REVIEW - How I Met Your Mother - S09E07 - ‘No Questions Asked’

This week’s How I Met Your Mother sees Robin sporting a skin-tight purple bodysuit, Ted sneaking into Lily’s room in the dead of night, and Barney trapped in an air vent.

Lily has not checked the most recent text on her phone, and therefore still does not know about Marshall having accepted a job as a judge (which will prevent them from moving to Italy and Lily doing her dream job). In order to delay the inevitable, Marshall enlists the help of Ted, Barney and Robin. They of course all want to know why Lily can’t check her phone, but Marshall wants them to do this for him “no questions asked”. When they start to protest, he reminds them all of times he has helped them out of sticky situations, “no questions asked”.

What follows is a series of flashbacks involving different members of the gang in increasingly ridiculous situations interwoven with their present attempts to separate Lily from her phone. There is also a minor-subplot in this episode involving Barney and Robin learning to work together as opposed to independently, but this was resolved almost as quickly as it was mentioned.

This episode was fun and light-hearted (in preparation for the coming storm between Marshall and Lilly no doubt). I bet the writers had a ball coming up with these scenarios, knowing they would never have to provide explanations for them. In all honesty though, this episode just felt like padding. I know they can’t have plot-heavy episodes every week, but the majority of this season has been filler. They’ve got a clear end in sight, and some plot points to sprinkle in every few episodes (just like every other season), but I think the problem comes back to the confined structure of this season. They’ve got limits on what they can and can’t do (they can’t have drama every week, but have to be doing something different in the hotel every few hours…), and that’s really taking it’s toll on the quality of the show. We’re only seven episodes in but still 42.5 hours away from the wedding - they have to sleep some time!

Anyway, they’ve managed to drag out the Marshall-Lily drama for another week, so I guess we just have to keep watching to see how that all goes down!

Review by Heather Bale.