How I Met Your Mother: ‘The Broken Code’

We’re 51 hours away from the wedding, and more importantly 51 hours away from putting this old dog of a show out of its misery. At this point we’re not doing good ol’ HIMYM any favors but letting it linger around, we’re selfishly keeping it by our side because we grew so fond of what it was in its prime and, despite better judgment, we’re hoping against hope that we can see one last trick, one last sparkle in its eye before it passes on. But the waiting is getting very, very painful.

The glaring problem is obviously the lack of Jason Segel. I’m assuming pat of his agreement to return for this final ninth season entailed an agreement that would allow for him to shoot movies, reminisce about Freaks and Geeks, or just try and detach his name as much as possible from this sinking ship of a show. But in the latter years here he’s often been the only source of laughter and it’s made the show that much worse to relegate to this awful road trip plot that absolutely no one asked for or wants to see. It would almost be better at this point if they didn’t give him any screen time until he can “arrive” at the wedding and just give us some more of ‘The Mother’ interacting with Ted in flash forwards.

What was especially annoying about ‘The Broken Code’ in particular is how rehashed both stories seemed. In the plot of Ted/Barney/Robin love triangle it’s literally been repeated time and time again and I’m not even sure if we’ve seen the last of it since it was alluded to early on that Ted went to visit Stella in Los Angeles to retrieve the missing locket. I just don’t understand what the writers think they can milk out of this. How many times can Ted come to the realization that Robin isn’t the right woman from him? And especially now that we have an actual visual image of ‘The Mother’ how do they expect to feel any real tension here? The whole thing comes off as total filler and a waste of time.

The other story involving Robin and her lack of female friends other than Lily was simply uninspired. We’ve seen lots of other sitcom characters and groups of friends talk about how very few friends they have outside of the main characters (which has more to do with actual practicality of keeping the cast small) so there was nothing new or groundbreaking here. The humor in Lily essentially being a crazy person which makes up for the Robin’s quantity of acquaintances was lost on me so we’ll just move on and chalk this up to a wasted episode as we head down the Mom stretch.

Other moments of note:

• Is Lily really one to critique Robin on her lack of other female friends? She’s not exactly a social butterfly either.
• Are they seriously going run this “thank you Linus” joke that far beneath the ground? Considering these episodes are taking place over several hours she has to be close to blacking out.
• Billy Zabka and Tim Gunn had fairly fun cameos at the poker table but I’m skeptical of the dubious ending which implies we haven’t seen the end of Zabka. Also, since when has the gang become so casual about running into celebrities like Tim Gunn? Ted doesn’t even bat an eye about him being there.
• I’m glad they kept the continuity of Marshall always winning at games, even in pillow form.