‘How I Met Your Mother’ season 8, episode 18 review: Ted tries out the playbook

Did you really think that Barney would have burned the playbook? We’re honestly a little bit torn over this development on “How I Met Your Mother,” mostly because the destruction of the original book was one of the big moments in Barney and Robin getting together in the first place.

However, the book was back for Monday night’s new episode, though in a very different purpose than before: as a means to help Ted try and get over Jeanette, and start to move forward with a new woman that would not be a complete and utter crazy person. What we ended up learning through this, though, was simply once again that the majority of Barney’s plays are not only horrible, but make no sense at all. His delusional nature really just adds to the humor of it, and the complete catastrophe that resulted from Ted’s attempts at running some plays actually led to him and Abby Elliot’s character reconciling … at least briefly, before she found the book and destroyed most of his stuff (including the famous red cowboy boots).

The playbook discovery had some terrible ramifications for Barney, as well, as he ended up causing a major fight between himself and Robin … at least until he was strangely able to convince his way out of it by explaining that he lives in a world full of lies, with the one singular constant being that he was in love with her.

Ultimately, this was a funny half-hour of television, but save for Ted and Jeanette calling it quits, it is hard to really say that there was a revolutionary moment at all in this episode. As a matter of fact, most of the storylines, especially Marshall dropping a bag full of Skittles during an art show, really just felt like filler designed to make the episode as long as it needed to be.

What did you think about this episode as a whole, and do you really believe that Ted and Jeanette are finally over? Be sure to share some more of your thoughts below, and you can see what “Glee” star is reprising her old role on the show over at the link here.

Photo: CBS