HIMYM 8x20: The Time Travelers

At long last, Future Ted is finally creeping up on the point in the story where he actually meets his kids' mother. But there's one thing standing in the way of their meeting: Robots vs. Wrestlers!

Which I suppose may technically be two things.

Barney drops by the bar with two tickets to Robots vs. Wrestlers: Legends and he wants Ted to be his +1. Unfortunately, Ted has a big lecture to give in the morning and he's not sure he should go out. So, in order to convince him, Barney calls upon the most convoluted narrative device in the history of television.

In order to get Ted to go out, he needs to prove that RvW:L will be a life-changing event. Unfortunately, there's no way to see into the future, so Present Barney can't make a good case. However, he can summon 20 Years from Now Barney to tell Ted just how legendary the night was. Future Barney's not wholly convincing, either, so he summons 20 Years from Now Ted to make the pitch to his past self.

We know Future Ted is a phony because he doesn't sound like Bob Saget.

20 Years from Now Ted says that going to RvW:L will make this night the single greatest night of his life, and that's enough for Present Ted. All four of them are about to head out when they're stopped by someone they didn't expect: 20 Hours from Now Ted.

The Ted of Tomorrow admits that Robots vs. Wrestlers is awesome, but while he was there he drank way too much, dove into the ring and sprained his wrist, and smoked half a pack of cigarettes. Also, he hurled like the time his mom bought beef at the Price Club. Upon hearing that his night was pretty awesome Present Ted is prepared to go just as long as he doesn't drink too much. The other Teds and the Barneys agree that you don't need alcohol to have a good time, but if you're going to Robots vs. Wrestlers, you still kinda need to get wasted. That seems to be enough to convince Present Ted because when they come back to this plot a bit later, he has inexplicably decided to go. They all get up to leave when they're stopped by yet another unexpected guest: 20 Minutes from Now Barney.

He's awfully smug for a guy with a big spaghetti stain on his shirt.

Present Barney laughs at this new Barney for spilling food on himself, then digs into the plate of spaghetti that Carl brings him. Nineteen minutes later, Present Barney has a big spaghetti stain, 20 Minutes from Now Barney has acid reflux from eating Italian food in an Irish pub, and the reason he came back to stop them walks through the door.

It's the coat check girl from Season 1, Episode 5: Okay Awesome. Remember her?

Ted consults with the group, and they all agree he should go talk to her, but before he can approach her, he's pulled into a booth by two people: Two separate versions of 20 Months from Now Coat Check Girl. They convince him that no matter what happens, either he'll get sick of her, or she'll get sick of him, because that's what always happens in his relationships.

Meanwhile, Marshall has invented a drink that he calls the 'Minnesota Tidal Wave' however, Robin's been ordering it so often that Carl has placed it on the MacLaren's menu and named it after her.

Now she has a play and a drink named after her.

Marshall is understandably upset that his creation got the Flaming Moe treatment, so he challenges Robin to a dance-off. They're about to hit the floor when Lily stops him because his dancer's hip has been acting up lately and their doctor wants him to lay off for a while.

With dance-based vengeance impossible, Marshall does the next best thing and writes Robin's phone number on the men's room wall. It doesn't work out terribly well for him since women can enter the men's room with impunity, but men can't go in the ladies' room. After scratching her name off the wall, Robin heads into the women's bathroom to do some writing of her own. Marshall sucks it up and busts through the door to see what it was, and it's not at all what he thought it would be.

It's not bawdy and it's really long.

Robin has left him a message about how sorry she is that she stole his drink and how it all goes back to her childhood and how her father treated her like a cat, but it's all a ruse. The last sentence exposes the whole thing as a lie she made up so Marshall would spend a long time in the bathroom and then have to hide in a stall when a woman comes in. And hide he does.

He waits until he thinks the coast is clear to emerge, but really there are somehow like seven girls in the bathroom. They all flee in terror, and Carl chastises Marshall for being creepy and even uses his name as shorthand for a dude creeping in the bathroom. While Marshall's glad that something is finally named after him, he's also kinda upset at the presumption that he was being creepy, so he resolves to call the next person he sees making a prejudicial assumption a 'Real Carl...' Unfortunately, he doesn't know Carl's last name, and even though he offers to name every drink in the bar after him if he can think of it, Marshall still has no idea what it could be.

Not pictured: Mr. Carl S. Jr.

Defeated, Marshall slinks back to the table. His wife has his back, though, and puts his jam on the jukebox so he can throw caution to the wind and dance it out with Ms. Sparkles.

While the dance-off is going down, Ted finally decides that he's not going to go to Robots vs. Wrestlers, and instead he's just going to go home. He expects Present Barney to try to change his mind, but instead he tells him that the whole 'Minnesota Tidal Wave' thing happened five years ago and everything else was just in his imagination. He's been alone the whole time, trying to decide if he should go by himself.

*Bwaaaaaaaaammmmmm*

Future Ted tells his kids that if he could go back to that night, he wouldn't go to Robots vs. Wrestlers. Instead, he'd go home and look at all his old stuff, visit Marshall and Lily and play with baby Marvin, and visit Robin and Barney and help settle whatever argument they were having. But first he'd run over to their mother's apartment and tell her that he loves her.

And get punched in the face by her boyfriend, Lou Ferrigno Jr.

What I Liked
-Future Ted trolls Present Ted by pretending that he's still not married. In the future he's still a douche, but he's a funnier douche.
-All the Teds and Barneys sing 'For the Longest Time' together. I wasn't a big fan of the multiples as a narrative device, but I recognize how tough it must have been to sync up their singing.

Plus, I kinda like that song.

What I Hated
-Marshall takes forever to read the message on the wall. It may have looked like a lot, but it was literally 185 words long, and should've taken him all of twenty seconds to read.
-The continuity is all messed up. Supposedly the 'Minnesota Tidal Wave' thing happened five years ago, but the gang didn't know about Marshall's dancer's hip until The Possimpible, which was only four years ago. Lily's hair is red in the episode, but five years ago it was brown. And most importantly, at the end of the season five episode 'Robots vs. Wrestlers' Future Ted says the following:

Kids, I'd love to tell you that over the years we didn't all drift apart a little at one time or another. You don't mean for it to happen, but it does. But no matter what, to this day, come hell or high water, we still all get together every year for Robots vs. Wrestlers.

What the hell is the point of having continuity if you're just going to ignore it or screw it up? Up until this season, this show's been very, very good at referencing things that happened in earlier episodes, but this year they've been screwing it up royally. Sure, they brought back Jayma Mays and Joe Manganiello, but the actors are probably the least important part of continuity.

Final Thoughts
This has to be the most confusing story in the history of the world at this point. Not only is Future Ted telling his kids the story of the eight years in his life before he met their mother, he's also telling them about things his friends did, things he doesn't know about, stories he told other people, and now things that he imagined. Future teenagers must have a lot more patience than today's teens.

I won't call it a complete waste of an episode, because things did happen on the show. However, from the point of view of the story it was a complete waste. It was literally an episode about how Ted went to the bar alone and drank one beer. We've had a firm date for when he finally meets the mother for a while now, and now the writers have to kill time until then. No progress or even fake progress can occur because we all know that it won't matter.

The characters aren't driving the plot anymore because Ted has resolved to stop dating, and the narrative's not driving the plot anymore because it already has an ending, so we just have to wait and watch the show spin its wheels until it gets there.