Thank God For Barney

How I Met Your Mother, S08E06

Robin saw that she needed to break up with Nick when she wasn't distracted by their sex life, but wasn't able to do it easily.  Marshall was obsessed with his basketball team and training, while Lily was being overly horny.  Ted was a horrible captain for his basketball team.  Barney tried to motivate Robin to breakup with Nick by threatening to invite her "stalker" Patrice to a BFF day.

The main focus of this episode was about Robin breaking up with Nick, which was way overdue.  The other things that were going on were merely distractions and not welcomed.  I was slightly wondering what was wrong with Marshall and Lily, but not so much that I was thankful that Ted finally made them fess up to their problems.  All that mattered was that Robin finally had the veil of good sex removed from her eyes so that she could see that she was dating an idiot that she had nothing in common with.  Even for TV, I was hoping that her realization would make the breakup quick and easy, but it dragged on for the length of the episode.

Only Barney was able to get things moving.  Robin was still dragging her feet about cutting Nick loose and would have continued to do so if he hadn't threatened her with Patrice.  Everyone else was telling her to end it, but Barney was the one making shit happen.  I was getting angry that she was still giving into her bodily urges toward the end and feared that we might have to watch this nonessential couple for another week, until Barney got fed up and arrived at Splitsville to take care of business.  His long emotional speech about how he felt about Robin was a lot more than she deserved.  Sure, maybe he was making Robin look like an ass, but he was doing her a huge favor by spilling his guts about her.  I wasn't too moved by what he was saying because I'm still angry at Robin, but I was so grateful to Barney for ending things with Nick.  Thank you, Barney!  If it hadn't been for him I might have had to pull out some hair.

Not sure if this will be the start of Barney and Robin being back together, but even that doesn't matter.  It just matters that we don't have to see him and her with someone who's basically an obstacle to Barbin.  I want to like them as a couple again, but I'll need to see some story that really shows that they were made for each other again.  Hopefully they won't just get back as if there wasn't a huge gap in their relationship. I can't imagine that when it's hard to imagine how they both ended up engaged.

I'd like the focus to be on Robin and Barney next time, with minimum on Ted again, unless we're going to get a little closer to the mystery of his wife.  So far, he's spending his time single as annoyingly as he was when he was with someone, so I don't need to watch a story centered around him.  Lily and Marshall stories are okay, but with them having a kid, I feel like it's going to related to Marvin and I'm starting to get sick of parent stories.  I miss the old dynamic of this show already--I knew the magic would be lost once a baby was involved.