Bye Brover, Bye Victoria

How I Met Your Mother, S08E05

Barney was getting a little too attached to his new dog, which Robin worried was due to his recent breakup with Quinn.  Ted realized that  Victoria wanted Ted to make a commitment to marry her and promise not to be friends with Robin anymore.  Marshall was being trained by Lily to give out sassy advice and got too carried away with it.

I groaned when I heard that Barney had named his dog "Brover." But I suppose him letting a dog be his wingman was kind of cute and better than seeing him use some stupid gimmick to pick up girls like he usually does.  His story also helped to put some strain on Robin's relationship, which needs to end already.  I felt a little bad that Barney had to give back the dog, but at least at the end it looked like they still could hang with each other.

Ted was incredibly thick in this episode.  I don't know why he would think that Victoria would want to take things slow when she had ruined a wedding to be with him.  I sort of forgot that he did owe her a commitment for taking such a big risk with him.  Yet, Ted couldn't give her 100 percent.  She should have known that asking him to cut Robin out of his life (which he has already tried at least once) wasn't going to fly.  But at least they sort of ended things on a less disastrous note.  They both saw that it wasn't going to work with them both wanting different things.  I feel bad for Victoria wasting her time with freaking Ted.  He should have just returned her to the church and never looked back.  Was there really a point in them being together this short time again?  So far, it just seems like a delay tactic before the "mystery woman" finally appears.  Get on with it!

Marshall and Lily were a little funny in this episode.  I thought it was weird that Marshall's inner goddess came through as this southern lady.  But as a Lily-in-training he wasn't so bad.  I mean, at least it was cute that they were dishing out advice with attitude together as a team.  It's just too bad that he didn't get the hang of actually dishing out good advice most of the time.  I also liked how annoyed Ted was to have Lily and Marshall keep telling him what he needed to do, especially when he told them they were the worst.  I don't know why that was the funniest thing to me, but it was.

Now that Robin has shown that she puts all of her friends ahead of Nick, I hope that their relationship falls next time because we haven't even really seen anything sweet or meaningful between them that would make you want to see them last.  Anyway, Robin is a train wreck, so she doesn't really deserve any guy (even Barney because she made him break up with Nora and then stayed with Kevin).

Not a great episode.  But I see potential for the next few episodes because we're getting rid of more clutter the more we progress.  It's just not progressing fast enough for my tastes, but as long as we're sort of moving along, I'm momentarily pacified.  I won't be , though, if next time Robin and Nick don't bite the dust already.