had to run 40 blocks? So she doesn't live near this diner? What the hell was she doing in it anyway? Who the hell travels 40 blocks for a diner? I won't even take a subway one stop for my FAVORITE diner.
2. Was the brief possibility of missing a meal with her really a good enough reason to risk your license and betray all your professional ethics?

...totally worth it.

So they try to give dating a shot, but they just can't quite get past the fact they met while she was divulging her deepest darkest secrets in an emotionally vulnerable place. Well there go my Friday night plans at the suicide hotline. Also, I don't know about anyone else, but it was actually really uncomfortable to watch Kal Penn and Cobie Smulders attempt to get their swerve on, on that couch. It was like watching an older brother awkwardly put the moves on your drunk cousin. Not that I know what that looks like. MOVING ON.

That wasn't cool, Brian.

Robin decides that the only way to get over this hump (no, I won't make that joke), is to have him reveal his deepest darkest secret for an equivalent two hours. somehow this works, despite of the fact that he goes from charming adult to screaming mama's boy in about 54.5 milliseconds. Alright, so I guess this is a thing now this season. I'll put up with it for Kal Penn, but really, it's creepy.

"That's an excellent question, thank you, Samuel. It's
painted on with magic marker and shoe polish, lightly
applied with a Clinique lash-comb mascara brush."

Ted, meanwhile, tries to inspire his Intro to Architecture class with his douchey stubble by taking them on a field trip to the site of the new GNB building. Unfortunately, big shot New York Magazine Cover architect didn't realize he'd need to get prior authorization and badges, and presumably, hard hats and waivers, to bring a group of 100 hungover freshmen to an active construction site. Rebuffed, Ted tries to bring them to other GNB-building-significant parts of the city. Like Barney's office. And his apartment. And the bar. I'm sure FutureKids will be glad to know they're not the only ones who've suffered because of their father's inability to just quit when one of this object lessons gets away from him.

Raise your hand if every relationship on this show is
super creepy and co-dependent?

Barney and Ted do manage to make use of this demographically diverse group (and one German family), by using them as a focus group to settle every outstanding issue and argument they can think of. Are Robin and her therapist super creepy? (Yes). Is Macaroni Salad a real salad (No). Is it Edward James Olmos or Jacob James Olmos (seriously, Barney? You don't recognize Captain Adama's name? A poorer version of this joke, surely). And finally, should Barney break up with Nora?

You can actually watch this work of genius on io9.

Wait, why does Barney want to break up with Nora this week? Turns out Nora hates Ewoks. And in a display of so-stupid-it's-brilliant-Barney logic not seen since the Hot/Crazy scale, Barney explains how where one comes down on the Ewok divide is an accurate indicator of age. By his Barn-culations, Nora can be no younger than 37 years old. He's ready to split immediately once he finds out this horrible news (including a hilarious sight gag where he tries to flee the bar with a packed suitcase not 10 seconds after hearing Nora's opinion). Despite every sleazy cell in his body telling him to break up and set up some new BDSes, by the end of the episode Barney has decided he doesn't care about her age. He declares he likes her so much he'll find a way to deal with it. The fact she's hot helps, of course. It's a moot emotional awakening though, since she tells him she didn't even see any of the Star Wars movies until last year, thus invalidating his Ewokematics.

Before we move on from the Barney/Ted subplots, can I just ask a small, insignificant question?

Who the hell is THIS girl?

And, by that, I mean...call me.

She is conspicuously in every shot involving Ted and his class. Right out front. She even gets a line. Normally, that wouldn't be noteworthy in and of itself. Stoned Dude gets several lines, and Weird Beard and Beiber are obviously memorable on their face facial hair. But this girl seems specifically built to stand out. Take a look at the group shot at the top of the post. Her hair dramatically contrasts with the rest of the group. As does her outfit. Everyone else is dark colors, dark hair, faces blended in a crowd. This girl has eye-catchingly light grey clothes, hair so blonde I had to photoshop out the lens flare, beatifically smiling all the time. Considering how the HIMYM writers like their wide shots with contrasting colors (yellow umbrella anyone?), I can't shake the feeling she's supposed to be important later on. But that would be weird, cause she has one line in the entire episode, isn't overtly referenced at all, and is actually implied to be one of Barney's conquests. If in the very last episode of this series, SagetTed goes "Oh yeah, you remember Gina from that story? That was your mom.", I will say "I told you so" and then go cockpunch the writers. In that order.

Any-who, finally, back in the Marsh-lands (Lily's not the only one who can make horrible Marshall related puns), Marhsall's seriously disappointed that his big shot environmental lawyer boss, Martin Short, seems to be a pushover. He takes a ridiculously small settlement from a pharmeceutical company that polluted a lake, and uses it finance a seemingly never-ending parade of office-party cakes. Marshall tries to take a moral stand with his boss, and gets schooled in the shocking truth: The world is doomed. "You know how they say it's never too late to save the planet? It's too late to save the planet!" Short has seen the research, and has concluded we're all fucked in the next 10 years. For a minute I'm suddenly excited about the idea that this entire time Ted has been telling his story from a hermetically sealed house encased in a biodome as the outside world burns from acid rain. But, alas, no. Turns out seeing the latest (first?) sonogram of little Baby Ericsson is enough to inspire Marshall to fight to fix the world. This in turn inspires Short to go back to the pharmeceutical company and reject their offer with the most. scary. face. EVER.

I peed myself a little.

FutureTed confirms that they, indeed saved the world.

I'm still not convinced this endless story isn't just a way to keep his kids distracted while the cyanide pills do their work after the air filters have failed and the mutates have stormed the garage doors.