| How I Met Your Mother – “Garbage Island” |  |
How I Met Your Mother kept pushing forward all the plots it’s been hinting at this week, which I appreciate since the show is usually somewhat stagnant. Marshall, still grieving the loss of his father, is having trouble getting motivated about work. He has realized that when Lily and he have a child, it would be extremely difficult to change careers, and facing a life sentence at GNB is something Marshall wants to avoid. They’ve been hinting at his change in employment since that episode in the museum, so it was nice to see the show start paying off on that already.
Meanwhile, Ted has been enlisted by Zoey to retrieve some of her stuff from the Captain. This character reappearing is something I hoped for, but doubted we would get. So I was overjoyed that they gave the Captain his due this week, showing his side of the divorce. While Ted felt he had saved Zoey from a loveless marriage, the Captain tells a different story. From his point of view, his loving wife was stolen away by a mustachioed villain, an act that maritime law demands physical retribution for. Ted and the Captain’s interactions were fantastic and full of laughs. I hope they can keep bringing him back.
Also, Barney is gearing up for a relationship with Nora, despite his own instincts. Fortunately, he has Robin to encourage him. I’m getting a little tired of Robin being relegated purely to the voice of wisdom on the show, it’s been a while since she actually had a story of her own. Anyway, Barney eventually gives in and calls Nora, so that’s going somewhere, I guess.
But the most important part of the episode was how it was framed. Ted is Hong Kong in the future, a married man with a bad hairdo, and he runs into Wendy the waitress. It turns out hatred for Marshall led to Wendy meeting her husband. More importantly, Ted hinted pretty strongly that his breakup with Zoey occurred at the same wedding we saw in the first episode of the season, the one where we supposedly finally meet Mother. We still don’t know whose wedding it is, but it definitely is starting to seem like we’ll be there this year.