HIMYM Watch: They're Lilys! Identical Lilys, All the Way!

CBS

Spoilers for last night's How I Met Your Mother coming up after the jump:

Mother? What mother? I now care far more about finding the remaining two doppelgängers than about finding any mother.

The A plot involving Ted's double-blind date was nice enough (and I'll get to that in a minute), but this episode of How I Met Your Mother really struck gold with the stripper subplot. There was nothing here especially mind-blowing or advancing the plot, but it was an example of the kind of inventions that mark HIMYM at its best: Lesbian Robin, Mustache Marshall, and, especially, the extended joke about Marshall having to imagine Lily's death before he can fantasize about other women, which seemed like it should have gone on too long but just got funnier as it went on.

As for the main storyline, I was under no illusions that Jen would turn out the be The Mother (presumably a woman who just got laid off from banking would not have been back in college in an Econ lecture). Which is a shame, because I absolutely loved Lindsay Sloane as the crypto-Tori Spelling in Darren Star's genius Grosse Pointe, and actually, HIMYM could have done worse than to cast her in a regular role.

But while the re-double date storyline wasn't itself hilarious, it did involve the neat visual of having 2002 Ted and Jen walk through 2009 Ted and Jen's date, and it was a nice bit of symmetry to pair Ted with someone who's as unfortunate a date as he is. But what was especially striking was how the episode could just as well have been a meeting scene between Ted and Your Mom, except that—as the first few minutes of their date showed us—they actually weren't right for each other. Which just went to show how a few tricks of circumstance—or a montage and the right song on the soundtrack—can make you think it's love when it's really not.

But taking your husband into the champagne room with the stripper who's your long-lost doppelgänger? Now that's love.