HIMYM Watch: Everybody Wang Chung Tonight

Monty Brinton/CBS

Spoilers for How I Met Your Mother coming up after the jump:

I suspect that, when employed by women, the "Naked Man" gambit has a significantly higher than 2/3 success to failure ratio. That's really the only complaint I have about the Naked Man episode of HIMYM.

Even though the central premise might have been the subject of one of those ironic "wingman" beer commercials, if those ironic wingman beer commercials were allowed to be dirtier, it somehow managed to sustain an entire episode. The installments of HIMYM where nothing big happens plot-wise—i.e., on the Meeting Your Mother or other relationship fronts—rise or fall on the back-and-forth conversation among the five characters, and the back-and-forth in this one was just exquisite.

I could have watched the "50 reasons list" composition around the bar table, for instance, for 20 minutes—partly because I never love Marshall as much as when he's being a big old girl. Ditto—well, maybe for 5 minutes or so—the ping-pong between Barney and Ted about how best to make their birthday-suited appearance, assisted by strategically placed household furnishings. And Neil Patrick Harris beautifully sold Barney's professional awe at the implications of the technique: "It's a game-changer! ... I'm like Batman. But this Mitch, he's like Superman. He just rips off his clothes and he's good to go."Throw in another allusion to the Future Goat Incident (with a date: May 8, 2009) and Robin in a Reservoir Dogs handgun standoff, and I'm a happy man.

Oh, and Mr. Wang's. Heh heh, Mr. Wang's. What? Am I made of stone?