Ray Wise is Robin’s dad. Hopefully he plays a better father than he did on Twin Peaks.

Way too much was going on in this week’s episode of How I Met Your Mother.

Marshall and Lily, attempting to prepare for their move to Italy, have enlisted Ted, the master of packing, to determine what to keep and what to send to The Triangle, the space beyond the front door of their apartment complex where left belongings disappear almost instantaneously. Barney has a laser tag bonding experience/feud with Robin’s father. Robin searches frantically for a locket she buried in Central Park in 1994, leaving it behind for the day Future Robin would return and claim it as the “Something Old” for her wedding.

The plots tied together in the end — Ted’s refusal to let Marshall and Lily throw out an old and decrepit bean bag chair the three got when they first moved into the apartment is a sign in the same way that Robin looks at the eventual discovery of the locket’s empty box and Barney’s inability to recognize that Robin is struggling when she calls him in the middle of his laser tag game. But Ted’s continual moments of self-awareness, teetering between realizing his refusing to let go of the past and  that he’s reading too much into signs and symbols and then finally the implicit message that Ted is still and will always be in love with Robin in some way, when combined with the sharp contrast between the early douche Ted gag and Robin’s later misery, made the episode feel jumpy and uneven.

The real problem with this episode lies in the fact that it’s much too explicit. Rather than let viewers analyze for themselves why Robin cares so much about the ring, why Ted cares so much about the bean bag chair, why it’s significant that Ted, and not Barney, was able to realize that Robin’s insistence that her problem is stupid actually means it’s a big deal, the writers inserted blunt lines that told viewers exactly what to think. “What if our friendship doesn’t pass the have-you-used-it-in-the-last-year test?” Ted asks, referencing the rule he’s created for Marshall and Lily to help them sort their stuff and the bean bag chair he refuses to let go of. Give the viewers some credit, writers, we’re smarter than you think.

This episode marks another stumble in Robin and Barney’s path to marriage. We’ve seen it episode after episode: Robin is still trying to trust Barney, and Barney hasn’t grown up enough to be sure he’s ready to settle down. Adding onto this, now, is further confusion about where Ted stands with Robin. He’s given the couple their blessing, but as the too-long pan out of Ted and Robin holding hands in Central Park would suggest, Ted is not as over it as he’d like to think. Since Ted mentions Robin as “Aunt Robin” to his kids, it’s hopefully safe to assume she’s not the mother, so it’s clear there is still a journey that Ted (and Robin) must undergo before their eventual marriages.

“Tedbits” (Thanks to Dan Singer for the clever renaming of this section)

–Lily wants to keep all the handbags she pilfered in her 20s: “You get older, you have kids you stop stealing. It’s sad.”

–Ted earned a nickname for himself when he was on vacation in Spain: “El ganso del riñonera” or the “fanny pack dork.”

–Barney, to a set of twin kids at the laser tag arena: “Now make like your mom’s ovum and split!”

–One of the gang’s most successful karaoke performances was a Destiny’s Child number. Ted, during packing: “And since I was Beyonce, I’m pretty sure I get final say here.”

–Bad boy Ted is always comedic gold: “I came here to chew bubblegum and pack boxes. And I’m all out of bubblegum.”

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