How I Met Your Mother - Recap: Did You Say Gary Blauman?

Recap and review of How I Met Your Mother - Season 9 Episode 21 - Gary Blauman:

"Gary Blauman" is the kind of episode it would be easy to get wrong. It's an episode that takes a risk by focusing on a completely ancillary character, with only two weeks to go until the series finale. How I Met Your Mother has taken risks before (hell, the entire narrative structure of this season is one big risk), but this is the kind of episode fans will either love passionately, or completely detest, with almost no room for middle ground. Ultimately, the unifying theme underlying it all (that we have to hold on to the people we want to keep in our lives), as evidenced via the character and plight of Gary Blauman (Taran Killam), puts me firmly in the "love" column. It certainly helps that we got more of The Mother (Cristin Milioti), including her first date with Ted (Josh Radnor), a milestone in the series canon if ever there was one. "Gary Blauman" is an unexpectedly poignant half-hour that provides a touching setup for next week's big wedding.

Credit: CBS

When Robin (Cobie Smulders) finds out that old acquaintance Gary Blauman is at the wedding, she panics. Apparently, Gary's reply card got lost in the mail, so she had no idea he was coming; thus, she has nowhere for him to sit at the reception. Marshall (Jason Segel) vows he'll be able to find a place for him, citing his past experience as the king of wedding seating arrangements (an amusing cutaway shows that a group seated together at his own wedding still meets for reunions, they were so well-matched). However, when Marshall agreed to help, he wasn't exactly expecting the wide array of differing opinions on Gary Blauman. Much like this episode bearing his name, you either love Gary Blauman, or you hate him. Ted has a passionate hatred for Blauman due to an incident at a party once in which they were locked in "a battle of wills" over the affections of a cute girl with an affinity for Teddy Roosevelt trivia. But Lily (Alyson Hannigan) loves Blauman for talking her out of getting an abhorrent Mark McGrath tattoo after breaking up with Marshall years earlier.

Barney (Neil Patrick Harris), meanwhile, hates Blauman for stealing four of his fries during a hang out at McLaren's, the fourth fry of which was an "accidental curly," a curly fry that had found its way into the basket with the homestyle fries (it's an absolutely ridiculous bit that wouldn't work at all without Neil Patrick Harris, who just nails every delivery and turns it into comedy gold from his reactions alone). William Zabka, for his part, loves Blauman for recognizing him not as the villain from The Karate Kid, but as the author of six poetry collections. But this love is offset by James (Wayne Brady), who hates Blauman for breaking up his marriage, since he's the man with whom James had his affair. Upon learning that Blauman is gay, Ted assumes this means that the "battle of wills" wasn't between Gary and himself, but rather between Gary and the girl, with Ted as the prize. Which is exactly within Ted's usual M.O. of passive narcissism, as it doesn't occur to him that Blauman might be bisexual. It's a gag that might be off-putting if it weren't Radnor doing it, since he makes Ted the butt of jokes as opposed to someone who could be construed as any kind of bigot. He's a doofus, and that makes Ted kind of lovable in his own goofy way.

Credit: CBS

Ultimately, the decision is left to Marshall, who judges that everyone is overlooking the biggest point of a wedding: whatever the bride wants, she gets. Yet they're too late, as Barney has already told Blauman off. They try to stop him from leaving, but Blauman is so offended he decides to tell off everyone else, including James, whom he declares needs to start being responsible for his own decisions. It's this that compels James to win back his husband, and for Marshall and the others to reflect on how they've treated their loved ones. Future Ted (Bob Saget) states that he learned just how easy it is to lose touch with people you loved when you were young, and emphasizes that when you find someone you want to keep around, you need to do something about it. Eventually, Blauman returns and the gang is all reunited, having seen the error of their ways. It's kind of a pat, easy resolution, but whatever doesn't work about it is immediately washed aside in a tide of loose end-wrapping. Future Ted reveals what became of all the ancillary characters in the show as we see their fates played out in a wonderful single-take panorama of scenes depicting where their lives ended up: Scooter found happiness with a girl that looked exactly like Lily, William Zabka won national honors for his poetry, Jeanette (Abby Elliot) was arrested and met and fell in love with Kevin (Kal Penn) while attending court-appointed psychiatric sessions, Zoey (Jennifer Morrison) continued in her activism, McLaren's became a family business, Ranjit makes wise investments and earns enough money to purchase the limo company, and James reunites with his husband and would go on to tell his kids the story of how he met their father. It's a touching resolution that further illustrates that Ted actually kept up with all of these people because, at some level, he wanted them all in his life, and thought them worth keeping. It's a lovely parallel with the frame story that sets this up...

Ted, while on his first date with The Mother three days after the wedding, is telling her the Gary Blauman story, the very first story of many in their relationship. Their chemistry is evident almost immediately, and it's a real credit to the casting department that Cristin Milioti has turned out to be such a perfect choice for The Mother, as building a believable relationship between she and Ted doesn't require much more than the both of them being in the same room. But still, the script does the leg work of showing us how these two are a perfect match. The Mother is interested in hearing Ted's story, and wants him to stick around, even after she cancels the date following a close call with the ex she dumped a week earlier. The story also illustrates how Ted has grown over the past nine years: when The Mother parts ways with him at the door to her apartment building, Ted notes that the Ted of eight years ago would have given some romantic speech and scared her away, but the Ted of 2013 somehow knew that everything would be okay, and had faith enough to let things play out as they would. And sure enough, The Mother asks him to finish the story, and they seal their relationship with a kiss -- and the decision to continue walking around the block together, since they don't need much more than each other's company. Ted's final pause, simply taking in the scene with The Mother in order to better remember it, is as touching as HIMYM has been all season, and it's pretty much the best way this episode could have ended, in my opinion.

Credit: CBS

"Gary Blauman" is an episode that finds success in how it speaks to a certain universal feeling of loss when we lose touch with those we thought would be in our lives forever. But beyond that, it further illustrates the connection between the people in the HIMYM world, showing that even the ancillary characters fit into the larger picture of this universe. And if those secondary people matter that much, imagine how much more the gang means to one another, and how much more The Mother means. It's an episode that displays the heart of How I Met Your Mother about as well as any episode this season.