‘How I Met Your Mother’ season 8, episode 8 review: Marshall’s big move

Joe Manganiello returned to “How I Met Your Mother” season 8 for another episode Monday night, and as fun as it was to see Brad again for one more go, it was for about twenty minutes the weakest half-hour of the season.

Why? It really just felt for most of the episode as though nothing important was going to happen at all. The narrative placed Marshall speaking to a judiciary committee about his case against the pharmaceutical firm, and it was one where he ended up winning despite having to compete against a shirtless man who was bending over in front of a number of female jurors. The problem? A win is hardly a win when you are only getting a tiny fraction of what you were hoping for out of it. He only received $25,000, as opposed to the millions his firm was asking for.

Now, we get to the part of this episode that mattered: this experience taught Marshall that in order to really enact change in the world, he would have to eventually become a judge. It still seems like a bit too early in his legal career for this to happen, but it is a nice prospect for him down the road. Plus, he helped to show Brad the error of his ways, and he really is now working alongside him at the environmental firm.

We’re going to largely ignore the lame “how tough are we?” storyline involving the other members of Marshall’s gang, and focus on the final bit of goodness from this episode: Robin seemingly realizing that she did not want Barney to stop pursuing her, but she did not know how to express her feelings. This wasn’t much movement, but it at least is a step closer than where we were half an hour ago.

What did you think about this episode?