Tonight’s episode of How I Met Your Mother, Splitsville, was sloppy and riddled with inconsistencies. It felt like it was just thrown together with stray ideas barely making threads to connect tonight to the rest of the show. Its negative moments far outweighed the positives, ultimately making for an overwhelmingly disappointing episode.
The main point of tonight’s episode was to get Robin and Nick finally broken up, which they did, but the episode meandered there, beating the same, not-all-that funny jokes into the ground until the required 22 minutes of show time was up. But before I bring up all my issues with the episode, a quick recap of what went on.
We begin by learning that Robin and Nick’s relationship is based purely on sex. However, their exceptional sex life is put on hold when Nick pulls his groin while playing basketball for Marshall’s team. This is a major problem for their relationship as now they’re talking more and she finds out just how dumb he is. She decides she must break up with him, but has trouble getting it done when he fails to understand her hints at breaking up.
Meanwhile, Marshall has an over-30 men’s league basketball team him and his lawyer friends are on. After getting dominated by the Number Crunchers, he recruits Nick to play for his team, and Nick is by far the standout player. Ted also has a team of architects, but they’re more concerned with the uneven floor and the extreme amount of wood paneling on the court.
Lily has become completely sex craved, constantly talking and fantasizing about Robin’s sex life and a mystery girl who is involved with her’s and Nick’s alleged three-ways. Lily even gets turned on just by thinking about icing a groin. It turns out Marshall is as sex crazed as she is, and that’s why he’s working out all episode, not just to prepare for his basketball league. Fortunately, Ted knows his friends well enough to figure out what’s going on, and he takes baby Marvin for a walk so they can have some alone time.
When Robin struggles to break up with Nick, Barney rushes in to save the day, telling Nick the brutal things Robin has said behind his back, and confessing his love to Robin. His speech in which he seemingly spills his heart is extremely sweet, especially by Barney standards, and is eaten up by Robin who indeed does break things off with Nick.
On the walk back from the breakup restaurant, Barney plays off his speech as if he was just a bro helping Robin out. She says how convincing his speech was, and they almost kiss, but mid-drumroll Robin gets a phone call which distracts them.
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