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Episode Reviews

The Magician’s Code

Barney reveals his trick

The Magician’s Code reveals a major plot point in the mythology of the series while raising even more questions and infuriating even more viewers.

For the last seven years, there have always been allusions to various aspects of the groups life as Ted retells a jumbled story of how he met the mother. Tonight, we learn about a number of these little hints and asides. From hints of Marshal and Lily’s awesome middle name (Waitforit) to why there was a “no motorcycles on the casino floor” sign in Atlantic city (Drunk Barney steering the prize motorcycle and riding it around).

In the first part, we have Robin and Ted attempting to calm Lily who is starting to go into labor. Ted tries to tell her some stories of their exploits in the past decade, such as what’s behind the mysterious door. Some of the stories are from episodes, but most are just one off asides. It almost felt as if the writers just pieced together a bunch of unused episode ideas and threw them in. Some of the ideas might have been interesting, but overall these spare stories likely wouldn’t have made compelling episodes anyways.

Meanwhile, Robin is attempting to mask her fear by falling back on her experience delivering babies…well horse babies anyways. It was both hilarious and somewhat terrifying to see Robin perp up to get really invasive by delivering Lily’s baby cattle style. Funny enough, some of her skills ended up useful in calming down Lily the heifer.

Barney and Marshal’s story of reaching the hospital was pretty unremarkable though. While it did lead to some soul searching by Barney and pushed him to fully admit his love of Quinn, overall it was just a silly story of two completely drunk fools attempting to get back to the city, reaching Lily in typical sitcom just in time fashion.

In the second episode though, we get to see the gang push Ted towards chasing the one that got away, fan favorite Victoria. It’s somewhat frustrating though to see Ted steal Victoria away from whatever groom she was about to marry, as we already know she isn’t the mother. It feels like not only a dirty and pointless tease, but it shows off Ted as being more of a horrible person than he’s want to be sometimes. He even mentions the fact that getting left at the altar nearly destroyed him, yet he continues to do the same to someone else now. As much as I have a huge crush on Victoria and love to see more of her in the show, Ted’s a pretty big jerk for stealing her.

As for Barney, his little show in the TSA holding room was a ridiculously over the top, yet awesome, way to propose to someone. I really want to know how that flower box works, because that thing was awesome! In the end though, it’s bitter sweet concerning Quinn. I guess deep down I knew Barney and Robin would end up together, but the question is how is he going to break it off with Quinn? I like Quinn and Barney together, as she reigns him in a lot (which is ironic considering she’s a somewhat wild former stripper).

Overall, it was a rocky end to the 7th year of the longest story ever told, and it had a lot of feelings of knowing it would end this next year. To be honest, I hope it does because what makes shows like these great are not that they last forever, but that they have a solid cohesive storyline that resolves to a single end.

Other Observations

  • Lily going after those sugar cubes.
  • Robin faints seeing the baby stick out of Lily.
  • Ted and Victoria driving off in to the sunset is ungodly cheesy.
  • Baby’s first outing…Mclaren’s
  • So if Ted meets the mother at Barney and Robin’s wedding, whose relation is it?
  • I guess Robin just runs around with surgical gloves?
  • We see the Fiero again, with Lily stealing beer.
  • Robin mentions delivering a baby, which was in Season 4’s “The Front Porch”
  • We see the circumstances for Dr. Sonya’s…harsh..encouragement.

Barneyisms

  • Magician’s Code was instilled on him at a young age.
  • Waitforit – Baby Marvin’s middle name.
  • Barney’s apartment is totally “American Psycho”

By Kien Tran

Based in Dallas, Texas, Kien Tran is an avid television enthusiast. After spending hundreds of hours wasting away on a couch, he decided to actually do something creative with his hobby and created this very blog.

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