Episode ted goes back and forth dating a girl

The episode (appropriately titled “Bad Crazy”) kicks off with a montage of Ted’s crazy experiences as a single New Yorker, while Voiceover Ted tells the kids that Jeanette (crazy stalker from last week) was the one who made him want to stop dating and settle down; we see present day Ted sitting on the curb outside his apartment surrounded by his friends and torched belongings saying “No more dating.” The story backs up to Ted telling his friends Jeanette threw a beer bottle at the TV and them urging him to dump her. Ted asks if they’re really looking out for him (DUH! SHE STALKED YOU FOR A YEAR AND A HALF!) or if they want him to stay single so they can have their “clubhouse.” We see via mini-montage that since he’s the only single guy left in the group, Barney and Marshall dump whatever they’ve bought (but aren’t allowed by their women to keep) at Ted’s; they drop off a Donkey Kong arcade game, a cotton candy machine, a Vespa, a horse, and a giant canoe. Barney uses the conversational opportunity to say that he bought an antique clock that doesn’t run, and he’ll work on it while Ted tells everyone about his night with Jeanette. Ted says she’s a big Marilyn Monroe fan, and Barney makes the clock say “cuckoo.” Ted goes on to say they had a séance, and Barney’s clock again chimes “cuckoo.” Barney asks if they were able to contact Marilyn, and Ted responds with a defiant “No” before conceding that they talked to her cat. Barney makes the clock say “cuckoo” several times before saying, “Screw loose! That’s the problem.” Lily asks Robin to hold Marvin but Marshall winds up holding him, and we find out Robin’s been too scared to hold him in the eight months he’s been alive. Ted tells the group he and Jeanette are taking her dog to the exorcist, and Barney tries to get the clock to “cuckoo” again but he broke it. Ted says he knows she’s cuckoo and he’ll dump her in a public place just to be safe. At a hockey game later, she yells at a referee that she’ll kill him right there in front of everyone.

To make it easier to follow, I’ll split the Marshall-Barney-Ted story off from the Lily-Robin story here; in the show it bounced back and forth with flash-forwards for the Lily-Robin part, but hey, you should’ve watched the show if you wanted to see how it ran. Anyway, it’s a day or so later, and Barney and Marshall are playing video games at Ted’s; he asks them to not let Jeanette in if she comes by, and they both laugh that their experience with Barney’s crazy exes has prepared them. Ted leaves, and Jeanette rings the bell. Marshall answers the door, screams, and shuts it; Barney then does the same. Long story short, when Ted comes back, Jeanette has barricaded herself in his room and is breaking things. She can stay in there for a long time because Ted bought food rations and an emergency toilet after Hurricane Sandy hit New York. Ted tells Jeanette he called the cops, and the guys then hear Jeanette answer the call on her police radio. Turns out, she’s a cop, which gets them reenact a scene from the Departed (truth moment: had to Google that, because I couldn’t figure out why they were saying “she’s a cawp” over and over). Ted suits up in some weird armor to go into his room, and he admits to the guys he didn’t actually dump her. Sigh. He tells them that at the game, she accused him of being in love with Lily, rambled some nonsense, and screamed that she never wanted to see him again; he just figured if he never contacted her again, she’d take the hint. Sigh.

Meanwhile, Lily has to chase down a bus because Marvin’s favorite pacifier is on it, and she leaves Marvin with Robin, telling her to pick him up if he cries. He starts to cry, and Robin picks up the whole stroller. When Lily returns, Robin says nothing eventful happened while Lily was gone. Flash-forward four years: Robin tells Lily she let a stranger (a sweet, elderly black woman as shown in a flashback) pick up Marvin because she was too nervous to do it herself. Lily says it’s fine, as long as there’s no more to the story. Robin says that’s it, but her face indicates it’s not. Flash-forward eight years: Robin confesses there was more to the story; after the stranger put him back down, the stroller rolled into the street with Marvin in it. Lily forgives Robin and makes her promise there’s no more to the story—but clearly there is. Flash-forward two years: Robin admits the stranger suggested they get out of the cold, and they wound up at a strip club. “It was just topless,” Robin says. “He saw yours all the time then anyway.” Flash-forward another two years: Robin admits she left Marvin with the kindly old woman when she went to the restroom. One final flash-forward later, Robin reveals the biggest part of the story: it wasn’t a kindly old woman who helped her that day…it was Mike Tyson! Lily blows up: “You waited 17 years to tell me that you met the greatest boxer of all time?! My son was rocked to sleep by Senator Mike Tyson?!”

The storylines converge when Lily and Robin show up at Ted’s because they heard his screaming from three blocks away. The group debates what makes a crazy girl crazy, and Robin quotes the old lady (really Mike Tyson) by saying, “You want to know why a girl acts crazy? Look at the guy she’s dating, then you’ll really see some crazy. Trust me.” Well, at least Tyson and I are on the same page that Ted’s even more crazy than Jeanette. Ted admits that may be true, because he didn’t leave Jeanette at the hockey game; they started making out until they were kicked out. Exasperated sigh. Furthermore, she was wearing his red cowboy boots when she went upstairs and they hooked up. UGH! Robin starts to go on a tangent about the boots, and doesn’t immediately notice Lily handed Marvin to her. When she realizes, Marshall says something like “What? It’s not like it’s the first time you’re holding him” (which it is) and Robin says something like “Of course not, this isn’t a big moment or anything” and under her breath “This is exhilarating.” Presh. Lily tells Ted he needs to be with Jeanette because they’re both crazy, and they’ll be there for him when things literally—not figuratively—go down in flames (which, as we saw at the beginning, they do). Later, it’s 3:00AM and Robin hasn’t put Marvin down; Lily smiles and goes to bed. Robin gets a whiff of a poopy diaper and whispers “Lily!!!”

I know that this show requires a good deal of suspending disbelief, but come on. Ted should’ve called the cops the moment he found out Jeanette had been stalking him, much less when she SET A FIRE to meet him—not to mention all the shit from this episode. He’s been pretty crazy at times too, but his continued interest in this episode is just stupid and detracts from the Lily-Robin storyline. I suppose my breaking up of the two storylines took the magic out of it, but it was as fun to watch Robin’s story unfold as it was annoying to watch Ted’s. It’s annoying that Ted’s last woman before his wife is totally cuckoo, but maybe that’s just par for the course (i.e., my comment last week about Ted being a complete nutjob the first season).