REVIEW - How I Met Your Mother - S09E06 - ‘Knight Vision’

This week on How I Met Your Mother Barney and Robin have some minister issues, Ted keeps making poor decisions, and Marshall still can’t tell Lily about his potential new job.

When the minister for Barney and Robin’s wedding arrives, Lily thinks he looks a tad surly and takes it upon herself to cheer him up. When Lily tells the minister about how she met Marshall, he becomes quite angry because that’s how Barney and Robin told him they met. The minister does not like liars, and will refuse to marry Barney and Robin if they have been lying to him. Will Barney and Robin come clean? And will the minister come around if they do?

The whole ‘strict minister’ thing was very predictable and not very amusing. However watching the cast recreate some of the more memorable moments of the show with the characters swapped around was definitely the highlight of this episode and more than made up for the disappointing ‘strict minister’.

Barney persuades Ted to hook up with one of the guests at the wedding, pointing out three potential candidates. Barney warns Ted to choose correctly, saying Ted won’t get any sex all weekend if he chooses wrong. Just as Ted is about to go for the girl Barney has most highly recommended, he changes his mind when option number two, Cassy (guest star Anna Camp), walks in. As soon as this happens we know Ted has chosen wrong, and are forced to watch as disaster upon disaster fall upon this poor girl, greatly reducing Ted’s chances of sex with her each time something goes wrong.

Since the show is trying to pave the way for the mother and wean Ted off Robin, we knew straight away that nothing would happen between Ted and Cassy, but they seemed to really want to eliminate all possibilities of Ted finding happiness with her. We already know how the story ends, surely Ted can have some happiness until he meets the mother? If they keep going down this path, Ted’s meeting of/courting the mother may seem like the act of a desperate man (if it already doesn’t to some...). I’ve expressed concern over this before: they just need to stop throwing ‘potential’ love interests at Ted, and really squash his feelings for Robin once and for all (easier said than done, I know, but if they don’t start setting up the groundwork now...). Speaking of the mother, I really thought we would have seen more of her by now. They threw her in the early episodes (meeting Lily, and her future happiness with Ted), but that’s been it. By no means does she need to be in every episode, but surely we are due for another dose of the mother by now?

Daphne preps Marshall for telling Lily about the job offer he has received to be a judge (his dream job) which will prevent their going to Rome (and prevent Lily from doing her dream job). When Marshall lets slip to Daphne that he has already accepted the job without telling Lily, Daphne becomes enraged and reveals part of her own past to Marshall. Can Daphne keep quiet to Lily about what Marshall has done?

This week’s episode continues on in the same vein as those from previous weeks, good without being great. There’s enough in the episode to keep me mildly amused, but not enough to keep me on the edge of my seat/rolling around on the floor laughing. As I noted earlier the best part of this episode was watching the cast recreate some memorable moments with different characters, but the cliffhanger of this episode was certainly right up there as well. I won’t spoil it here, but it seems we could be in for a big fight...

Review by Heather Bale.