Ted gets a mysterious call from an elderly woman, informing him: "The window is open." Said window belongs to Maggie, an old crush from Ted's college days, but he has never been able to pursue her, because the woman takes serial monogamy way too literally. She's the classic girl-next-door for whom men fall head-over-heels. As soon as she breaks up with one guy, another is pitching woo, before Ted even knows she's back on the market. When Ted missed his last all-too-brief window of opportunity, he bribed Maggie's neighbor to call him as soon as the window was once again open -- hence the phone call. This time, Ted gets to Maggie in time, and jumps through every hoop imaginable to spend the evening with her, but in all his planning he forgets one important thing -- his own availability. Ted has a class scheduled that evening, so he tasks the gang with running interference for him, until he can get back to MacLaren's and Maggie.
The B-plot revolves around a box of keepsakes Marshall's mom sent him -- specifically a letter his 15-year-old self wrote to his 30-year-old self. Marshall has not lived up to one of his adolescent goals and is taking it hard. When he bolts from MacLaren's (and Maggie-sitting), Lily follows to make sure he doesn't quit his job at GNB. This leaves Robin on Maggie-minding duty, but she has a hard time accepting that mild-mannered Maggie is way more of a guy magnet than she. The only way she can think to keep Maggie man-free is to throw herself at Maggie's co-worker, who is currently throwing himself at Maggie. When Robin makes the poor man take her on a date, the only one left to watch Maggie is... Barney. Yeah.
Fortunately, Barney is actually wearing the C-plot -- a pair of Marshall's overalls from his teen years. Barney's goal is to hook up with a woman while wearing the dated denim duds. Unfortunately, Maggie thinks they're cute. When Ted learns the fox is guarding the chicken coop, he rushes back to the bar, to keep (another one of) his dream girl(s) from being bedded by Barney. While succeeding at that, he fails at his main mission. And he (and Barney, and Maggie's co-worker) end up cock-blocked by the girl-next-door's boy-next-door and childhood sweetheart, in what Saget!Ted describes as the "Second greatest love story." Aw.
This episode is not to be missed, and not just because of Jason Segel's turn as the awkward teenage Marshall who writes to his future self while listening to Snow's "Informer" (but man, don't miss that part). And the Segel-centric end tag could only be better if there were actual, working light sabers. I'll hit that, and all the details in the full Weecap, tomorrow. In the meantime, come on over to the forum and licky boom boom down.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Remember that little show about an unapologetically romantic guy named Ted and his best friends? You know the one. The show itself was also often unapologetically romantic (see the blue French horn; a memory that will never be tarnished (except that it was); and the two-minute date), even while it treasured its edge. It continued on and off like that for four seasons, and then during the first chunk of its fifth season, it took what may be the second most longed-for couple in the series and squeezed every drop of joy and fun out of them before presenting them to their salivating audience. Yeah, well, forget about those dark days, because How I Met Your Mother's romance is back, and is as swoon-worthy as ever. Lordy! Get me my smelling salts and my lace hand fan. I'm going in!
Marshall enters Ted's apartment lugging a heavy package. Robin goes all Brad Pitt in Se7en, and is only slightly more cringe-worthy than Dean Winchester when he did the same. Lost's Frank did it much better, if you ask me, and granted, you didn't. Anyhow, it's intentionally awkward, but satisfying once Robin looks at her two friends who refuse to indulge her with even a smirk, and says, "Yeah, I'm the jerk." I say satisfying, because she was the jerk, until she said that. At any rate, it seems Marshall's mother has been sending him his old stuff, which totally explains why he'd heft a box all the way from Dowisetrepla to Ted's place, right? Oh, sitcoms. In it, there's a bunch of childhood jetsam, like an old Mad Libs book. Marshall reads it: "Fart went to the fart to fart fartly." As they laugh over young Marshall's scatology, the phone rings. When Ted picks it up, we cut to an older lady (Barbara Perry, who played Buddy's wife, Pickles Sorrell, on The Dick Van Dyke Show) talking on her cell as she walks down the streets of New York, pushing her little shopping cart. It's not the store kind of cart that street people use. It's the actual old-lady kind that middle-class old ladies use. (Rich old ladies have staff do their shopping. Rich old ladies rule.) Look how cute Barbara Perry looks here. Her wool coat even sparkles as she deadpans into the phone: "The window is open." We cut back to...
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