I don't know about you, but this was the episode of this show where I raised an eyebrow and said, "Not merely a well-made show featuring a killer performance by Neill Patrick Harris, but...possibly a classic. Just possibly." Ladies and gentlemen: "Slap Bet."
Ted VOs that one thing you learn when you're in a relationship is that everyone has secrets. Some are pleasant. (Example: Robin knows how to make crepes.) Some are not so pleasant. (Example: In bed, Robin rattles off her list of conquests, as Ted sits to her in bed with that blank, terrified stare he so favors.) Some are simply weird. (Example: Robin is afraid of the Seven Dwarves. Specifically, she is afraid of Doc, on the theory that it's creepy to go to medical school and wind up living with "six coal miners.") (She makes a good point. Fairy-tale characters often make baffling life choices. See also: remaining in the home of your father and evil step-family instead of calling Family Services when they're making you crawl around picking individual peas out of the fireplace.)
On the heels of the Doc thing, here comes Barney, sliding up to the MacLaren's booth and announcing excitedly that The Sharper Image is opening its 500th store, and they're all going, and he's buying gifts! (Three foot massagers; one nose-hair trimmer...Marshall.) They're all up for the trip, until Robin hears that it's at a mall. (Apparently, she figured that The Sharper Image would be at...a farmer's market?) She says she doesn't like malls, even after a crestfallen Lily offers to "split a Cinnabon." You should split that mofo with a couple more people, ladies, unless you're looking for a sugar high that a jellybean-pounding six-year-old can only dream of. When prodded, Robin more frantically cries that she doesn't go to malls. DOES NOT! And she won't say why, either. Ted makes his friends back off his girlfriend and leave her alone, but later, in bed, he wants to know. Arrested at a mall? Dumped at a mall? Trapped under a fake boulder at the mall? She keeps telling him to stop, but then she pauses to pose the understandable question of who could get trapped under a fake boulder at the mall. "Not me in Ohio when I was nine, that's for sure," he says sadly. Aw, poor Tiny Ted.
Credits. Other than The Office, I think this show has the most irresistible credits music. Anything with people actually singing "ba-pah-pah" makes it hard not to sing along. No words to remember; no words to forget.
Booth. Everyone but Robin. Ted is tormented by wondering why she won't tell him what it is with her and malls. Barney doesn't think Ted should try too hard to find out, because if he does, he'll only bring himself closer to what Barney calls "the 'oh' moment." Examples of the "oh" moment follow: Barney learns that a woman has a pact with God to remain a virgin. (Barney: "Oh.") Barney learns that a woman spits out all her food rather than swallowing it. (Barney: "Oh.") Barney learns that a woman just turned thirty. (Barney: "Oh.") (Miss Alli: "HEY!") Thus, Barney suggests delaying any more knowledge of each other than needed. Ted disagrees -- if there's something to know, he'd rather know now. What, after all, is the alternative?
Fffffoom! Ted, in a tux, throws back Robin's bridal veil. "I love you," he says. "I used to be a dude," she rather blissfully says back to him. Fffffoom! That would be the alternative, then.
Lily's on board with Ted -- you should share everything, like she and Marshall do. Barney can't believe Lily knows everything, but Lily says to try her. Barney offers a quiz. Yes, she knows a donkey ate Marshall's pants. Yes, she knows he had to have nickels removed from his innards after a bachelor party. And yes, she knows he's never been to the Pacific Northwest because of his fear of Sasquatch. Barney is frustrated. Ted assures him that Lily and Marshall also have a weird degree of interest in knowing things about each other, which is demonstrated by a ffffoom! in which Lily breathlessly follows a story about Marshall brushing his teeth as Ted, on the couch, begs silently for it to end.
Barney tells Ted that he knows exactly what Robin's secret is. He's just sure he does. And what's the secret? "Our, friend, Robin, used to do, porn -- wait for it! -- ography," Barney says emphatically. Lily sees the possibility, given Robin's quality fake-orgasm noises. Ted: offended; Lily: "thin walls." You know the drill. Marshall thinks maybe Robin's married and got married at the mall. He points out that you can get married at the Mall of America, which I can verify is true, since I used to live basically across the street from it. I didn't have to get married there for it to contribute to my fear of malls. The fifteen-foot-tall Lego characters were adequate. Anyway, Ted is not believing that Robin is married -- she hates marriage, after all. Marshall points out that maybe a bad marriage made her so bitter. They all realize that they don't know much about Robin's history in Canada, other than that she talks incessantly -- fffoom! fffoom! fffoom! -- about a "friend" back there who got married too young. Marshall is sure that this is a cover for when Robin is talking about herself; he's convinced that there is no friend in Canada, huh-huh-ing that it's not like he really has a "friend" who wet his bed until he was ten. "Use your brain, Ted," Marshall mocks. Barney thinks there's no way it's marriage -- it's porn, people. PORN!
Marshall offers to bet Barney "anything" that the secret is marriage. Barney will bet back that it's porn. He wants to bet $20,000. Marshall doesn't have it. After Lily rules out Marshall's potentially losing her virtue in a bet, Barney suggests a solution: the slap bet. Marshall is all excited, because he participated in slap bets when he was little. Lily doesn't understand. The (now-infamous) idea is that whoever wins gets to slap the other person in the face as hard as possible. Lily thinks it sounds "so immature," until Marshall offers her the post of slap-bet commissioner. This, she loves. Of course, the position entails involves resolving any disputes that may arise and imposing any punishments. Barney cautions her to put "the integrity of slap bet" above everything, because this is so important. "On your tombstone," he tells her, "it will read, 'Lily Aldrin: Caring Wife, Loving Friend, Slap-Bet Commissioner." Damn. That would be a great tombstone. Marshall says that Barney's will say he was slapped so hard by Marshall that he died. Death slap! Damn, Marshall.
Ted returns, asking whether he should just ask Robin if she's married. Lily tells him to drop it, and he agrees, which is how you know we're going to cut to him trying to pry it out of Robin -- which we do. He is using a complex Scrabble-based method of inquiry. Ted "casually" mentions to her that Marshall thinks she has a husband -- that Marshall is hilarious, huh? Huh? She wants to know if he's asking whether she's married. After some back-and-forth about privacy and secrets and the dangers of refusing to leave well enough alone, Robin announces that indeed, she is married. It was a mistake, but she is married. "Oh," Ted says miserably. Turns out he didn't want to know.
When we return, Ted is still shocked about the husband. Robin confirms that they were married at, and broke up at, a mall. And is she divorced? She says she's not -- the guy moved to Hong Kong for business, and she figured that was "good enough." Ted thinks this does not qualify as "good enough." Robin protests that it's not like she ever sees the guy. Unhappy but theoretically forced to be grateful for the truth, Ted promises not to tell anyone.
Which: not so much, since we see Marshall at MacLaren's unleashing a wicked slap that throws Barney against the bar. "Your hand is monstrous," Barney complains. "Well, what would you expect? You've seen my penis," Marshall says calmly and seriously. In the booth, Ted is chided for sharing the secret until he points out that Lily begged him to. She denies it. Fffoom! "Please please please please..." Fffoom! You get the idea. Ted tells his friends that now, with her married and everything, he's Robin's mistress. Or "mastress." Ted isn't sure whether to ask her to get a divorce, but Lily insists that Canadian marriages don't count. Marshall says that he can look it up at school, but in some countries, separation of a long enough period will dissolve a marriage. Marshall then pauses to chuckle and note that he can see his handprint on Barney's face. "Don't get too cocky, Slappy," Barney says, insisting that he will be reviewing a lot of Canadian porn just in case Robin is married and a porn star. Lily thinks he'll be reviewing the Canadian porn just for pleasure, but Barney says it's not that pleasurable: "Their universal health-care system doesn't cover breast implants." He adds, "If I have to sit through one more flat-chested Nova Scotian riding a Mountie on the back of a Zamboni, I'll go oooot of my mind." Thus did Barney broadly insult Canadians, women with small chests, Nova Scotia, the police, and hockey fans, all at once. Well, and I guess he also insulted Canadian porn enthusiasts.
Later, Marshall arrives at the apartment and tells Ted he has news. He's done a records search, and it doesn't appear that Robin was ever married after all. He wants Ted not to tell Barney, for obvious reasons related to not getting slapped. Marshall notes that Robin does have a lot of parking tickets. I'm thinking that's not the secret. Ted feels like he can't confront Robin without revealing that he told Marshall, so Marshall tells him to "lawyer" Robin about it, just to drag it out of her.
So Ted and Robin are in the apartment, and Ted is raving about how much he appreciates Robin's being so darn honest. He's loving the honesty! The honesty is GREAT. Robin isn't biting. Ted decides to press her for details, hoping to trip her up. But she can name every detail -- where the wedding was, what they ate, what the music was, the size of the wedding party, the color scheme -- everything but her husband's name, which trips her up completely. Seizing on her freezing, Ted jumps up and is all, "You were never married!" She's busted, but she manages to catch him on the fact that he leaked the information to Marshall and had Marshall look it up at school. This, of course, means that he didn't keep her secret -- which, as he points out, wasn't a real secret anyway. She rails at him for failing what she claims was a "test," and she says that now, he'll never know the real secret. "And it's good, too," she says ominously. "No wonder your fake husband moved to Hong Kong!" Ted hollers. "He moved there for business!" she barks back. Poor fake husband, trapped in the middle. Don't drag poor fake husband into this!
Booth. Marshall and Lily. Barney approaches with a somber air. He knows Robin wasn't married. How, Marshall wonders, could Barney know that? Fffoom! In bed, Marshall tells Lily all about his day, including the fact that Robin wasn't married. Fffoom! In the booth, Lily says that she couldn't keep it a secret, since she's the Slap Bet Commissioner. "Believe me, this hurts me more than it's going to hurt you," she says. Barney begs to differ. "Don't count on it," he says. "I've been practicing on a tree trunk." Reluctantly, Lily announces that Barney is entitled to three slaps. "One because you lied, and two for being prematurely slapped." And Barney takes his three slaps. I'm assuming Neil Patrick Harris is not actually whaling on Jason Segel's face here, but he sure as hell looks like he is. "Oh my God," he chuckles when it's over. "Are you going to cry?" Marshall pauses, still holding his cheek. "No," he says through tears. "You're gonna cry." Poor Marshall. He needs a hankie.
We return to Ted and Robin at the apartment, still doing the Keep Secrets Or Don't dance. He thinks she shouldn't be so secretive; she swears she's already shared more with him than with anyone else, so she wants him to just drop this one thing this one time. Just then, Barney and Marshall and Lily come busting through the door, and Barney is bringing news: he knows her secret. And he knows her name..."Robin Sparkles." Robin steps back. "How do you know that name?" she asks nervously. Barney opens a laptop and tells her she's about to be exposed, but Ted tells Barney they're not intruding on Robin's privacy -- if she wants it to be a secret, it will remain so. Barney, having none of this "compassion for others" business, scoffs and explains that he found a guy on the internet in Malaysia who is a big Robin Sparkles fan, who will be streaming a video on MySpace in just a moment. And then, he will undoubtedly be running to the Robin Sparkles thread at ObscureCanadians.com to plug it. "Robin's world is about to be turned upside-down," Barney says. "I mean, I'm guessing." Barney says they'll only watch enough to prove he was right (about the porn). Ted tries again to stop him, but Robin finally gives in and says "it's time." "There's no point in trying to hide it," she says. Lily and Marshall agree that they're afraid -- she's afraid generally, and he's afraid of getting hit.
Robin protests that she was young. (Barney: "YEAH you were.") She didn't know any better! (Barney: "They never do.") It started with modeling! (Barney: "It always does.") So let's go to the videotape. In a schoolgirl outfit and a ratty blonde wig, Robin begs a "teacher" for forgiveness for being a "bad girl." She'll do anything, in fact, to make it up to him. Satisfied that this can only mean porn, porn, porn, Barney stops it on account of "Robin's dignity." Then, declaring it "slap o'clock," he turns and smacks an unprepared Marshall in the face. Robin doesn't get it, so Barney explains how there was this bet that she did porn. Robin tells them that it isn't porn -- it's actually worse than porn.
Robin restarts the video. "I know!" on-screen ratty blonde Robin says to the teacher. "How about I...sing you a song!" Anchored by a stonewashed denim mini and a matching jacket with the sleeves pushed up, Robin's look is largely Electric Youth-era Debbie Gibson, as is the dancing, but the song, "Let's Go To The Mall," reminds me most of "Let's Hear It For The Boy." Around the computer, Robin's friends are horrified. "I was a teenage pop star in Canada," Robin finally admits. Let it out, Robin. You'll feel better. She explains that as a result of her "one minor hit," she had to go all over in Canada singing this song in various malls. She lived on "Orange Julius and Wetzel's Pretzels" for a whole year. Marshall doesn't understand why this early-'90s video looks like 1986. "The '80s didn't come to Canada till, like, '93," she pouts. Hey, Robin -- at least you didn't wind up on Skating With Celebrities. It could have been a lot worse.
Marshall has something to say. This, he points out, is not porn. "And yet a slap occurred without the permission of the slap bet commissioner," Lily says sternly, staring at Barney. Marshall accuses Barney of "premature slapulation." They're interrupted by Ted's insistence that they listen to Robin...rapping. Hee. Barney's punishment, Lily explains, is either ten slaps now or five slaps that Marshall can hand out at any time in the future. Robin says she'd totally take the five -- why not five instead of ten? But Ted thinks the fear of being slapped would be worse. (Interestingly, it contradicts their personalities a little, in that you might think it would be Robin leading the charge against the fear of fear itself, since she seems so uncomfortable with anything that leaves her with the possibility of disappointment.) Barney agrees with Robin and takes the five slaps. Marshall then reaches for a drink on the table, and Barney flinches away from him. This is where Marshall realizes that these five slaps will pay off for a long time.
Robin's friends continue to ruthlessly mock her (as they must), but Ted assures her that when he was sixteen, he would have been crazy about her. "You could've been the girlfriend in Canada I told everyone I had," he observes. He quietly apologizes to her for prying into her business, but she says it's all right. She likes how well he knows her. Everyone in the room "awww"s. Just as they're all basking in this warm moment, Marshall whacks Barney on the cheek. "That's one," Marshall says. Since then, we've seen one other. At some point, it seems like we're surely see another.
In the tag, we get more of the song, and at one moment where Robin giggles girlishly, Barney asks her if she had to do that every time. "Yes," she says unhappily, taking another swig of beer. In other news, it turns out that not only does "Let's Go To The Mall" feature a guy with feathered hair that looks like it unzips down the middle, but it also features an entirely random robot, which is a curious but not incorrect period detail. You know how iPods are now? How you reference them just to show that you're hip? Adorable robots were kind of like that once. Best line? "I'm going to rock your body till Canada Day," delivered in front of a giant maple leaf. You know, somebody in the Yukon Territory thinks that is porn, I promise you.