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How I Met Your Mother: Wait For It (season premiere)

Posted Sep 24th 2007 9:01PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: OpEd, How I Met Your Mother, Episode Reviews

How I Met Your Mother: Wait For It
(S03E01) Welcome to season three of How I Met Your Mother. If you read my Early Look post on the season premiere, you'll know that season three picks up where season two left off.

Well, kinda. Yes, Robin and Ted have gone their separate ways after a year together. Yes, Marshall and Lily have just gotten married (and I guess are back from their honeymoon, but they never say).

But something didn't happen --at least not right at the start of the episode -- that I think almost every HIMYM fan expected to happen.

The episode didn't start with Barney saying "...dary."

Oh, don't get me wrong, it happened... eventually. Actually pretty quickly. The completion of the final scene on the terrace after Marshall and Lily's wedding happened about twenty seconds in. But I think everyone who watched the finale thought the premiere would literally pick up where the finale left off. Instead, we got yet another Bob Saget narration and the picture of a yellow umbrella. Is this Bays and Thomas changing things up to be unexpected, or blowing what might have been one of the coolest opening scenes ever put on a season premiere? I'm leaning towards the latter, because I was a bit disappointed that they didn't start with "...dary".

Anyway, this season, we're going to get to see Wild Ted, a Ted who's not concerned about finding "the one" or about maintaining a relationship with Robin. It's a Ted who's going sow the proverbial wild oats, and it doesn't look like he's going to need Barney's help with that, much to the suited one's chagrin. It's interesting that Ted for some reason thought the break-up was a competition, while Robin, who went to Argentina and hooked up with a very handsome guy named Gael (Enrique Iglesias), was just trying to survive it.

But first we get to see what Ted does after a break-up. He doesn't get drunk; he grows a beard and paints the apartment. I think the only reason the beard was there was so that Marshall, Lily, and Barney could make fun of it as he shaved it off. The mutton-chop-mustache phase generated cracks about Chester A. Arthur, Around the World in 80 Days, and barbershop quartets. A mustache-only look reminded Barney of a Persian nightclub owner. That's an intelligent and quick bunch there, isn't it?

Ted's first post-Robin conquest is Amy, a tattooed bad girl played by Mandy Moore. On second view, I don't think she did as bad a job as I thought she did when I wrote my Early Look post. But still, it really wasn't such a big role that having Moore in it was necessary. Neither was Iglesias' role. They just served as distractions, keeping the five main players apart from each other. The best scenes in this episode were where at least four of the five group members interacted with each other, which means Cobie Smulders was pretty much the odd person out. Hopefully, this break-up isn't going to be as torturous as the one it is most compared to (hint: "We were on a break!"); we need to have all of the Fab Five together as much as possible.

What was funny about the Amy storyline was her interaction with Barney. She calls him a "nerd" and "dork" with a "huge vagina;" he calls her "Tommy Lee" and "1994 Courtney Love." He was just jealous that Ted found her without his help, since he was so looking forward to being Ted's wingman. Which leads me to my choice for the season's first Best Barneyism: his wingman-ish plans for Ted:

"As your wingman I'm going to get you a 12. Or at least two sixes. Failing that, four threes. And, break glass in case of emergency, we'll go to Staten Island and get you twelve ones."

Second place is Barney's reaction to Ted's new tattoo: "That, dear boy, is a tramp stamp. You know, a ho tag. Ass Antlers. A Panama City license plate." The tramp stamp is the funniest part of the episode; I just love how the members of the group revel in each other's comic missteps. Barney's knees buckle when he sees the butterfly that Ted drunkenly got tattooed on his lower back. Lily whispers "He's gonna say it!" with unfettered glee as Barney leads Ted to the horrific discovery. That's best friends for you: completely supportive but unafraid to bust chops when the occasion calls for it.

Other fun stuff:

  • New season, new hairstyle for Lily. This year: bangs-o-rama.
  • Barney's best entreaties to get Ted going: Joggers in a 10K: "Salty girls on an endophin high who just want to lie down." Acrobats from Montreal: "We're gonna get cirque du so laid!"
  • Lily: "The girl never marries the hot guy." Marshall: "Well, you did." Lilly (quickly recovering): "I'm one of the lucky few." God Bless Marshall's ego.
  • I'd like to see that episode where Barney breaks into the Smithsonian so he can check the Apollo 11 space capsule off his list.
  • Wild Ted's new motto: "A dark path is my driveway."
  • Barney after Ted and Amy leave to get Ted a tat: "This is so going in my blog!"
  • Barney had a suit but no tie the next morning! Is he loosening up?
  • Ted, when he confronts Robin about Gael, had this fun call-back to his previous lovesick self: "There'll be no statling confession of love, no sweet indie rock song that swells up just as we're about to kiss, none of that crap. Got it?"
  • The sweetest words Ted could ever hear: "Ted... you're bigger."
  • Marshall calls Gael "male Gayle," calling back how they mangled his name right after Robin introduced him, in solidarity to their hurt friend Ted. He couldn't resist the man's charms for long, could he? The fruit interception was the funniest part. At least Lily admitted her weakness with him.
Two more items: The yellow umbrella. Apparently the "mother" in the title is linked to a yellow umbrella. We see the umbrella at the beginning and the end of the episode; at the end, the woman under the umbrella is walking past McLaren's as Ted celebrates being bigger. Intriguing...

The second item is the introduction of the Slap Countdown Clock into the plot. We've known about the clock for a few months, but we didn't know that Marshall was going to make Barney aware of it. So... is the slap coming? Is the clock there to fake everyone, including the viewers, out? Let me know in the poll below.

Again, this wasn't a great episode. But the promise of Wild Ted and more clues about the mother definitely have me intrigued. It'll be hard for Bays and Thomas to follow up last season's excellence, but I hope they can match or exceed it. Either way, I'll be along for the entire ride.

Will Barney get slapped when the Slap Countdown Clock hits zero?

Tags: allyson hannigan, carter bays, craig thomas, enrique iglesias, guest stars, jason segel, josh radnor, mandy moore, neil patrick harris, season premiere, SeasonPremiere, stunt casting, wait for it, WaitForIt

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