By Matthew Wood

I’ve said all season how much I think the Marshall-Lily (Jason Segel-Alyson Hannigan) marriage is ruining HIMYM, but even
I didn’t want to see them get a divorce. Well, that almost happened on Monday, as Marshall found out about her dirty little secret (she’s a shopaholic) the hard way – namely, as they were trying to get a loan to buy their own apartment together. Talk about bad timing.

Anyway, they work it out (as they always do), they don’t get a divorce, and Barney uses the place they were going to buy to get laid. So, all’s well that ends well. Well, except for that huuuuge credit card debt of Lily’s.

I didn’t like the whole Lily shopping problem thing when they introduced it earlier this season. But I guess you gotta have some conflict, and apparently shopping addiction is more serious of a problem than I ever thought (who knew, right fellas?)


As always, this week’s episode was chock full of flashbacks, showing the way the gang should have reacted to situations (with a calm, cool head) and then the ways they actually reacted (usually the complete wrong thing to say). And the foreshadowing that buying this place was a bad idea was peppered throughout the episode, with narrator Bob Saget warning us all along the way that this was not going to work out.

They’ve been doing this a lot this season – most notably fast-forwarding to the mess that Marshall’s law firm job would turn out to be last week. I like that a lot. It shows that there’s no plan for a happy ending to wrap things up – when they’re ready to wrap up this show. It just feels more realistic.

And Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) never disappoints, finding a girl with commitment problems and taking her to the apartment – which isn’t even Marshall and Lily’s – where he tells her he loves her, betroths her, then walks out while she’s in the shower, presumably to never see her again. God that guy is good.


In the end, the happy couple buy the apartment, which is located in the new up-and-coming Dowisetrepla. We don't know what that means, only that it’s a shortened name – like SoHo. Well, it turns out it’s short for “Down Wind of the Sewage Treatment Plant,” which Marshall and Lily don’t find out until it’s too late. Moral of that story: If Bob Saget is narrating and he tells you something is a bad idea, you damn well better listen to him!