After a two week hiatus, the second of which was an unexpected delay due to Hurricane Sandy, How I Met Your Mother was back tonight as the group continued The Autumn Of Break-Ups.
With an episode titled as it is, the glaring question is of course, who would break up next? The first couple to split this fall was Barney and Quinn, but we’ve known that both Robin and Nick, and Ted and Victoria have been on the rocks for a while. It’s really just been a matter of who will fall first.
The episode begins with the odds looking heavily in favor of Ted and Victoria. After what Ted deems was a “great” couples night with Lily and Marshall, Ted finds out that they think he is missing some big hints about where Victoria thinks their relationship should be at. Victoria is ready to be married, yet Ted is oblivious to her not-so-subtle clues, insisting that they’ve only been dating five months. Lily and Marshall claim that the time when they dated six years ago also counts, so they’re in a much more serious relationship than Ted believes.
Let me just say that Ted is more right on this relationship thing. While after a break people don’t start totally over as if they’ve never met, they certainly don’t just un-pause. This is a prime example of Lily and Marshall’s ignorance to the rest of the relationship world. They were able to break off an engagement only to resume almost as if nothing had happened, but for everyone else, when you get back together, quite a bit of ground is lost, so it’s totally rationale that Ted think’s they’re in the proper place. I mean signing birthday cards together is a fairly big deal. That’s permanent.
Alas, Ted realizes that Lily and Marshall read Victoria perfectly, as she pulls out her wedding dress and asks Ted if she should just throw it away since she’ll probably never need it again. This causes Ted to re-examine their relationship, trying to figure out what is missing.
It was clear from the start of the episode that Ted and Victoria were going to fall before Nick and Robin. While Robin just seems slightly annoyed with Nick, Victoria has gone full on commitment-crazy with Ted. Yet Ted is at the dangerous point of desperation where he feels that if Victoria is ready and willing to marry him then he should press on and do it, despite how horrible their relationship has become.
So, in classic Ted fashion, Victoria arrives home to a room of flowers, with a tuxedoed Ted waiting to propose. Victoria is overjoyed and agrees, but she has a slight condition: Ted can no longer see Robin.
For anyone else in this exact situation it should be a no-brainer, but Ted is desperate enough that he actually considers it. Their relationship is horrible in almost every way, and it has been for weeks. When sharing his thoughts with Lily and Marshall he said he knows Robin won’t be the one he grows old with, yet Victoria COULD be. COULD be. The fact that he says could instead of is means that under no circumstance should he be throwing away one of the closest relationships in his life for this girl.
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