‘How I Met Your Mother’ season 8, episodes 11-12 review: Let’s talk Barney / Robin

Neil Patrick Harris, Cobie SmuldersOn Monday night, “How I Met Your Mother” season 8 said goodbye to 2012 with back-to-back episodes that really told the story of not only the opening of Ted’s building, but whether or not Robin was finally going to come clean about her feelings for Barney.

What happened? At first, she tried her best to deny her feelings for him despite almost firing Patrice in the process (who did nothing wrong outside of trying to date the man), and when she heard from Ted that Barney was planning to propose to her archenemy at the top of the World Wide News Building (otherwise known as her favorite spot), it actually took some coercing from her own ex, even in spite of him breaking a promise to keep it secret, to actually get her to confront him about some of her feelings.

Ted’s speech to Robin (as her friend) was one of the most moving of the season, as he reminded her how okay it is to make mistakes considering just how many he has made over the years with her. At the end of the day, it still ended up with the two parties being in a pretty good place.

So what happened as a result? It was basically Barney’s greatest move of all, as he had drawn up an entire page in his playbook that was all about making sure that he did exactly what he needed to do in order to get her to fall for her. In some way we were hoping for Barney’s feelings for Patrice to actually be genuine, but at the end of the day the way in which this all worked out was touching, and rather tear-jerking to boot. It made sense for Robin to be angry with him at first, but let it all wash away the moment Barney got down on one knee. They’re engaged!

As for the Marshall and Lily stories, they were funny in between seeing an old college friend (Seth Green) who almost gave them $100,000 for doing pretty much nothing to realizing just how much they are having trouble being away from their son Marvin. With that being said, we do prefer these two when they have a little bit something deeper going on, and Lily in particular needs something substantial this year since Marshall has already at least had the story regarding Brad.

What did you think about this hour-long episode? If you want to see what one of the show bosses is saying about the show potentially going on for another year, be sure to head on over to the link.

Photo: CBS

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