HIMYM, "Not a Father's Day": Socks to be him

Spoilers for tonight's "How I Met Your Mother" coming up just as soon as I shoot some cans on the roof...

It's weird: we complain all the time about how we'd like to see more of Marshall and Lily (especially as compared to Ted), and yet the episodes that focus on one or both of them are rarely the most memorable. "Not a Father's Day" was a solid episode with some good laughs, but not much more than that. Even though it was stronger from start to finish than last week's "Happily Ever After," the five minutes or so of "Happily Ever After" that worked (Robin's flashback through the pumped-up cab ride) were significantly better than anything here. In fact, most of my favorite Marshall moments tend to be in other people's episodes, rather than his own.

Drunk Lily as baby substitute was a cute idea, and well-played by Alyson Hannigan, and the dueling flashbacks with Lily and Marshall's new neighbor -- Marshall sees only the cute stuff, Lily sees only the sleep-deprived horror show -- was one of the show's better uses of perspective in a while. And the hypnotic sway of the little sock was a good running joke.

And for the "HIMYM" continuity nerds among us (you know who you are), this episode firmly placed Lily and Marshall into the Dowisetrepla apartment, and explained how Robin wound up moving in with Ted (as we were told about in last season's "The Goat"). So it had that going for it.

But for some reason, the only part that I imagine is going to stay with me is Barney's cheerleader/sorority girl/Spice Girl theorem about how women look hotter in packs. Of course, just as clamoring for more Lily and Marshall doesn't always work out as well as we would hope, we probably shouldn't push for more Barney than we already get. NPH is superb, but that way lies Fonzification, or its sad latter-day equivalent, Urkelization.

What did everybody else think?