How I Met Your Mother: 10 Greatest Fantasy Sequences

The sexless innkeeper is a poem that Barney had written to describe the idea of using someone for a place to sleep.

We are returned to a year to Barney telling the tale, though the image we are given is of an old tavern with powdered wigs and horse-drawn carriages. As Ted tries to point out that if this was a year ago, then carriages don’t really make sense, he is simply trampled by Barney continuing.

He tells a tale all in rhyme about how he was stranded in Queens and used a woman so he could sleep on her couch. Unattractive, he did not want to sleep with her, so he simply pretended that he fell asleep, getting a safe night indoors, while leaving her with a stranger asleep in her apartment.

This scene so perfectly gives us the image of what a Barney Stinson story is like, as most of them tend to return to this era in history, featuring most of the cast in revolutionary garb. It is such a strange image to go from their small apartment in New York City, to a tavern during revolutionary times, all for Barney to tell his ridiculous story.