After being away for almost a month, How I Met Your Mother returned with another episode continuing the Barney and Robin saga, Band or DJ?
It seems the show simply isn’t willing to let the focus of this couple die, as week after week the main focus of each episode is on these two and the roadblocks that stand in the way of them getting together, making it seem that someone writing the show forgot that they revealed the wedding in season 7.
This was the first episode since it was announced that the show would be back for a ninth season, so the creators are finally able to implement the two-year plan for the conclusion of the show as opposed to the last few months of being stuck in limbo as to how long they had left to reveal the mother. The one unfortunate thing about another season of the show, is it likely means more of this meandering through Barney and Robin’s relationship will occur. On the plus side, we did get a date for the wedding in tonight’s episode, and it will happen this spring, so at least we don’t have to deal with this again in the fall.
In this week’s episode, Robin finds out that Barney neglected to ask her father for permission before proposing. While Barney feels that this is an old-fashioned tradition, Robin still thinks it’s important, so they arrange a lunch where Barney will be able to ask Robin’s dad.
It turns out Robin’s dad has been living in New York for 8 months without telling Robin, although he says she should know since he posted it on his Facebook page and he has sent her multiple friend requests. He has turned from the strict father he once was to a much more fun, though equally stiff, man. Now he wears Hawaiian shirts and goes to performances of an “artist named James Buffett.”
Robin holds off on accepting her father’s friend request at the advice of her friends who mention that adding a parent on Facebook is territory no one should ever go into. When she finally does add him, she finds something startling. He is married. Robin is extremely hurt that her father didn’t tell her he was getting married or invite her to the wedding. She tells him that if she means that little to him, then she doesn’t want him to show up at her wedding.
Barney gets her dad to agree to meet Robin for lunch, and there he does something that he’s never done before. He apologizes to her. Granted, he does it in the form of divorcing his new wife since he thinks that’s what Robin wants, but she can take solace in the fact that for the first time in her life he admitted he was wrong.
Click below to continue reading.