How I Met Your Mother - The Mermaid Theory recap review with help from Hatts

Zoey is hanging out with the gang now (collective sigh from everyone who dislikes her), but they are all creeped out by her husband, The Captain. Zoey is the only one who wanted to join Ted on a trip to an architectural exhibit (which proves that she’s attracted to him), and that brought up the subject of whether married people can spend a significant amount of time alone with a single person of the opposite gender. (Ern’s vote is decidedly no, in almost all cases, as is Leeard's.)

Marshall and Robin realized that the two of them never hang out, and they decided to go out to dinner together. Lily decreed that Ted had to become friends with The Captain if he wanted to hang out with Zoey. That left Lily and Barney, and they supposedly got into a fight, the cause of which narrator Ted said he could not remember. Marshall and Robin's dinner went terribly, as they have nothing to talk about together. Marshall revealed that the reason they don't hang out is because of Barney's “Mermaid Theory.” It stated, "Every women, no matter how repulsive, has a mermaid clock - the time it takes for you to realize you want to bang her." According to Barney Stinson's history of the world, when sailors are deprived of feminine company for long enough, even the manatees at sea start to look like attractive mermaids. Marshall was afraid Robin's mermaid clock would start if they hung out to much. This explains powerful men and their unattractive mistresses, we guess.

Ted went out to sea with The Captain but was terrified that The Captain was jealous and was taking him out to sea to kill him. He wasn't; he just wanted to bond with Ted, because he usually can't connect with his wife's younger friends. Ted and Zoe agreed that since neither of them had any romantic feelings for the other it was ok to continue hanging out. At that moment, we heard Zoe's Mermaid Clock start ticking. This neither surprises nor especially pleases us. Heck, Stella was cooler than Zoey. We hope she is not the mother, and we might be rewarded, because older Ted kept calling her “Zoey” in his narration, not “the mother.” And we don’t think Zoey recently lived with roommate Rachel Bilson. Zoey has been married for a while, right?

Lily and Barney had the best story of the episode. In classic HIMYM form, Narrator Ted kept telling the story differently as he tried to remember what really happened. In the end, he realized that the whole fight had actually happened a few years later when Lily was pregnant and Barney told her that pregnancy had changed her from a mermaid into a manatee. Yeah, we would be mad at him too. There were hints dropped in the "wrong" version of the story, and it was a cute way to announce that Lily would be pregnant.

If you’re a loyal follower of HIMYM, you'll want to know that at the end of the corrected/ future Lily-Barney fight scene, Ted marched into the bar in a lovely green dress, and said, “Ha! Now we're even" and Narrator Ted promised that he will explain that story later. We can’t wait for that one, but we will have to, because this is HIMYM, where we have to wait forever for anything to happen.

Ern really liked this episode, and Leeard thought it was average, so it averages out to:

Episode grade: B-