Season Analysis: Inspired by the death of Marshall’s father, HIMYM plumbed some of its deepest emotional depths in the first half of the season, with Jason Segel doing his best work of the entire series. Then in the second half, there was a little of this, a little of that, and by the end, we still hadn’t quite made it to the wedding that was teased in the season premiere.
“Trilogy Time”
As part of a triennial tradition, Ted, Marshall, and Barney gather to watch the original Star Wars trilogy back-to-back-to-back. I would have been happy if this episode had just been the three of them reacting to the movies, but what this episode actually turned out to be was good, too. It turns out that every year of this tradition, they have imagined what their lives will be like three years into the future. This structure of potential flash-forwards within flashbacks was mostly silly, in that it was already known that these possible futures – at points now in the past – would not come to be. But it was also clever in a way that HIMYM often is, displaying a strong awareness of continuity, as Lily and Marshall’s relationship troubles and Barney and Robin’s secret affair are referenced at the appropriate points. There was also a plethora of blink-and-you-miss-’em gags, particularly the presidents mentioned in the newspaper headlines (Al Gore in ’03, Howard Dean in ’06, Dennis Kucinich in ’09, and George W. Bush for a third term in 2015). Gratifyingly, something resembling a self-appointed endgame was established, with an actual flash-forward to the next trilogy time in 2015 revealing that Ted would be breaking the tradition by bringing a girl along – with that girl being his infant daughter.
