How I Met Your Mother 6.16 “Desperation Day” Review

Valentine’s Day….you either love it or you hate it.

Not too many people are impartial when it comes to the holiday of love but Barney Stinson, well he loves the day before it.

Desperation Day.

For Barney, the day before Valentine’s Day is when every single girl is so desperate and lonely for attention from a man that she’ll pretty much give anything to get some lovin’. It’s like his Christmas.

Hands down, the best part of last night’s episode of How I Met Your Mother was Barney. Every joke he spewed invoked an audible laugh and the Barney-isms spoken were bountiful and hilarious.

I fell totally in love with this character again during this episode. It felt like a throwback to classic HIMYM and even included some great flashbacks.

Little did Barney know that this would be the Valentine’s Day where he would actually end up being set up on a date with Robin’s friend Nora for the epic laser tag game in Poughkeepsie. According to imdb.com, Nora who is played by Nazanin Boniadi will be on the show for at least two more episodes so I’ll be interested to see where this arc takes Barney.

Nora has got some spunk and called Barney out at the bar so I like her already.

Meanwhile, Lily is missing Marshall hard and heads to Minnesota to try to convince him to come home. Upon arriving at his mother’s house, she sees Marshall has essentially reverted back to a teenager, letting his mom wait on him and playing video games all day.

I must say kudos to the writers of HIMYM and Jason Segel for taking the time and portraying what I believe is a realistic type of grief. So many sitcoms tend to have a sad moment and then sweep it under the rug in the next episodes but this show has done a great job of showing how Marshall’s dad’s death has really impacted the character and wrapped up the storyline nicely. Last night’s scene of Marshall talking about how he can’t see ahead because his dad was gone was quite poignant.

As for Ted and Zoey, their relationship was first moving too slow and then moving light years ahead. If I were Ted I would have freaked out and flown to Minnesota too once Zoey started talking about remembering their first Valentine’s Day for years to come. All was A-OK by the end of the episode though.

While I still really like the chemistry between these two, I found myself really drawn to the other story lines last night and not caring much about Ted and Zoey. I guess we’ll have to wait and see what else their relationship has in store.

Some additional thoughts:

• The difference between a guy and girl’s booty call…True? I think so. What did you think?
• I loved the flashbacks tonight. St. Desperacious plucking up the insecure bridesmaids…genius.
• How awesome is it that Marshall and Lily watch Predator every Valentine’s Day? and How great was it when they went from Lily’s description of the movie to Barney’s heat vision to scope out the bar?
• Also Lily mouthing the words to predator at the end of the episode was amazing.
• Lily substituting Marshall with the Marshpillow was amusing but I loved all the subtle references of how being with a pillow would be crazy far more.

Quips of the Night:

• “Private Booty reporting for Duty.” – Lily
• ‘A magical night when a 10 has the self esteem of a 4 and the depraved enthusiam of a 2.” – Barney re: Desperation Day
• “He is on a pretty sick Dr. Mario run.” – Marshall’s mom
• “This is Barney, a high functioning sociopath and my ex.” – Robin re: introducing Barney to her friends
• “I’m Huey Lewis…and you just heard the news.” – Barney

So what did you guys think? Did you love Barney in this episode just as much as I did? and What about his love interest Nora? What about Ted and Zoey…were you as iffy about them as I was? What was your funniest moment? Sound off in the comments below!!