22. How I Met Your Mother How Lily Stole Christmas (CBS, 2006)
Lily discovers an answering machine message in which Ted calls her a Grinch (Future Teds euphemism for a very bad word). As revenge, she steals all of his Christmas decorations. Parodies of
The Grinch are pretty common but this one is actually quite inventive and uses the bare bones of
The Grinchs plot to build a more character driven story. A really clever plot device is that since Ted is telling the story to his children in the future (the framing device of the entire show), he replaces very instance of the offending word (Its four letters long and begins with C) with 'Grinch'. Not only does it allow the shows writers to get the story across without falling foul of the censors, it also allows for scenes like Teds cousins (all of whom are younger than ten and have incredibly strict Christian parents) saying the word Grinch over and over again. It may seem juvenile that this is why I think this episode is so funny but its really the context that elevates it above just being crude. As well as that, overall theres some good character moments and its a decent personal story between Lily and Ted. Its not as Christmassy as it could have been but its still very funny.
Best Moment: The reactions from incidental characters whenever Ted says Grinch.