How I Met Your Mother Episode 8.05 Recap: The Autumn of the Breakups

Honestly, with a title like “The Autumn of Breakups,” do we really need to talk about what happened this week? Probably not. But since you’re already here, we’ll go ahead and talk about it anyway. Of course, it’s been quite some time since we’ve had a new episode, so if you need a refresher on what’s been going on this season, you can follow this link to check out the previous episode recap before reading any further.

Now, this episode wasn’t much on the comedy game, but as far as story progress for getting closer to both finding the mother and getting to Robin and Barney‘s wedding goes, it was a step in the right direction. As we all know, you can’t move on from a relationship until you’ve at least accepted and digested the breakup, and despite what he may think about the matter, Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) is not immune to this rule.

As Robin (Cobie Smulders) correctly spots, Barney is feeling lonely since he and Quinn broke up. The thing is, Barney doesn’t do feelings and emotions like normal people, so he has to find other ways to express those feelings. This week, Barney stumbles on a new bro with whom he can have some fun bro-times. The exciting part of this story [besides watching Barney bro out, which is always fun to see], was that Barney’s new bro was a dog Barney found on the street – who Barney quickly named Brover.

When he brings Brover up to MacLaren’s to integrate him into the group, Robin convinces Nick (Michael Trucco) to invite Barney to dinner in an effort to help his loneliness – which Robin is the only one able to see. Barney shows up with Brover in tow, for whom Barney had just purchased a suit and a whole line of ties. Opting to go with the flow, Robin and Nick wisely choose not to say anything to Barney about his dependence on Brover – until Brover’s owner calls to ask that he be returned. [It turned out that Brover wasn’t a stray – he ran away from home.]

Nick is understanding with Robin when she tells him she’s going with Barney to return Brover to his owner – though you can tell he doesn’t really like the idea much. In continuing with being a good friend to Barney, Robin pulls off her bro-status with him when Brover’s owner turns out to be a single young woman. Before chasing after this new girl, Barney tells the audience [as Robin had already left] that he thinks Robin is the best bro.

Meanwhile, Marshall and Lily (Alyson Hannigan) help Ted with some problems – well, one problem, who’s name is Victoria (Ashley Williams). Though Ted is exceptionally unobservant [though obviously with a phenomenal memory – just listen to him tell a story!] with the Victoria situation, Marshall (Jason Segel) and Lily help set him straight, making him see that Victoria has been dropping hints to get him to propose to her.

Finally catching on, he proposes to her – and she says yes! Of course, remember the title of this episode? Victoria places a stipulation on her acceptance of his proposal: Ted (Josh Radnor) has to sever ties with Robin. Because they have so much history together, Victoria tells Ted that she isn’t comfortable with Ted remaining friends with Robin – and Lily sides with her. Marshall, on the other hand, agrees with Ted.

Ultimately, it’s Ted‘s decision – and he wisely decides to kick Victoria to the curb and keep Robin in his life. [Not that the decision was a surprise – after all, in his stories to the kids, Ted refers to Robin as Aunt Robin, and doesn’t refer to Victoria as anyone the kids would know. If he’d really ended his friendship with Robin, his kids wouldn’t know who she was – let alone have such a familial name for her.]

Anyway, having made that decision, he also swears Marshall and Lily to secrecy – demanding that they never tell Robin the reason that he and Victoria broke up. They go along with it – but Future Ted informs us that she does eventually find out [maybe that has something to do with Robin’s cold feet on the day of her wedding to Barney?].

Before we end out the recap, I’ll go ahead and mention the two side storylines [that I wasn’t really a fan of this week]: Nick‘s issues and Marshall‘s advice lessons. I just can’t get invested in anything Nick is involved in – largely because I know that he’s a temporary character – but he was having some problems breaking into the professional chef field. He spent most of the episode trying and failing to come up with a catch phrase.

Marshall, on the other hand, was taking advice from Lily on how to basically become Lily. There was also some bit about a 50 Shades of Grey reference [I think that’s what they were going for anyway, talking about Marshall‘s “inner goddess”], which was just as senseless and annoying in the episode as it was in the book itself. In all, I’m not sure why, but I just didn’t find that storyline entertaining at all. In fact, it was kind of boring and not funny – which is weird because I usually pretty much love all of Marshall‘s scenes. Not so much this week, though.

Well, for all that, we only got the one breakup – I honestly thought Robin and Nick would call it quits this week, too. However, that said, checking out the title for next week “Splitsville” looks pretty promising in that department. Finally, looks like we might be heading somewhere towards the series finale. Check out the next episode’s synopsis below!

————————–

Now we should be back on schedule, so tune in next Monday to CBS for episode 8.06 “Splitsville”: Robin has a problem pulling the trigger on breaking up with Nick, so Barney steps in to help out, while new parents Lily and Marshall look for a way to schedule some private time for themselves.