How I Met Your Mother – "The Pre-Nup" [Spoilers]

Shannon O’Connor ’16 / Emertainment Monthly Editor-in-Chief

Through the seasons CBS’s hit sitcom How I Met Your Mother, much like the characters in the show, has really matured. The show is no longer about inserting as many sexual jokes as possible or merely reminiscing about the hijinks the gang got themselves into recently. How I Met Your Mother tackles real life issues in a way that is easily and humorously conveyed to audiences. The overlying theme of this week’s episode, “The Pre-Nup,” is trust, an issue all couples grapple with at some point.
It begins with newly engaged Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) and Quinn (Becki Newton), the reunited Ted (Josh Radnor) and Victoria (Ashley Williams), new parents Marshall (Jason Segel) and Lily (Alyson Hannigan), and brand new couple Nick (Michael Trucco) and Robin (Cobie Smulders) all deeply in love and perfectly content. However this facade is shattered once Barney decides to write up a prenuptial, with the help of lawyer Arthur Hobbs (Breaking Bad‘s Bob Odenkirk), before diving into an area even the all-knowing Barney is not up on… marriage. Barney, being Barney, takes the prenuptial too far, about 500 pages too far. He and Quinn go page through page of Barney’s idea of a prenuptial, aka his rule book for their marriage. His absurd rules may leave audiences laughing, but Quinn is less than amused.
As Quinn runs to tell Lily and Robin the insane things Barney tried to get her to agree to, Barney scurries off to Ted and Marshall to complain about Quinn’s lack of compliance. Both conversations, while equally amusing, bring up the issues facing each of the couples, Lily being over protective with Marvin, Robin getting turned on by watching herself do the news, and Ted’s annoyance with Victoria’s ex-fiancé  living with him. As the couples try to talk things out separately multiple fights ensue, eventually leading to the climatic ending in which lawyer Arthur Hobbs reunites all the couples, except for one. Barney and Quinn are the first couple to split in what Ted dubs “the August of Break-Ups,” they realize that neither one of them trust each other. But just as audiences give up hope on wedding bells chiming for Barney, the creators once again allude to his future marriage to Robin.
Tonight’s episode had all the ingredients of a classic How I Met Your Mother episode, outlandish humor (Lily’s “Your Dead To Me Eyes” make another appearance), awkward conversations (Oh what weird fetish will Robin have next) and as always a whole lot of heart.