In How I Met Your Mother‘s season 9, episode 15 “Unpause,” Ted and Robin spoke on behalf of the viewers, asking Barney all the burning questions we’ve had over the years, and more!
All right, a lot of noteworthy stuff happened in tonight’s episode, so this HIMYM recap is going to attempt to hit all of them succinctly. “Unpause,” arguably, makes up for everything last week’s slap-filled episode lacked. It was, perhaps, one of the most obvious “the show is ending and we’re just spilling our secrets now,” and quite literally, it focused around Barney being drunk enough to tell the unbridled truth and Lily and Marshall’s fight reaching new levels.
Hopefully, tonight’s episode was as satisfying for you as the writers clearly hoped it’d be. This is nine seasons worth of payoff in thirty minutes.
Ever since Ted told us so in season 1, episode 18, we’ve abided by the nothing good happens after 2 a.m. rule (or at least, we have thought about it whenever that clock hits 2:01 a.m.). But, there are always exceptions to that rule, and for Ted, that exception was in the year 2017 and on the night of his son Luke’s birth. His sister, Penny, was right there with them, at the Farhampton Inn.
But, back to the present: Lily and Marshall finally confront each other and have the fight that’s been brewing ever since Daphne (Marshall’s driving companion for part of the trip) texted Lily about Marshall’s new judge job that would prevent him from going to Italy for the year.
After a series of attempts to delay the inevitable, which includes Marshall convincing the gang to keep drinking late into the night and taking some pills slipped to him by Barney to keep up his performance in bed long enough to exhaust Lily, Lily demands an “unpause” and an emotionally heartbreaking scene ensues.
Lily is really hurt – she claims Marshall’s act of accepting the job more selfish than anything she did, but then he drops the San Francisco bomb. He also insults her new job by calling it a hobby – something so inconsiderate that Marshall would never dare say during the daylight with an even temper.
Has he been holding on to resentment for seven years? They play the ‘what if’ game – if Lily had been successful in San Fran, would she had stayed and not married Marshall? Is he, as he says, just a consolation prize for not being a successful artist? She storms out after calling someone to pick her up. We would assume it’s Ranjit, but because they purposely don’t show his face, we’re open to other suggestions.
Marshall is trying to prevent a fight on the pause, but Lily is more horny than angry. He realizes he has to gear up for a night of having sex in lieu of fighting. The most unsexy things Marshall can think of: road kill, finger nail clippings, mouth retainers, bugs, more bugs.
Meanwhile, downstairs at the bar: Barney’s drunk! And we learn just how high his alcohol tolerance goes when he starts talking like Jabba the Hutt of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi . Ted and Robin soon realize he has surpassed that stage and entered uncharted territory: the truth serum/trance stage. Major props to Neil Patrick Harris’ acting during this episode – his eyes looked ever-so-slightly crossed and his infliction was that of a hypnotized man.
Some questions Ted and Robin asked, and the revelations that followed:
and finally
It’s then revealed that two months after the wedding, Barney tells his girlfriend-stealing boss that he’s been clouding with the government and his boss is in a whole lot of trouble. This was all a very elaborate revenge plan Barney conceived in 1998, when he was just a hippie who had his girlfriend stolen away from him. It’s funny to remember Barney wasn’t always this suit-wearing man; he was once a barista who went to magic school.
When Robin goes up to bed, Ted asks one last question to Barney – why isn’t he freaking out about becoming a husband tomorrow? And while we were holding our breath waiting for Barney to snap out of it and go running for the hills because of his fear of commitment, he seems genuinely content. For so long, Barney has been scared and lonely, but with Robin, he feels “100% awesome.” At least one couple is happy tonight.
‘HIMYM’ MVP of the week: Alyson Hannigan
Watching her become so distraught while fighting with Marshall, and definitively saying that they are going to Italy with less and less certainty, was tough. We don’t know what she is feeling when she leaves (will she be back for the wedding?!). Is she just blowing off steam?
Is she reconsidering the past seven years, and her marriage? The reason they probably don’t entertain her going off to Italy and him staying to become a judge, is rooted in the fear Marshall had when she went to San Francisco – if she becomes successful, will she want to stay?
Next week is ‘How I Met Your Mother’s’ 200th episode and we’ll find out – from the mother’s perspective – how she met Ted.
What do you think about Ted’s kids’ names? What about Barney’s job/plot to ruin his boss’ life?
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