The Stinson Missile Crisis

"The Stinson Missile Crisis" is the fourth episode of the seventh season of the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother and the 140th episode overall. It aired on October 3, 2011.^[1]

Plot

After assaulting a woman aiming to break up Barney's relationship with Nora, Robin must attend a court-mandated therapy session. As she tells the therapist the events leading up to the assault, Robin keeps digressing into the story of how Ted became too involved with Lily's pregnancy.

During the session, she reveals to her therapist that she has been growing jealous of the attention that Barney showers on Nora, reinforcing the fact that Robin still has feelings for Barney. When she succeeds in getting Nora sent to France to cover a G-8 summit, Robin secretly hopes to use the time to win Barney back. Robin helps Barney pack up all of the items he uses for running plays on women, and when they go back to MacLaren's, Robin suggests that they dress up and go out on the town drunk and wasted for one last time. Before Barney can respond, Nora walks in, having returned early. They leave and Robin ends up getting drunk under the table of their booth. When a 'victim' of one of Barney's plays shows up at the bar, Robin sends her after Barney and Nora, hoping to break them up.

Meanwhile, Ted becomes concerned that Lily is consuming wine and Cheetos while pregnant, especially after learning that her doctor allows Lily to have "just a little bit" of everything that Lily asks for. Ted lauds the fact that they have always been a trio, but Lily pushes back, saying that Ted never gives them privacy. Marshall takes Ted's side, sympathizing with how Ted has always been the third wheel in their relationship.

Marshall and Ted attend a birthing class that Ted had signed the group up for. However, Lily refuses to participate and at the birthing class, Ted reveals that he is afraid of losing his friends. He feels his life is lagging behind everyone else's, thinking he should've been married and having kids by now. They leave the class and return to Marshall and Lily's apartment. Marshall apologizes to Lily, but finds that Ted has left the building, leaving one of his socks on the handle of their apartment door.

When Robin and Ted talk at their apartment, Robin realizes that she was selfish in trying to break up Barney and Nora. She rushes to the restaurant and attacks the girl to stop her from getting to Barney, with the result that both women are arrested.

Barney's blog

Barney posts an advertisement of one of his plays.^[2] Also, the two commercials of Barney as a doctor and as a lawyer have associated Websites:

• StinsonBreastReduction.com
• LinsonBreastLawsuit.com

Cultural references

• The name of the Episode is a reference to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Barney refers to the plays he had to get women as BDSes, or "Bimbo Delivery Systems."
• To insist that Team Baby is viable, Ted tries to claim that other trios like Batman and Robin and Alfred, plus Romeo and Juliet and the apothecary worked as well. A display of previous trio pictures at the end of the episode include: salt and pepper and cumin, Lady and the Tramp and their plate of spaghetti, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark and their canoe, Victor Frankenstein and Frankenstein's monster and "a scared villager", and C-3PO and R2-D2 and "the droid Luke's uncle almost bought from the Jawas," referring to R5D4.
• Stinson Breast Reduction sponsors a reward challenge on fellow CBS show Survivor: South Pacific. Other ongoing "bimbo delivery systems" Barney discontinues during the episode include:
  • Pretending to be a gay women's hairstylist with an "extremely attractive, straight twin brother"
  • Being notified when naïve young women seeking acting careers arrive at the Port Authority Bus Terminal "with no idea what a casting director could legally ask her to do, hold, or lick during an audition"
  • Pretending that a cremation urn holds his parents' ashes, or is the Wimbledon trophy
  • Using an auto dialer to persuade customers of body glitter and pasties to meet him at MacLaren's Bar

Reception

Donna Bowman of the AV Club gave the episode a B,^[3] whereas Chris O'Hara of TV Fanatic gave the episode 4 out of 5 stars.^[4]

Angel Cohn of Television Without Pity graded the episode at B+, stating that the subplot on Lily and Marshall "dragged down the few funny moments of Barney and Robin scheme-busting."^[5]

References

External links

• "The Stinson Missile Crisis" at the Internet Movie Database