When Barney is nervously waiting for something to happen, he imagines himself being interviewed by CBS sportscaster Jim Nantz (playing himself). So although this episode still includes an opening shot of Ted's kids in 2030, and Saget!Ted's narration, most of it is told from Barney's POV -- or at least from future-Ted's image of Barney's point of view. The subject of Jim Nantz's interview is Barney's latest attempt to have a perfect week -- that is, sleeping with seven women in seven days. There are references to baseball's superstitions surrounding the "perfect game," and Nantz and NPH do a bang-up job (sorry) with their part of the story.

Whenever interview-Barney flashes back to his latest conquest, we get to see not only how he did, but how the rest of the gang is doing. And? They're not doing so well. Marshall and Lily strike out with yet another prospective friend-couple. This time, they don't mess it up by trying too hard. Instead, everything goes to hell when they unwittingly admit to sharing a single toothbrush. On purpose. They find themselves in a real pickle when we learn that while they lived with Ted, he was sharing one with them, too, unbeknownst to all at the time. Additionally, Ted has new students this semester, and one of them is a young Asian woman named "Cook Pu." When Ted reads the roster, he balks, assumes the students are playing a prank on him, and gets so into his own poo jokes that he misses the poor woman trying to tell him that's actually her name. Things are foul for Robin, too. Oh, she's doing her best to ignore Barney's latest sex quest, and she's gone on a date with some guy named Dale, but she really isn't into him. She plans to give him the brush-off when he calls for a second date, but as each day passes with no call from Dale, Robin likes him a little bit more. By the end of the episode, he's her soulmate. And? He still hasn't called. Barney's other-than-sex life isn't going so well, either. A big deal he was working fell through, and Marshall reports to the gang that Barney may lose his job. Typically, Lily wants Barney to talk about it, and Barney would rather do anything but, and in her persistence, Lily (with an unintentional assist from New York Yankee Nick Swisher) almost costs Barney his perfect week.

The structure of the episode is complex, even for HIMYM, but I've got some Barney fatigue, and more specifically some Barney's-such-a-ho fatigue, so by the time the whole gang started pulling together help Barney land the last conquest needed for his perfect week, I started hoping he'd fail. In fact, I expected him to fail. When he succeeded, I assumed his GNB job was toast. But no, Barney got the girl(s) and kept the job, and this episode felt like it went nowhere except possibly backwards. I mean hey, it's a sitcom and a good one, but if I weren't writing up the weecap tomorrow, I don't know that I'd be rushing to watch this episode again. I'm crossing my fingers that it improves upon re-watch.

Tomorrow, I'll cover all the details, including quotes and the end tag, in the full weecap. In the meantime, come on over to the forum, where we know better than to talk about your perfect game er... mother.

Discuss this episode in our forums, then add "perfect game" to our HIMYM Dictionary!