51 hours left until the wedding! Part of me has trouble believing that in the four episodes thus far in the season, we have only covered five hours of the characters’ lives. Honestly, not much has happened, so five hours should seem about right, but this new hour-by-hour format is hard to digest, especially after eight seasons covering the span of years.
Since it has only been five hours since we last saw the gang, Marshall is still in Wisconsin. But Lily has set up a body pillow/iPad contraption known as Marshpillow 2.0 that uses FaceTime to bring Marshall into the Farhampton action. Clearly he and newcomer Daphne are not splitting the driving on this road trip, or maybe we are supposed to have forgotten about her and baby Marvin in the back of the car.
So now that Barney has revealed that he saw Ted and Robin’s intimate carousel moment, he’s decided to make the anti-karate kid from his bachelor party the best man. Apparently, Ted has BROken one of the bro code commandments (hence this episode’s title): a bro shall not have a weird moment with another bro’s fiancée. Ted claims that since he and Robin are friends, the moment was not weird. The boys take it to Marshpillow to lawyer (v.) the code, which is apparently their bible and their law (possible separation of bro-church and bro-state issues?). Barney admits he’s mad about them holding hands because it’s the fourth grade (or twelfth grade in Ted’s case) equivalent of banging. Ted admits that he still, not so secretly, has feelings for Robin, but he swears on the bro code that he will do everything he can to be just friends with both her and Barney. Ted is reinstated as best man/best bro.
As much as it kills me to say it, the episode was pretty un–legendary. The season has gotten so much hype for being the final one, that it’s hard to be satisfied with an episode that’s just funny and doesn’t seem to advance the plot at all. The only thing that has changed between this episode and last is that the whole Ted-Robin-carousel-raining moment is finally “resolved” because everyone realized it wasn’t a big deal. Unfortunately, the viewers figured that out when we were watching that scene the first time around.
It says something that the most exciting moment of the whole episode was Tim Gunn’s guest appearance. Next week Barney’s mom will be playing strip poker. I’ll let you decide for yourselves if that’s something to be looking forward to.
