Bryan Cranston shows up to remind everyone that he is still great.

They say you never forget your first love. No matter who you date, fall for, marry and spend your life with, somewhere in the back of your mind will always be the first one you could see a future with. The first one who mattered.

I don’t know if Robin is the first person Ted fell in love with. He had a life before the show started and in that time, knowing Ted, there could have been countless women he fell in love with. But for us, as viewers, Robin was the first. From the very first episode it was clear she would be important to Ted, and to us. And though Ted dated a few other girls before he and Robin got together, she was the first one he stuck with, the first one who mattered. And so, no matter how frustrating it can be to continue to see Ted’s lingering feelings for Robin keep coming back over… and over… and over again, it makes sense. It’s hard to let go of love.

So when I realized that this week’s episode would be focusing on Ted once again figuring out his feelings for Robin, this time six months before the wedding, just exactly at the moment when Barney realized he wanted to propose to Robin, I took a deep breath, and let it happen.

The flashback began when Lily reminded Barney of the challenge he never completed – diapers and samosas. See, Barney has a habit of challenging himself to easy things and then congratulating himself for completing them. Hoping to antagonize Barney, Lily and Robin task Barney with much harder challenges – pick up a girl speaking only in dolphin, pick up a girl while wearing a trash bag and not using the letter e, pick up a girl who was told not to speak to any men because it would scare off Ryan Gosling. All of these challenges completed almost effortlessly, a bored Lily and Robin send Barney on one final challenge – pick up some diapers and samosas… oh, and pick up a girl too. At the pharmacy, and determined to complete the challenge he hits on the first “target” he sees – and it turns out it’s none other than Ted’s future wife, who refuses to give him her number and instead sees past his actions to a man who is hurt and needs to get his life in order. It was a little corny, a little unbelievable that she read that much into him that quickly and a little weird, but it was fitting – Ted’s future wife should definitely be corny and sentimental, because that’s Ted. In the end, the Barney and the mother have a talk about what Barney is doing with his life and ultimately, she guides Barney to the decision to pursue Robin.

Meanwhile, Ted is vigorously defending the idea that he and Robin have a platonic relationship, even though they are reverting back to their old jokes. (“Major Cravingforamojito.”) When Ted and Marshall go to watch their team, the Washington Generals, lose miserably to the Harlem Globetrotters, Marshall drops that Robin said she is still in love with Ted. Though it wasn’t true, Ted’s reaction convinces Marshall that Ted should give it another try with her. When Ted envisions an elaborate plan to win her back involving stealing back the (now chained up) blue French horn, Marshall is even more convinced that Ted is in love with her.

But just as Ted is thinking he might tell her, he gets a call from none other than Hammond Druthers (a throwback character, played by the amazing, astounding, wonderful Bryan Cranston, who I can never unsee as Walter White, even though I totally saw him only as the dad in Malcolm in the Middle when he first came on the show). Druthers is looking for a partner at his firm in Chicago to keep up his reputation at his firm after he built a glass building that accidentally murdered a lot of rare fish and whose glare misdirected pilots flying into O’Hare. Ted ultimately chooses not to take the job, but Druthers leaves the door open for taking it again in the future, and since we know he still has plans to go to Chicago, it’s clear he’ll take the job at some point in another flashback. Ted is still considering telling Robin he is still in love with her when he comes home and sees her eating olives – a food that on their first date she said she hated. Suddenly realizing that some things change, Ted ultimately decides to wait it out and leave it up to fate, not knowing that Barney is taking matters into his own hands.

The choice to make this week’s entirely a flashback episode was smart – the wedding plot was getting very tired very quickly, and it was time for a change of scenery and topic. Leaping back to the moment when Barney first realized he wanted to settle down with Robin was an important scene that allowed us to see a different dynamic between the characters that was lacking in this season due to the constraints of the plot.

Ultimately I was happy with how this episode turned out. It had the nostalgic elements, like the horn and Druthers, that have made this season entertaining, and it totally sold me on the Ted and Robin plot, something I never would have imagined just a few episodes ago. In fact I was so convinced, that when Barney finished telling the flashback story and professed his love for Robin, and the scene cut to a quiet Ted with sadness in his eyes, my heart broke for him just a little bit.

Tidbits:

  • Barney’s definition of platonic relationships: “Two people are only platonic if in the next 20 minutes there is no chance of them hooking up.” The only two people he’s seen who’ve had that are Robin and Marshall, whom he imagines wouldn’t make out even if Lily had a bomb strapped to her chest that would blow up the whole bar that relied solely on whether or not they kissed.
  • “Yeah ‘cuz it’s 1994 and I’m gonna pick up a phone without knowing who’s on the other end.”
  • Barney on accepting the trash bag challenge: “I’d be Glad to, I hope she’s not Hefty… and those are all the brands of trash bags I know.”
  • “Challng Accptd”
  • “Do you know who you are? You’re Nicholas Sparks!”
  • Not quite Heisenberg levels of scheming from Druthers: “I will call you a lot, I will tweet you like crazy, I will LIVE on your Facebook wall!”