How I Met Your Mother: Season 8 Premiere

With the end of season seven, I expressed frustration at the fact that Carter Bays and Craig Thomas flipped over their hole cards and expected us to be surprised by the outcome of the hand with the revelations of Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) and Robin's (Cobie Smulders) imminent wedding and Victoria's (Ashley Williams) eloping with Ted (Josh Radnor). I argued that despite some sincere emotional engagement, the fact that we know where the road will lead (Robin and Barney married, Victoria and Ted not) makes the journey far less enjoyable. After taking in season eights's premiere, "Farhampton," I can say that fuel has only been added to the fire.

"Farhampton" is so called as the framing of the story takes place at the titular train station where Ted sits waiting in a tuxedo. Striking up conversation with an elderly woman who has no clue as to the bucket of neuroses she's stumbled upon, Ted launches into a story about the wedding he just came from, one that saw Robin and Barney separately contemplate escaping through their respective windows. Addressing Robin, who expresses teary eyed that she can't go through with it before musing how difficult it would be to climb down the drainpipe, Ted comments that the climb up is actually much more of a challenge. 

And with that, we're back to May 2012, with Victoria and Ted riding off into the sunset while back at the (metaphorical) ranch, Barney and Quinn (Becki Newton), Marshall (Jason Segal) and Lily (Alyson Hannigan) and Robin all bask in the glow of their accomplishments: for Barney and Quinn, it's their recent engagement; for Marshall and Lily, it's the birth of their  son; and for Robin, it's, well, unclear at first because her news is revealed through the lenses of Marshall and Lily, who are exhausted to the point of delusion thanks to their newborn bundle of joy. Their delirium not only provides for a plausible method by which revelations (more on that in a little bit) are held off to great narrative effect, but also the episode's greatest running gag as the new parents' memories are reduced to those of goldfish. This is hilarious when Marshall continuously brings up the fact that there's celebration champagne in the fridge, but inconvenient when he and Lily spill the beans when Barney admits he's never told Quinn that he and Robin used to date, but that she'll never find out because he's wiped out all physical remnants of them ever being together. Why should this matter? It shouldn't, but Bays and Thomas need an excuse for Band of Horses to play over a closing montage, so tension is introduced. 

Speaking of tension, Ted and Victoria are running away from a wedding together, but the romantically schizophrenic Mosby refuses to let Victoria experience a clean getaway until she leaves her fiancé, Klaus (played delightfully over the top by Thomas Lennon), a note.  What results is supposed to be a wacky comedy of errors (Ted can't get into Victoria's room because of Klaus's sister who's also a former wrestler! Ted is afraid to climb the drainpipe because of childhood trauma! Ted finally gets into the room but leaves the car keys!) until Ted eventually comes across Klaus, who is attempting to make his own escape from a wedding to which he can't fully commit. At the very least, Klaus had the decency to leave a note—"it's common courtesy"—which also allows Ted to leave Victoria's note and finally escape into the sunset evening with the girl of his dreams.  Except we all know that's not true. 

Meanwhile, back at the (metaphorical) ranch (again), Quinn gives Barney 52 seconds to explain his past with Robin and while it makes absolutely zero sense for her to be so upset about something so inconsequential, it does provide opportunity for Neil Patrick Harris to impressively and briskly rattle off seven years’ worth of relationship history in less than a minute (actually about 50 seconds according to the onscreen timer) and top it off with a brag about a dune buggy he won while on The Price is Right. 

Robin insists it's not a problem because she's dating a man with terrific abs—an admission  which Marshall and Lily have no recollection—but Quinn remains upset because she'll always believe feelings still exist between the two. Seeing as the episode began with Barney and Robin's wedding, we know this to be true and thus, despite a reconciliation after Robin introduces her new boyfriend to everyone, in the end it just doesn't matter in a "doth protest too much" sort of fashion.  Nevertheless, we get Band of Horses tugging on our heart strings as Barney gives Robin a key that unlocks a storage room that contains, to the surprise of no one, a box where Barney has stored every token of his relationship with Robin. 

While we're on the topic of things that don't matter, let's make one final trip to the Farhampton train station where Ted makes one final stop before heading off with Victoria. Waiting for a train back to New York City is Klaus, who helps clear up Ted's confusion about why he ran out on such a great girl by describing two hilarious complex German words that translate (roughly) to "girl of your dreams" and "not quite." For Klaus, Victoria is the "not quite" and seeing as we know full well Victoria is not The Mother, the implication for Ted is clear. Flash forward to the outset of the episode where Ted sits in a tux oblivious to the fact that a certain female equipped with a yellow umbrella has just gotten out of the cab. It's a charming reveal, but it's also still a maddening tease, a reminder that everything we're about to see him and Victoria go through will be an exercise in futility in the same vein that likely an entire season will be spent trying to find reasonable ways to keep Barney and Robin apart.