OK, now this is how you do How I Met Your Mother. I had some concerns about the show after last week’s underwhelming season premiere, but Monday night’s episode totally made up for it. It was funny, sweet, brought the whole crew together for one storyline and featured Wayne Brady. What could be better?

Papa Was a Rolling Stone

Several seasons ago we learned that Barney still believed the childhood lie that Bob Barker is his father. I knew this season Barney would be searching for his real father, but this episode kicked it off in a way that was much funnier than I anticipated. 

Barney told his friends that his mom was selling his childhood home and magically convinced them to come help him pack up. Part of me wished that we’d gotten to see how he did that – the flashforward thing felt like a cop-out – but the rest of the episode was so good that I’ll forgive it. Through stories from Barney’s brother James (Wayne Brady) and flashbacks to Barney’s childhood, we hear all the ways his mom lied to him as a kid. We knew from other flashbacks that Barney Stinson’s middle name has not always been “Awesome”. When he got kicked off the basketball team for sucking, his mom Loretta told him he’d been asked to leave because he was so good it was unfair to the other kids. When no one showed up to his eighth birthday party she wrote him a fake letter from the Postmaster General explaining that all his invitations had gotten lost in the mail. And then she told him that Bob Barker was his father.

Lyin’ Eyes

Meanwhile, all this talk of lying to kids inspired a conversation between Lily and Marshall. For me, this episode proved why Marshall and Lily having a baby will not be bad for the show. The characters are still themselves, and they had VERY different upbringings, and raising a child together will make for a lot of hilarious disagreements. Like whether or not to let their kid believe in Santa Clause. I’m with Marshall, who said “But that’s a good lie. Like when we tell Ted he’ll meet the right girl and settle down.” I loved that joke -it was mocking Ted, but it was also mocking the show, and even the viewers in a way. Also, I love that every time Marshall for overexcited as a kid his mom would say he was “sick” and would feed him cough medicine. Which is why he is ONLY 6’4″. 

The other little side plot was about “overselling” someone. Robin told Ted that she was talking him up to the makeup artist at work, who was a total ten and looked like a movie star. But she waaaay oversold Ted in the bedroom department, and then way undersold him when she was trying to correct it. It turned out she’d oversold the girl to Ted as well – she was a ten, but not on a scale of ten, and the movie star she looked like was Robert De Niro. It was an insignificant but humorous subplot.

Father Figure

Things got really good when Barney and James discovered an old letter their mom had written but never sent. It was a picture of the two of them as kids, with “Your son” written on the back. James, Barney and the whole gang went to see the man, Sam Gibbs, and find out which father he was. It was obvious, of course, when a black man came to the door that he was James’s father. But Barney had finally admitted that he knew Bob Barker wasn’t his dad and was so excited to meet his that he convinced himself that Sam was also his father – and that Barney was there for a very, very, very pale biracial person. 

Barney pretending to be black was absolutely hilarious. The singing. The comments about how hard it is to hail a cab. I loved when Marshall pleaded with the guys to just let Barney think Sam was his dad for a bit – “Can’t we just let the guy be black for this day?” Eventually though, Barney went home and Loretta gave him a scrap of paper with the name of his real father written on it. Barney tore it up because he realized his mom was enough for him, but it’s definitely not the end of Barney searching for his father. 

Barney-centric episodes are always great, and Neil Patrick Harris did a great job in this one of balancing the comedic and heartwarming moments. We aren’t any closer to meeting The Mother, but as far as subplots for the season go, Barney finding his father and Lily and Marshall trying for a baby are making out to be great ones. What did you think of the episode?