Five Drinks Into How I Met Your Mother Final Season Episode 15 "Unpause"

Tom's Take:

The Fifteenth episode of How I Met Your Mother's final season was a winner. While the last episode brought us a Slap, one of the longest running gags of the show, this one brought us Barney's job which was far more awesome. Because they managed to not actually disappoint us with solving the eternal mystery of what Barney does for a living.

And because I love it when Barney pulls a long con.




So let's discuss the callbacks this episode did.

1. Pause. First brought to us in Season 1, Pause is a phenomenon of Lily and Marshall stopping their fights, usually to have sex. It was used to great effect here, as this episode also made a reference to the original Pause, when Lily and Marshall were fighting over San Francisco. Personally, I think the writers have over reached here, as I don't believe addressing Marshall's clearly long buried feelings of resentment towards Lily is possible to do in a realistic way in the time we have left. But I am willing to be surprised, and they are handling the issue with skill so far.

2. Nothing good happens after 2AM. This honestly felt kind of tacked on, but I enjoyed seeing the mother so much that I am completely willing to forgive it.

3. Ted got to name his son Luke. That's awesome.

4. Barney's Awesome song, was a great callback, since that song was awesome.

5. Please. Please being an acronym was kind of dumb, but when they revealed that Barney was actually pulling a long con to destroy his boss who was the same original suit that stole his ex girlfriend was a great payoff to something we have been laughing at for nine years.

Episode MVP: Barney. Barney stole this episode with his performance of different levels of drunkenness, the jokes about his sexual past, and of course the backstory of Please.

Rating: 9 out of 10. I really enjoyed this episode, but I am not quite willing to give it a perfect score because there was not that extra oomph, that would have given it a perfect 10. I think it was that the stuff with the mother, while enjoyable did not really link up with the stuff in the past? It was kind of odd how unrelated it all was. It just made it seem a little disjointed.