How I Met Your Mother Recap – Mom and Dad

Season 9, Episode 10
Mom and Dad

Saturday, 3PM, 27 hours before the wedding…

Tonight’s “Mom and Dad” featured some Zabka, some Proclaimers, some Bangity-Bang, some Detective Mosby, even a little Pineapple. Yes, this episode was chock full of HIMYM callbacks. But perhaps the most enjoyable moment for me was the fact that Marshall’s never-ending car ride may be reaching its final destination VERY soon. But really, there was A LOT happening in this episode.

Who’s Your Daddy?
Let’s start with Barney and his intense childlike desire to see his long-separated mom and dad get back together. Long-lost father Jerry and his wife Sheryl arrive at the Inn for the wedding weekend, which means Jerry and Loretta seeing each other after all these years. When they greet each other civilly, Barney immediately becomes obsessed with pulling a Parent Trap. The only problem with his elaborate schemes (other than the fact that they are elaborate schemes) is that James has the same exact wish: for HIS biological dad to get back together with Loretta.

As we learned several seasons ago, James found out that his bio-dad is a reverend. Since Barney and Robin were in sudden need of an officiant, James called in his father to save the wedding. The Barney-James feud to get their own dads to rekindle a relationship with their shared mom Loretta was definitely a highlight of the episode, specifically when it became a fantasy musical sequence a la Leave It to Beaver. Despite a few stalled elevator attempts and a Ranjit-kidnapping of Jerry’s wife, both Barney and James are shocked to discover that Loretta and Reverend Gibbs (i.e. James’ father) actually are a reunited couple!

Zabka-tage
Over in best man land, Ted is tasked with protecting Barney’s gift to Robin: an autographed photo of Wayne Gretzky! Unfortunately for Ted, while he takes a shower in his room his bottle of calligraphy ink spills all over the photo. Ted finds this odd and smells sabotage. But who? Sounds like a case for Detective Mosby! I give major props to the show (pun intended) for showing us a beat of Detective Mosby still attempting to solve the Pineapple Incident after all these years.

Ted realizes there are three potential suspects, each of whom heard Barney’s request in the bar: Billy Zabka, a hotel employee, and a crazy Canadian cousin. Everyone’s [absurd] story checks out, but then both Lily and Ted piece together the clues at the last minute… It was Zabka all along! Poor Billy was tired of always being labeled the bad guy, even by his own family. Barney making him best man was a turning point…until the title was stripped away and given back to Ted. So Zabka switched the photo in Ted’s room and spilled the ink on the false headshot (of Zabka himself, no less), with the intention of being the hero who was able to secure a replacement autograph. Ted feels for the “real” karate kid and decides to let him be the hero instead of the bad guy for once.

500 Miles
Marshall and Daphne are still on the road, still singing to The Proclaimers. But then Daphne gets angry at Marshall and he thinks he may be to blame. But it wasn’t Marshall flagging down the police to give Daphne a ticket, or leaving her oranges on the roof. Daphne was upset because her daughter told her not to even bother coming to her speech. Marshall won’t have it…so he keeps driving them straight to Daphne’s daughter’s event. Daphne gets to see her daughter and be proud (and like mother, like daughter, it is “drill, baby, drill!”). Daphne and Marshall part ways as friends, and I can only hope this means that Marshall is a short drive away from reuniting with his family: the gang.

Next week promises to be another interesting HIMYM experiment: an entire episode spoken in rhyme.