‘How I Met Your Mother’ season 9, episode 10 review: John Lithgow, William Zabka, and what else?

On Monday night’s “How I Met Your Mother” episode, we had an opportunity to check out the return of one of the greatest guest stars in the history of the show: John Lithgow. When you remember just how evil he was as the Trinity Killer on “Dexter,” seeing him as the kind, sweet father figure Jerry is a complete 180.

Jerry had to endure a very different sort of drama this week, as his arrival to the wedding weekend led to Barney making a mad attempt to get him back together with his mom Loretta. Meanwhile, Ben Vareen returned as James’ dad Sam and Barney and Robin’s likely minister, and this in turn led to James declaring the same thing. Based on the embrace we saw between the two, James seemed to win out with this battle.

While we at least had something significant for Barney and Robin this week, we can’t really say that the other two stories were really all that interesting. Marshall’s story was really more about Sherri Shepherd’s Daphne, and it is hard to sit here and claim to care that much about a character who has only been around for a few weeks. Meanwhile, “Detective Ted” was really just intriguing as a callback to a certain pineapple mystery from years ago. It didn’t really bare any relevance to anything … but then again, it did allow for a great usage of “Sabotage” as it turned out that Ted was tricked by William Zabka. At least the he and Ted don’t seem ready to kill each other at every given moment.

“Mom and Dad” was a pretty funny episode of the show, but not really an important one by any means. Most of the stories were really about supporting characters, and nothing else really happened at all (unless you care about Zabka). Grade: B-

What did you think about tonight’s “How I Met Your Mother” episode? Be sure to share your thoughts below, and click here if you want to read some more news related to the show. (We’ll have another preview coming up soon enough.)

Photo: CBS