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It's The Amazing Race, How I Met Your Mother-style in this actually cool and only-a-little-gimmicky concept episode that has our whole cast racing separately to a single location in downtown Manhattan. Basically, they get a call from a friend who sees Woody Allen at Gregor's Steakhouse. Robin thinks it would be cool to see him, but everyone else just teases her about not being a New Yorker yet if she hasn't seen Woody Allen. She tries to tell them she's seen Maury Povich, but they don't think that counts since he's everywhere (in this episode). Also, if she hasn't stolen a cab from someone who needed it more, cried on the subway without giving a damn what anyone thought, and killed a cockroach with her bare hands. (She will do all of those by end of this day episode.) They discuss the quickest way to get to Gregor's, and each of them has a different theory. They all pretend there's, like, no way to know who's right anyway, and then they start racing...
Lily takes the subway, and Saget!Ted tells us she needs the win because she and Marshall haven't been able to get pregnant, so she feels like a loser. Maury Povich is there, and he calls her an idiot. Ted takes the bus, where he turns out to be the one crazy person no one will sit by. Maury Povich is there, and he looks at Ted derisively. Robin tries to take a cab, but Maury Povich steals it from her. (Then she steals one from another woman, who needed it more: check!). Barney eats a steak and then pretends to choke, since ambulance is his vehicle of choice. Unfortunately, he can't choose the hospital and finds himself going uptown instead of downtown. So he calls Ranjit and hitches a ride. Then he picks up Robin, who scolds him for not noticing how sad she's been. Then she jumps out. Barney passes Marshall. I'm sure Maury Povich pops up again somewhere. Everyone meets up at some point in the middle, then races some more. Barney takes and then drives a rickshaw. Robin cries on the subway (check!), and Lily consoles her. Then Lily calls Ranjit and gives Marshall a ride. But they decide to stop worrying about baby-making and racing and go to Coney Island instead. Ted, Barney, and Robin are in a dead-heat to the finish, when Barney tackles Ted and Robin wins. She has a nice dinner with Anonymous Friend Max, who points out Woody Allen (it's actually Maury Povich; he always gets them confused). Then Robin kills a cockroach with her bare hands, and -- check! -- she's a New Yorker. As long as it doesn't mean an end to the Canada jokes.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!At MacLaren's, Barney can't stop staring at a girl's face. When everyone is briefly shocked that he'd look at that part of a girl, he brings it back to Barneyland with "Puffy cheeks, smudged mascara, slightly red nose. That girl was just crying. She's so sad and defenseless. Anyone have a condom?" Lily gives him a timeout for being that offensive, and sends him to the corner booth. Marshall gets a text from his friend, Max, who says he's sitting two tables over from Woody Allen at Gregor's Steakhouse downtown. Max invites them to come check it out, and they all groan. Except Robin, who thinks it would be cool to see him. Marshall wonders how she can be a New Yorker if she hasn't seen him already, and she's like, "I see famous people; just last week I saw Maury Povich." Saget!Ted tells us how uncanny it is how often they see Maury. Then Lily and Marshall say the same thing to Robin, so I'm not really sure why we needed that particular Saget!Ted. I mean, nothing against the Saget!Ted or anything. But, actually, yes, I do have something against pointless narration, and that includes Saget!Ted sometimes. Sorry, Saget. I know you probably like phoning in your lines and getting paid, but I would like more.
Robin tries to say she is, in fact, a real New Yorker, since she's been here for six years. Everyone laughs at her, and Ted says she's not a real New Yorker until she's stolen a cab from someone who needs it more. Lily says you're not a real New Yorker until you've cried on the subway and not given a damn what anyone thinks. But Marshall says you're not a real New Yorker until you've killed a cockroach with your bare hands. Robin thinks this is stupid, since she's done none of those things. Saget!Ted: "By the end of the day, Robin will have done all of those things." See? Now, that's a perfectly fine use of Saget!Ted. Barney comes back from his timeout and asks what's up. Marshall fills him on Robin wanting to go see Woody Allen at Gregor's, blah blah. Barney's like: "Why would I do that? I'll see him at poker on Tuesday." Robin says they'll be there in twenty minutes if they jump in a cab, but Lily says a real New Yorker would know the subway's faster. Ted thinks the bus is faster on weekends. Barney says there's always one crazy person on the bus that no one wants to sit by, which is why he never takes the bus. And Marshall thinks he could run faster than the bus. But Ted says it's, like, seven miles! Marshall: "I can beat a bus, or a cab, or a train." Robin wonders if anyone else is craving Green Eggs & Ham. Marshall thinks someone needs to take machines down a peg. Barney says he could beat them all, even if he sat down and ordered a big, juicy steak first. Marshall asks how, and Barney replies, "Medium rare, but that's not important right now." Robin tries to say she knows the city better than any of them, and they all argue. Ted yells that they should all just forget about it, since there's no way to know who's right. Then they all get up and run out, with yelling, "First person wins!" "Doesn't matter how you get there!" Barney throws in a "Stay sad, I'll be back!" to the girl at the bar.
Race music as our gang breaks up, running, running, running. Barney runs all the way to the restaurant door and asks for a menu, "no rush." Lily runs into the subway as Saget!Ted tells us "kids" that Lily really needed a win that day, and here's why. Flashback: Lily takes pregnancy tests and keeps failing, even though Marshall tells her how fertile the Eriksen men are. Marshall's confidence messes with Lily's head, and when she imagines him on the pregnancy test stick taunting her, she decides to pee on that one again. Back to Lily running onto the subway and diving through the doors. But they aren't closing. Maury Povich, sitting just inside the door, mutters, "Idiot."
Marshall's running, and giving himself an internal pep talk about how he needs a folk song to keep this up. As he runs, a country tune sings: "Gather round ye children, to hear the tale so sweet. Of a man who dared to race machines with nothing but his feet. Marshall Versus The Machines." Robin flags down a cab, which Maury Povich steals from her. Back on the subway, Lily (sitting to her Maury) thinks the incomprehensible subway conductor announcement says there's track maintenance and a twenty-minute delay. So she gets off, and the train takes off. On a bus, two seats in front of Maury Povich, Ted stares out the window. Saget!Ted tells us why he needed a win: He'd recently learned about a teacher-grading website and looked himself up: The reviews were all glowing and wonderful except for one: "Boring." And we know Ted well enough to know he'll obsess over that one. On the bus, Ted tries to teach his seatmate about the city's buildings, but the guy falls asleep.
Barney's finishing up his steak and martini when he checks his watch and starts wheezing. He goes way over-the-top dramatic with it, finally screaming out, "Elizabeth!" and keeling over. The waiter asks someone to call an ambulance, and Barney winks at the camera. Robin steals a cab, and asks to go to Gregor's Steakhouse. We get a ding! Since she's now stolen a cab from someone who needed it more. The lady jumps on the front of the cab as it drives away. Barney asks the ambulance to take him to the hospital right by Gregor's, but they must go to the nearest hospital, which is actually uptown, not downtown. The best-laid plans. 24-style five-screen montage of our racers takes us into commercial.
After the break, Barney calls someone for help. Heads on a map shift us from Barney to Robin, still screaming about the woman on her windshield. Saget!Ted tells us why Robin needs a win: She's had a rough year, first with losing Don and then her new co-anchor Becky comes in all blonde and perky and cute and steals the show to the point that her face literally eclipses Robin's in the title cards. The woman falls off the front of the cab, so Robin pays the guy and jumps out. Folk music kicks up as Marshall runs by. Ranjit picks Barney up, and Barney asks him to take him to Gregor's. Marshall keeps running, and his folk song flashes us back to him beating various machines: Atari as a kid, his alarm, the jukebox. The lady whose cab Robin stole gets on Ted's bus and sits to him, in pain. But she sits only through a half-second of Ted before taking her pain elsewhere, even though the bus is full. Barney spots a hottie and tells Ranjit to offer her a ride. It's Robin. Marshall keeps running to folk music. He runs right by Maury Povich, sitting on some steps.
Ted tells the bus driver boring architecture stories, since no one else on the bus has been willing to listen. Bus driver slams on the brakes. Robin wonders if Barney giving her a ride is his way of apologizing for this morning. He says he never apologizes, and also -- why would he? Flashback: Robin tries to have an actual conversation about how difficult her life's been as he uses her as a decoy while he scopes out Sad Face. When she talks about work, he's like, "That's just distracting. Say 'carrots and peas.' " In the car, Barney's surprised to hear Robin actually had something to talk about. She says this city is starting to reject her, what with the woman almost getting her killed and Maury stealing her cab. She says maybe she should stop trying. Barney says he had no idea, but Robin says it's her fault for thinking he might care. He tries to get her to talk now, but she tells Ranjit to stop the car, and leaves Barney with a "carrots and peas." Marshall's country song is getting slower as he's also running slower. This verse is all about him losing to machines. Flashback to him losing to cable boxes and a stapler. He huffs and puffs right past Barney's car. Barney jumps out and runs after him. Ted's talking to himself on the bus, while everyone else is on the other side. Saget!Ted says he had a realization that if you can't spot the crazy person on the bus, it's you. He gets out, and runs.
They all meet up, halfway there, at Seventh and Fourteenth. Ted tries to tell them to forget the race, since this is a sign, but they all run off in their own directions. Maury Povich walks out of the building, walking a fluffy white dog. Subway. Lily dives on again, and Maury once again calls her an idiot. One car over, though, some guy seems to be hitting on Robin. Turns out he sees the giant picture of Becky with tiny Robin in the corner. Robin tears it down and reveals the picture of her and Don under it. A bell dings! As she cries and doesn't give a damn. On a pedicab, Barney tells his cyclist to go faster, because he needs this win. Flash to Barney talking about doubling his salary, sleeping with a hot girl, getting more muscular, and -- oh, by the way -- he smells incredible. Saget!Ted says Barney actually didn't need a win. And he did smell incredible. Barney switches with the pedicab cyclist, who's too slow.
Impatient, Lily jumps off the subway and runs to the car over, where she finds Robin crying. Robin tells her she's done with this city, and wants to move somewhere new and start over. Lily tells her she's had a rough year, but she's tough, and Lily loves her, so if she leaves, she'll have to follow her. And Marshall will follow her. And Ted will follow him. On the plus side, she says, they might lose Barney. That would only be a plus if the show gets to stay with Barney. They hug, but the indecipherable conductor talks. Lily pretends not to know what he said, then points out Maury on the other car, and runs out just as the doors close. She yells through the doors that Robin's screwed because this train just turned into an express. She swears she'll be a great friend at the finish line. Lily says "So long, sucker!" and then the door opens and Robin gets out. Lily's all, "Oops." Then she calls and asks someone for help.
Ted and Marshall run together, and Ted jabbers, wondering if he just puts people to sleep. Marshall literally collapses. He wakes up with a giant talking calculator leaning over him. He panics, "The machines have won!" But it's just a guy outside of an electronics store or something. Marshall yells that he can't get his wife pregnant. Maury walks by with some electronics. Ted wonders if this running has been about that, and Marshall says he wanted to prove his body could still do something. Ted says they've been trying for two months, not two years. And he says Ted should talk, with his good reviews and one bad one. The calculator tells then in equation form to get some perspective, so they knock him down. Lily pulls up then with Ranjit and tells Marshall to get in.
Ted's running and Barney's on his pedicab when they bump into Robin. They all see Gregor's and wonder where Marshall and Lily are, but Barney doesn't care. The three of them run toward Gregor's neck and neck, until Ted and Barney fall down. Barney yells: "No!" as Robin celebrates. She wonders how that happened, so Saget!Ted tells us: After Marshall got in the car, Lily got all super competitive, telling Ranjit to run Ted over if he's in the way. Then she realizes she was a bad friend to Robin. Marshall's like, "Uh, you wanted to run over Ted." She acknowledges she probably is trying to make up for not being able to get pregnant. They bond over the realization that they're both freaked out. Then they decide to stop freaking out, and to instead cherish and enjoy the time they have with just the two of them. When they get pregnant, they get pregnant, but they'll stop trying so hard and obsessing. "This isn't a race." Sounds healthy to me. They tell Ranjit to screw Gregor's and go to Coney Island.
Saget!Ted fills us in on how Robin beat him and Barney. He says Barney won't admit it to this day, but he saw Barney notice Robin's sad face (which he's familiar with, see? So Sad Face wasn't for nothing) when she asked about Marshall and Lily. Barney says he tripped, but Ted says it sure felt like he tackled him on purpose. And then he swears he saw Barney smile when Robin won (then he fakes the "No!" we saw originally). At Gregor's, Robin sits with Max and Ted with Barney. Ted tells him he knows what he did, but Barney doesn't confirm or deny. He just says that he drove a pedicab 26 blocks and still smells incredible. Saget!Ted confirms this to be true. Robin asks Max where Woody Allen is, and he points him out, but it's Maury again. Max says he always gets those two confused. Robin laughs. Ted says there was only one winner that day, but everyone got something from the race: Marshall and Lily snuggle in the car. Ted and Barney chat it up. Robin wouldn't see Woody Allen for a couple months, but she did become a New Yorker (just then, chatting with Max, she kills a cockroach on the table -- which we're thankfully spared having to see. And ding!). And that's all. There's no tag this week, sadly.
Discuss this episode in our forums, read our HIMYM dictionary, then see why our vlogger thinks HIMYM is the new Friends, below.
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DeAnn, a writer and editor in Portland, Oregon, didn't even know Maury Povich lived in New York. You can contact her at twopmodmars@gmail.com.