Last night’s episode of How I Met Your Mother was called “The Goat”, and mostly dealt with fallout from the Robin/Barney coupling of the previous week. While I liked how freaked and nervous Barney was about the whole thing (such a drastic change for that character), I was disappointed that Robin and Barney had very little screen time together and barely discussed their actions after the teaser. The secondary story, that of Ted’s 30th birthday party and the goat was pretty boring, IMO, but that’s probably just because I wanted to see more Robin/Barney stuff!

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): The show opens with a “morning after” scene where Barney and Robin are going through some awkward conversation after sleeping with each other for the first time. They both agree that it would be best to pretend that the whole thing never happened, and above all, they agree that Ted should never find out.

Robin seems perfectly fine with this plan, and does a great job of acting normal later at the bar with the rest of the gang. Barney is the one who acts very nervous and guilty, taking references about “hitting it” and “Xbox” to somehow relate to what happened to Robin. Later, though, Robin ends up telling Ted, who says he’s not mad at all because they’ve been broken up for a whole year already, etc.

Barney can’t feel good about what he did because he knows he broke the Bro Code. He hires Marshall as his lawyer and tells Marshall to comb through the code and find out if there’s a loophole whereby Barney’s actions wouldn’t be considered sleazy. But Marshall can’t find anything of the sort. In fact, he just goes and points out all the ways Ted has adhered to the Bro Code over the years, making Barney feel even more miserable.

Meanwhile, the gang is planning a surprise 30th birthday party for Ted, even though he already knows about it. One unexpected guest is a goat that Lily’s class of kindergarten students begged her to save from the slaughterhouse. She brought it home where it hast to stay for a few days until an Animal Rescue place can pick it up. FutureTed makes a big deal out of this goat, and keeps trying to tell his kids what the goat did, but backtracks and puts it off until finally revealing that he had the birthdays mixed up and the goat wasn’t there until his 31st — at which point Robin was also living in the apartment.

Later, as Barney is driving Ted to his party in a limo, Ted reveals that he knows that Barney slept with Robin. At first, Ted said he wasn’t mad, which of course made Barney feel relieved. But then Ted’s true feelings show, and he tells Barney exactly what he thinks of him. Barney has always done some horrible things to other people, but Ted thought that there was a line, that Ted was a line Barney wouldn’t cross. Since Barney did cross that line, Ted doesn’t have any use for him anymore and doesn’t think they should be friends. Not even a free punch to the groin can fix this situation.

My Reaction: This episode failed to live up to my expectations of what the post-Barney/Robin coupling would be like. Actually, that’s not fair on my part, since I’m not even sure what I wanted — I just know that this wasn’t it.

First of all, while I can understand Ted being angry and hurt by what Barney did, the least he could have done was listen to what Barney had to say. He asked how it happened, but then didn’t give Barney a chance to explain. Had he done so, he might have realized that Barney did NOT take advantage of Robin (as Ted seems to think) and that since Robin and Barney are ok with what they did, then Ted should be too. After all, it has been a year. I know there’s that whole bro code thing, but… there’s got to be a point in time after which it shouldn’t matter who’s sleeping with whom.

I didn’t get the goat stuff at all. I read on some message forums that it was a callback to Season 1 when the goat was mentioned in a previous episode, but honestly, I don’t watch this show as closely as that, so the goat meant nothing to me. And since they didn’t explain its purpose in this ep, it felt like even more of a waste of time.

I know that Barney and Ted eventually reconcile; there’s no question about that. I’m just wondering when and how this comes about. Hopefully Robin will play an instrumental role in that, since she was the reason they broke up in the first place. I also hope that this isn’t the end of Robin and Barney because I still think they are awesome together!

There are just a few more eps left in the season. I’m praying that they’re good ones!

Last night’s episode of Desperate Housewives was called “Hello, Little Girl”, and was one of the more uneven hours of television I’ve seen in a while. The writers tried to address so many different storylines in the ep that almost everything felt rushed. Moreover, for a show that usually likes to take its sweet time in revealing info and plot twists, a lot of secrets were spilled last night (relatively speaking). So let’s get right to the recap of what happened in 4×13.

Mike/Susan/Orson/Bree: Julie wasted no time in telling Mike that Orson “confessed” to running him over. Mike in turn told Susan, who immediately went over to confront Orson and Bree. This led to an offscreen fight where Bree apparently decided to kick Orson out, so he goes to stay at a hotel (perhaps the same one Adam Mayfair is at?). Meanwhile, Susan agrees to work on forgiving Orson, but can’t guarantee that it will happen soon — or at all.

Gabby/Carlos: Gabby and Carlos had a good amount of screen time in this ep. Carlos got a seeing-eye dog named Roxie to help him move around a little better. Gabby was under the impression that these dogs were miracle workers who would be able to fetch the remote and actually do chores. When the trainer set her straight, she immediately lost enthusiasm in the project.

To make matters worse (for Gabby), Roxie becomes far too protective of Carlos for Gabby’s liking. The dog barks and growls whenever Gabby hits or yells at Carlos, and even ends up hogging Gabby’s side of the bed (after Carlos essentially chooses the dog over Gabby). So Gabby decides to try to return Roxie to the training center, but the dog follows her back home. Carlos becomes livid when he realizes what she tried to do.

Then Edie stops by with dog treats that Carlos asked her to buy, and tells Gabby that she needs to reevaluate the way she treats Carlos. Their constant bickering and hitting might have been fine when Carlos could see, but things are different now — though Carlos is too proud to admit that he can’t go “toe to toe” with Gabby anymore. Gabby needs to tone things down, otherwise Carlos will end up leaving again, adding that there are plenty of other women who would be happy to have him.

Tom/Lynette/Rick: Rick comes over to the Scavo pizza place to confront Tom about the fire. He found a book of matches from the Scavo restaurant near the back of his place and thinks that proves that Tom was involved. The two get into a brawl and won’t stop, so Andrew ends up calling the police.

While at the station, Tom is questioned about his whereabouts on the night of the fire. Lynette supplies an alibi, lying to say that she saw him sitting in the car shouting at the radio when he slipped out of the Founder’s Ball.

Later, the Scavo twins confess that they set the fire because they overheard Tom saying that Rick was trying to take Lynette away from her family.

Dylan /Wayne: Dylan gets pulled over by a police officer for speeding, even though she insists that she didn’t do anything wrong. The officer looks at her license for a long time before letting her go with a warning. As he gets back into his squad car, we see that he’s the faceless guy from last week who circled Dylan’s picture in the newspaper.

His name is Wayne, and he goes to visit Dylan when she’s sitting on a park bench reading a book. Instead of being completely freaked out by this creepy guy who seems to be stalking her, Dylan starts talking to him. He then reveals that he’s her father. Dylan doesn’t know how to react at first, but after Wayne admits that he wasn’t a perfect husband and that he hit Katherine, Dylan relents and decides she wants to get to know him — without telling Katherine about it.

My Reaction: As I said, there was really a lot going on in this ep. I was very surprised at how many things were revealed here: The Scavo twins as the arsonists; Julie telling Mike Orson’s secret, and Mike immediately telling Susan; Wayne coming forward as Dylan’s father… these are the sorts of things that the Desperate Housewives writers like to drag out forever, so it was strange to see everything develop so quickly.

I have a bad feeling about this Wayne character. After seeing his filthy hands and disgusting apartment last week, it doesn’t seem like he’s the same guy. It’s hard to believe he works as a police officer by day, and then goes home to that dingy place by night. I think there are
two different mystery men involved here, and the guy from the apartment hasn’t come forward yet.

Another clue is the actual newspaper. The guy in the apartment circled only Dylan’s face in the picture, but Wayne’s copy of the paper had both Dylan and Katherine circled. Sure, this could be a continuity error that slipped by the editors, but I prefer to think it’s a clue.

I wasn’t at all impressed by the Scavo storyline or the drama between Susan and the Hodges. Where are the writers going with Lynette and Tom? Is a divorce imminent? It sure seems like it.

I liked the Gabby and Carlos nonsense, as I prefer the lighthearted stuff to the “darker” storylines. I continue to love Gabby, even though she proves week after week that she is truly one of the most selfish and shallow characters ever. I thought it was sweet that she relented a bit about the dog, but I’m sure she’ll be back to her demanding ways in no time!

Overall, this was an ok ep. Lots of boring parts, but some good ones as well. I’m sure the Dylan/Wayne mystery isn’t what it appears to be on the surface, so it’ll be interesting to see how that one develops!