Episode Report Card DeAnn Welker: C+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT "Not Bad. Not Bad At All."
By DeAnn Welker | Season 6 | Episode 2 | Aired on 09.27.2010
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.This week, we barely spend a moment at MacLaren's before Barney somehow (and, really, we don't get to see how) talks everyone in to helping him go to his mom's to pack and move his stuff out, since she's preparing to move. James is there, too, of course, and we soon learn that the lie about Bob Barker being Barney's dad isn't the only lie Loretta told her boys. She also made up lies to make Barney feel better when he got cut from the basketball team, and when no one showed up to his birthday party. And he bought it all. James says he learned about her lies much earlier, and knows his dad isn't Bill Cosby, or any of the others she told him. As they're going through a box of letter, Barney and James find a never-mailed letter from their mom to Sam Gibbs with a picture of the boys inside. It says "your son" on the back, so James finally convinces Barney they should go find out who Sam Gibbs fathered. Barney pretends his dad's Bob Barker right up until the whole gang is standing on his porch. Then he admits it just made him better to think that. They open the door, and Sam Gibbs is black. There's a touching reunion between him and James, and just when Marshall and Lily are whispering about how hard this must be for Barney, Barney runs up and hugs Sam, all, "Papa!" Lots of funny jokes ensue about Barney think he's black, of course. In the end, his mom tells him the truth, and offers to tell him who his dad is, but Barney doesn't want to know, because he already had the best dad ever: his mom.
Since the A plot takes up the bulk of the episode, Lily and Marshall are relegated to standing in the background talking about parents' biggest lie: Santa Claus. And Robin and Ted discuss her possibly setting him up with someone all episode that never pans out -- because Robin's an overseller.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!MacLaren's. Barney is telling a sex story about the Central Park Zoo until he loses his energy, because he says he can't help the guys escape their humdrum lives. Robin asks why he can't, and he's like, "I can't tell you." Robin's like, "Okay. Did you guys see Deadliest Catch last night?" What weird timing, since Deadliest Catch as we know it is over -- and not just because of Phil's death. I'm talking about Sig and the Hillstrands quitting the show. Anyway, we all know Barney really does want to tell them what's up, and what's up is that his mom's selling the house he grew up in. And he needs them to come out to Staten Island on Saturday and help box everything up. And, oh, it's a two-day job. But they're all like, "Uh, no." Barney laughs and says it's adorable that they think he won't be able to talk them into doing this -- "I got the queen to give me a fist bump." Ted: "No one believes that story." Lily says it might work on the brain surgeons he picks up, but it's not going to work on them. Barney stretches, clears his throat, then cut to the gang packing in a house. Lily: "How did he do that?" I guess we'll never know.
Ted's packing when Barney walks in and says, "Ted, that thing you're packing is way too big to fit in that box." Sadly (for me) the show is way ahead of me on the "That's what she said," because Ted replies, "That's what your mom said." Barney seethes: "How dare you!" But Ted's all, "No, she really said that." Barney's mom, Loretta walks in and reminds Ted that she told him that wouldn't fit in there. Barney's brother, Wayne Brady, comes in and asks if someone ordered something tall, dark and awesome. Loretta hugs her boys and compliments them, so happy they're both here to help their mother. They look at cell phone photos of Wayne's son in the Dolce & Gabbana suit Barney sent him.
In the next room, Robin tells Ted she talked him up to the hot makeup girl, Liz, at work. She told her how funny he is, how handsome, and an incredible lover. She describe him as knowing a woman's body better than she knows her own, and "endless waves of pleasure for hours and hours," and orgasms so intense you black out. Ted asks how he can ever live up to that review, and tells her she broke the first rule of setting people up: undersell. Which can be difficult to do with Ted, but still, Robin: Try. Ted proves my point by using The Karate Kid as his example -- and not even the new one. He acts out the whole, "Sweep the leg" ending and everything. Robin's like, "Maybe I did oversell you a bit."