Studying the Brorah

Much of what I find most appealing about How I Met Your Mother is its technique of taking a situation and completely reversing our understanding of what’s going on. Can it be predictable? Yes, frequently it is, in fact, and  at least twice in this season alone that this plot development style has fallen completely flat.

One probably could have predicted the outcome of tonight’s episode of How I Met Your Mother, in which the gang throws Barney the bachelor party (Bro Mitzvah) he’d always wanted by making Barney think he is having the worst night ever. It’s twisted, it’s mean and, to paraphrase Barney’s mother, it’s exactly what he deserves.

I should have seen the twist of this plot coming: Robin finally gets her just desserts against Barney for executing The Final Play and proves she’s the super-cool, perfect-for-Barney fiancé we all know her to be. For some reason, this plot really had me going. When the guys got to the cheap hotel room outside Atlantic City where you can sort-of-but-not-really see the Taj Mahal penthouse, I rolled my eyes at a Typical Ted moment. When the requisite live, weird entertainment was a balloon contorting clown, I sighed. When Quinn showed up as the sexy stripper, I cringed. When Barney blew all the wedding catering money on the weird Chinese gambling game he used to be so good at, I was starting to get upset. And by the time he came home, and Quinn ruined the moment and Robin threw her ring back at Barney, I almost cried. Why were they doing this to me? I didn’t think I could manage another broken relationship for the sake of furthering show drama, and especially after all that the two have suffered through to make it work throughout the season.

But then Robin walked behind the building and high-fived Quinn and flashbacked to all of the moments before that night during which she set up the ultimate Bro-Mitzvah for Barney – from the moment a few weeks prior when Barney announced the guys could do no more than “ordi-whyevenbothertowaitforit-nary” and that there was no way women could plan a Bro Mitzvah to all the different people she asked along the way to the moment she sent Barney out the door on an errand she knew he would never complete.

And then of course there is the final surprising meta-twist. Barney has already found out that this awful night has been completely orchestrated to fulfill all the requirements of a Bro Mitzvah, as laid out in the Brorah (written in Hebro). There was a stripper, Barney lost a friend (he pawned off Marshall in exchange for some credit at the casino), he feared for his life (he was kidnapped twice, and he watched mobsters chop off Marshall’s hand) and a girlfight (Quinn and Robin’s brief tangle before Robin throws the ring). But there was one thing missing: a visit from the real star of The Karate Kid. At the bad Bro Mitzvah, Ted and Marshall muffed it by bringing Ralph Macchio (Barney contends that the real hero in the film is Johnny Lawrence, the character played by William Zabka. Macchio, according to Barney, may as well hang out with other “movie bad guys” such as Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter and War Horse).

So when Barney finds out that the whole Bachelor party has been an elaborately organized scheme to complete his epic bucket list, he only has one question: where’s Johnny Lawrence? Barney does not have to wonder for long, as the actor has been with them all along — hiding as the disappointing clown with the well-timed non-verbal comedy, who had inexplicably been following the gang on their journey throughout the night, dropping silent jokes along the way.

This switcheroo is what viewers come for when they turn on an episode of How I Met Your Mother. We want elaborate schemes, fake drama, moments when we realize how perfect they are as friends and how insane their lives can be. We like to know more than the characters and rethink whole situations we thought we understood. We like to try to guess what happens next, and feel proud in our knowledge of the show when we are right. Though these types of plots can sometimes feel too obvious or like a crutch when the show’s writers don’t know where to go with a storyline, they more often represent the reason we watch in the first place.

Tidbits:

–A sub-complication of the Bro Mitzvah that Robin orchestrated that I forgot to mention: Barney told his mother that Robin was a virgin in order to make her seem more likeable. Barney’s mother’s enthusiastic side comments and very direct explanations of sex were hilarious. A few: “What’s gotten into you? Oh, that’s right, nothing!”, “…And that’s the inverted chimney sweep, the last of the 17 basic sex positions.”

–Also, her explanation of sex included napkin rings and breadsticks. Robin’s final moment of exasperation after a long night of chiding: “My napkin ring has seen plenty of breadsticks, and one baguette!”

–Ted’s solution to Barney’s Brorah request that they fear for their lives: watch An Inconvenient Truth. Drink every time Al Gore says “catastrophic.”

–Barney on Ted’s and Marshall’s kidnapping him to start the bachelor party: “The students have become the intermediate students.”

–If Robin was just faking, I can’t believe she actually threw her engagement ring onto the ground. What if it got lost? Knowing Barney, I’m sure that thing was expensive.

–I love it when Lily gets awkwardly sexual. In this episode, she relived a childhood crush on Ralph Macchio, which she had difficulty containing in his presence. Best creepy Lily pickup line: “Earlier at the salon, I waxed on… then I waxed off everywhere.”

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