The Fight (How I Met Your Mother)

"The Fight" is the tenth episode in the fourth season of the television series How I Met Your Mother and 74th overall. It originally aired on December 8, 2008.

Plot

A bartender, Doug (Will Sasso), gets Ted and Barney involved in a fight with a group of guys sitting in the gang's favorite booth (Doug is very loyal to the regular customers). Marshall and Lily try to warn them off, but Barney vows to join in when Robin reveals that she thinks fights (particularly fight scars) are sexy. Ted also joins in as an experience he thinks he should have sometime in his life.

When they arrive in the back alley, Doug has knocked out the guys single-handedly. Ted and Barney try to give him credit, but he insists they were in the fight as well. Afraid of appearing unmasculine, they take the credit after Barney creates "battle wounds" by blackening his own eye and punching Ted in the nose. They earn the admiration of everyone except Marshall, who claims that he used to fight with his brothers and Ted and Barney wouldn't stand a chance. Ted and Barney laugh it off.

Later, Ted and Barney are sued by the losers of the fight, and they admit to Marshall and the others that they had no role in the victory. Robin, who had been extremely attracted to Barney, cancels a date to a hockey match. Marshall gets the boys out of the lawsuit with their admission of no involvement.

However, another consequence arises - Doug is now the only person named in the suit. As loyalty is extremely important to him, he now plans to pulverize Ted and Barney for their betrayal. Barney runs away in fear. Doug then tells Ted that he was quick to throw him in the fire rather than take any blame for himself, and brings up Stella leaving him. Enraged, Ted punches Doug, who subsequently knocks him out cold. Marshall, however, proves his earlier stories of fighting prowess by knocking out the much larger Doug with one blow; it turns out that his childhood fights with his brothers were not mere horseplay, but vicious brawls. Barney returns to find both Doug and Ted on the floor in pain.

At school, Lily struggles with two kids in her class who are also fighting. First, she has Marshall come to class to preach pacifism, but the kids call him a wuss. She later has Ted come to class (after he has been hit by Doug) to preach the consequences of fighting. The kids are still unmoved.

At the end of the episode, Marshall is shown with Lily at his parents' house 3–5 years later for Thanksgiving. True to his word, Marshall pulls out a lightsaber to carve the turkey, which he earlier mentioned as being available on the market "in 3–5 years".

Critical response

Donna Bowman of The AV Club rated the episode B+.^[1]

Michelle Zoromski of IGN rated the episode 8.2 out of 10.^[2]

Television Without Pity gave the episode a rating A.^[3]

References

External links

• "The Fight" at the Internet Movie Database
• "The Fight" at TV.com