How I Met Your Mother: 10 Episodes Proving It's Past Its Best

2. Mom And Dad

Alright, "Mom and Dad" was just terrible. An incredulous Barney storyline even by his standards, which, mind you, involves hiring an actress to play his wife and hitting on a girl while speaking dolphin, a boring Ted storyline and proving that "real Karate Kid" William Zabka's character as Ted's best man competition had some of the worst writing in the show's 9 year history. When Barney's father and his step-family come to the inn, Barney is hellbent on getting his parents back together. Coincidentally, at the same time James' father was called in to officiate in the place of the dead reverend, James is hellbent on getting his parents back together. Ultimately, James wins the battle as Sam and Loretta had in fact been seeing each other since James tracked him down two years before, but not before Barney traps Jerome and Loretta in an elevator complete with candlelit dinner while having Ranjit drive his stepmother Cheryl out into the woods and leaving the most ridiculous suicide note ever, which Jerome reads deadpan: "I'm going to kill my--wait for it---self." In the subplot, Barney plans to give an autographed Wayne Gretsky photo to Robin as a wedding present. He gives it to Ted to hide, and Ted's calligraphy ink is spilled on it. Ted immediately suspects "Zabka-tage," if you get my drift, and it turns out that Zabka had a massage scheduled, but gave it to Jerome so he would have an alibi. The calligraphy ink was spilled in an attempt to once again unseat Ted as best man. In the poorest written joke in HIMYM's history, we're shown a montage of the abuse Zabka took being an 80's movies bad guy, but when he's invited to be Barney's best man in place of Ted he's finally allowed to come home for Thanksgiving. Yeah. The only plus we saw out of this episode was the end of Daphne, and Marshall and baby Marvin finally making their way towards the inn.