Spoilers for "How I Met Your Mother" coming up just as soon as I play a round of Plinko...Poor, sad little Barney. Brilliant, hilarious big Barney. Not since Norm Peterson and Cliff's mom were guests on "The Tonight Show" in a latter-day "Cheers" episode -- and possibly not since Cliff asked Alex Trebek, "Who are three people who have never been in my kitchen?" -- has a sitcom featured such a funny, albeit cross-promotional, salute to a TV institution. Barney's complete dominance of "The Price Is Right" was hilarious, especially him deliberately making a way-over bid on Over/Under so he could waste most of the 30 seconds showing Bob childhood photos. (Though, as Fienberg points out, how can Barney be so obsessed with the show and his "dad" and yet not know that the wheel spin and the Showcase Showdown are the same thing?)
The wedding build-up stuff wasn't quite at the same level of awesomeness, but it still had some highlights: Robin bullying Lily into eating ("You gonna cry? Skinny little baby's gonna cry? Well, eat, baby! Eat!"); the oral sex flashback; Ted's sanitized toast in which Marshall and Lily got caught "holding hands" (plus the way Josh Radnor tried to make his narration cadence the same as Bob Saget's); and the fact that they even gave us a little taste of the wedding before jumping back to the "TPIR" stuff.
I've had a DVD of the two-part finale sitting in my bag for weeks, and I've been waiting until I saw this episode to watch it. And now I can. Woo-hoo!
What did everybody else think?
