Now that the last gap of more than a week between episodes of How I Met Your Mother has passed, the show is finally into its homestretch. There’s six episodes to go. Six more episodes for all the loose ends from over the years to be wrapped up, including the most important one: Ted finally meeting the Mother. But before any of that can happen, Barney had rally from the worst hangover of all time, and that’s where this week’s episode “Rally” picks up.
With a mere 10 hours to go until the wedding, Barney is in a far worse state than anyone has ever seen him in before. His crazy night out on the town has him passed out cold, and there’s not even a possibility of finding a way to get him to recover considering there’s no way to even wake him up. The hope is that if they can wake Barney, he’ll be able to make Stinson’s Hangover Fixer Elixir. However, getting dunked in ice, thrown down the stairs and threatened with the cutting of a tie has absolutely no effect. It starts to look like the entire wedding may be in jeopardy, not just the wedding pictures. Eventually, Robin and Lily concoct a way to wake Barney up, but it turns out that his elixir was a lie all along.
While the actual plot of this episode wasn’t all that substantial, it did make for a good excuse to show the characters in the future, which is always great to see. Seeing why Marshall loses his hair, Marvin’s first day of college, and Barney and Robin’s potential kid made for a series of short, funny scenes, which served as a nice balance to the sappier parts of the episode, though thankfully those were kept to a minimum.
Far funnier than any of the scenes where they try to wake Barney is the scene where Ted finally discovers bacon. Having him still believe all the ridiculous allergies his mother made up is a hilarious idea, and that scene is one of the far-too-rare instances where we get to see Josh Radnor act in a goofy manner. It’s also one of the few times where the characters break the fourth wall, and I was a huge fan of it, even though it was only a brief moment.