Shakespeare and Crack: How I Met Your Mother - 7x10

Holy shit. Shit just got real, y'all. Or shit briefly got real, before being put on the back burner for about 4-6 eps, before being briefly brought up one or two more times before the finale. I'm hoping not. I like the idea of everything going balls to the walls each episode this season. For the first time in a while it feels like they're not just treading water for a season (I mean obviously they are in terms of the Mother, but in general), and it also doesn't feel like they're going to punt like they did with the whole dispersing tease in early Season 4. Love has been declared, relationships irreparably broken, nachos were eaten from the garbage! And we get an super fun subplot, epic in scope, to balance it all out! Please don't eff this up, guys.

Alright, big stuff first: Robin and Barney totally slept together after the events of last week's episode. After a very brief post coital bliss-out, they start freaking the fuck out because they cheated on their significant others. Well Robin freaked out a lot more. Barney seemed to be enjoying the afterglow for a little while until finally realizing that he betrayed Nora. Interestingly enough, their distress is almost exclusively focused around the act of the betrayal (which, let's not under emphasize here) and NOT about how they may have messed up their relationships. That's probably not all that surprising for Robin since her and Kevin have only been dating a relatively short amount of time, but Barney, one would expect, would be far more freaked out that he's ruined his relationship with the woman he fell in love with, chased after, spent a week in a diner for, and who he got viciously assaulted for in the service of impressing her parents. But no, his main concern (both of theirs) is that they did this to really nice people. That's a big clue to what comes up later. Robin asks Barney if this meant anything, and he waffles back and forth trying to figure out what she wants to hear (*cough*cluetwo*cough*).

In grand dramatic tradition, it turns out the four of them are due to spend the next night alone on a boat in the middle of the ocean! Well less alone and more with the entire World Wide News staff, and less the ocean than the Hudson, but still...boat! They agree to pretend absolutely nothing ever happened, never let their respective others know, and just let the night fade into memory. Of course, once they're actually on the boat, the two start to fold like cheap tents. While in the midst of a panic attack, Barney suggests that they jump off the boat, swim to shore, and start a new life together under assumed names in Dubai or Vermont (I like to think he threw Vermont in for Robin, cause Barney's totally a Dubai kinda guy). Robin catches onto a very specific portion of that crazy, and asks Barney, a second time, if that's what he really wants. I say 'second time', even though it's technically a different question, because, really, it's the same exact question. And it's important. The Barnacle doesn't get a chance to respond, because Nora and Kevin show up and our erstwhile lovers freak the fuck out because they feel Nora and Kevin totally know (paranoia is another recurring theme in this episode, as we'll touch on, briefly, later).

They thankfully manage to supress their obviously ridiculous "they know!" instincts, but are still slaves to their own guilt quirks; Robin's odd quietness, and Barney's cartoonish rapid fire Freudian Slips (and one disturbing quiet contemplation of throwing Nora off the boat!). After a slow dance to a guilt-tripping ballad sung by a shoulda-been-hilarious-but-a-little-too-on-the-nose-even-though-that-was-the-point lounge singer, they re-decide to tell Kevin and Nora right there and then and deal with the consequences. Unfortunately things don't quite go as planned, as Kevin gets a bad concussion as a result of tripping and falling after being blinded by cheap Mexican tequila meant for Sandy Rivers's face (whose name I'm still convinced is a dirty euphemism for something), and Nora gets a tiny almost invisible spot of wine on her sleeve. Robin and Barney decide they don't want to pile onto their dates horrible tragedies.

Completely overwhelmed by everything going wrong, Robin wishes nothing had happened, and not-quite-surprisingly Barney disagrees, and Robin, for the third time, practically begging for the right answer this time, asks him if he really wants them to be together. And Barney says he does. He points out the absurdity of their previous plans and recontextualizes them as ways to sabotage their way out of their current relationships. I'm not sure I buy that, but I like the idea. He pleads that he's never stopped thinking about her, and he knows she's never stopped thinking about him (aww). She says she's a giant mess, and asks him why he'd even want to be with her. Rather than pulling up my favorite picture, he says it's because she's the only person he's met that's as much of a mess as he is. How...romantic? She seems to think so. They resolve to do it, to break up with Nora and Kevin once they're on dry land (and after appropriate MRI's are administered, one assumes), and meet back at MacLaren's at midnight.Oh, Barney. That's the second this was destined to fall apart. You never, ever, ever decide the fate of your an affair on meeting at a particular place at a particular time. When has that EVER gone right for anyone? And surely enough, it doesn't. When Barney and Nora get back to her place, they find her parents waiting there for them. When Robin and Kevin wait for his MRI results, he tells her he loves her. Jesus, people.

Now, to be fair to the Gods of Contrivance, I kind of got the feeling that Kevin was using some kind of psychological hoodoo on her this time around. Maybe I'm just super cynical (and misanthropic, and hateful, and a bit limpy in one leg), but Robin is someone he knows is a mess, knows has issues with commitment, and had trouble with the couple you just spent an entire evening with. The whole weird psychological-manipulation undertones get stronger when Robin tries to confess, and Kevin stops her. He doesn't come out and say he knows what she's going to say, but when your girlfriend of a few weeks says she has to confess something right after you tell her you love her, it's not like she's going to finish it off with "I was going to get you an MRI for your birthday and now it's ruined."

He says he doesn't want to know, he says it doesn't matter what they did in their "past", and et cetera. I mean there's no way he doesn't know she cheated (and Barney or Ted would be the most likely suspects), and I can sorta understand the whole "everyone makes mistakes" attitude...but it's the complete lack of even subdued shock or hurt that really creeps me out here. It just really feels like he's playing her somehow. It's all capped off with the most clinically perfect answer to Robin's earlier question: "Why would you want to be with someone like me?": because she's wonderful and et cetera and blah, and he hopes that someday she'll see herself the way he sees her. I gotta say, that totally beats Barney's half-assed, though probably more honest answer. Robin decides to stay with Kevin.

Which REALLY sucks for Barney, because, to my complete and utter shock, he takes the first opportunity Nora's parents are out of the room to cowboy the fuck up and confess to her. He tells her he cheated, and even when she tries to give him an out by asking him to tell her it didn't mean anything, he can't lie and tells her it did. Wow. Horrifically, horribly, indescribably bad timing. And more than a little selfish. But I'm still impressed. I didn't think he had that in him. I'm also a little disappointed that Nora, whose heart Barney made such a huge deal of winning, is gone just like that. I feel like there should be more fallout from that. I'm not holding my breath though.

Unfortaunately, it seems Barney was, because when he gets back to the bar, and midnight rolls around, Robin walks in with Kevin. And, you know, I rip on this show a lot. Hardly a review goes by where I don't call Barney a sociopath, or for Ted to get cockpunched, but I really have to give them credit on this next bit. The overarching theme of relative time gets its climax here as everything absolutely stands still for Barney for the half second/solid minute it takes for him to give Robin a questioning glance and get the exact opposite one he was hoping for in return. Narrative tricks like this are what have made me fall for this show for seven seasons. Perfect blend of unreliable narrator, artistic effect, and thematic cohesion and all self-consistent with each other. Awesome.

Barney is understandably pretty shaken and excuses himself, citing his breakup with Nora, and disappears. Ted excuses himself shortly thereafter, still reeling over his own misadventure (see below), and when he comes into the apartment he sees Barney stealthily cleaning up rose petals and romantic candles from all over Robin's room. Ted knows. We can't quite discern if the look on his face is sympathy or jealousy, but he withdraws without saying a word. Ominous!

So what the hell is on deck for next week? I swear to God, it better not be a filler episode. I want to see this shit move forward again! I want Barney to get pissed at the fact that (perhaps in his eyes) he threw away the relationship with Nora he worked so hard for for nothing. I want to see how Ted's going to be reacting to Barney and Robin's aborted affair. Ducky Tie hints that it won't be a good reaction, especially when combined with the barely hinted tension showcased in the premiere's "If we're both unmarried when we're 40" deal. I wanna see Nora fucking FURIOUS that Barney has ONCE AGAIN broken her heart in front of her parents without so much as nary a warning! Let's mix it up, folks!

Oh yeah, Ted and Marshall also had a tiny little subplot. Really it took up less than two minutes: