How I Met Your Mother: Jamming On Scherbatsky (recap)

By Jen Smith
Fancast.com

Last night’s How I Met Your Mother reminds us what any responsible, mature adult would do if arguing with a roommate—have sex. Of course, it helps if your roommate is as hot as Robin or Ted and not, in fact, addicted to WWE, Hawaiian shirts, and Hot Pockets like mine is. All bitterness aside… if there are any attractive males in the Los Angeles area that want cheap rent in exchange for a friends-with-benefits situation, hit me up.

For some wholly inappropriate reason, Future Ted is enlightening his kids on that one time he started sleeping with Aunt Robin again as a distraction for her bad roommate habits. Apparently the sex overshadows the maddening tendency of putting an empty milk carton back into the fridge. While they have every intention of keeping their new arrangement a secret, Marshall accidently catches them red handed when he comes to the apartment to “read a magazine.”

Of course, this is code for taking a crap. Marshall doesn’t like to do it at work because of the walk of shame down the long hallway that precedes the bathroom break. By the way, this episode featured reality stars Spencer Pratt, Heidi Montag, Kim Kardashian, and Kendra Wilkinson as the live-action covers of Marshall’s bathroom reading. It was slightly amusing, but too hyped for what we got. Marshall eventually agrees not to spill the beans about Robin and Ted’s little arrangement in exchange for use of the bathroom.

As we all know, Marshall doesn’t keep anything from Lily, and Lily doesn’t keep anything from anybody. So now everyone knows—including Barney. Poor Barney. He is none too pleased with his Bro, but tries to act like it’s the coolest thing ever. He decides to take his aggression out on an abandoned TV in the alley, but Lily suggests that maybe he should see a psychiatrist. Barney, of course, would only pay $200 to lie on a couch if it involved a prostitute.

Over the next few weeks, Robin and Ted continue the friends with benefits situation. Forgot to do the dishes? No problem… let’s have sex. Didn’t take out the garbage? No problem… let’s have sex. Et cetera. Meanwhile, Barney is running out of TVs to smash while I weep at the blatant destruction of a perfectly good plasma. It all comes to an end when Ted accidentally kisses Robin goodbye before work. They both realize that this is morphing into a relationship, which is so not what they want.

Things are looking up for Marshall, though. He’s discovered that the entire 8th floor of his building has been abandoned and he’s got free reign of the bathroom. No more hiding the magazine! He’s got a good thing going until a sledgehammer almost kills him. I guess he didn’t realize they’d be doing construction while he’s dropping the kids off at the pool.

Ted and Robin decide to nip the sex in the bud. That sounded dirtier than was intended. Anyway, they promise to stop the booty calls and start being roomies again. Only, it’s harder than it looks (that’s what she said) and they can’t seem to stop. Barney, still seething with jealousy, becomes proactive in the situation and buys Ted a new dishwasher, fills up the fridge with milk, and takes out the garbage. Ted finally figures out that Barney’s doing all these things so he’ll stop having angry sex with Robin. He knows Barney is in love!

Back at plot #2 (get it?), Marshall has decided to stop caring what other people think. Even though he has no idea why Kim Kardashian is famous, he agrees with her that he’s incredibly brave. Marshall is inspired to tell Barney to act like a man, prompting Barney to run to admit his true feelings to Ted about Robin. He shows up at the apartment but finds Robin there, not Ted. He’s this close to spilling the beans, but he settles on having some awesome tacos with her instead. Ah, tacos—the international language of love.