The Poker Game (How I Met Your Mother)
 | This article's lead section may be too short to adequately summarize the key points. (December 2015) |
| "The Poker Game" | |
|---|---|
| How I Met Your Mother episode | |
| Episode no. | Season 9 Episode 5 |
| Directed by | Pamela Fryman |
| Written by | Dan Gregor & Doug Mand |
| Original air date | October 14, 2013 |
| Guest appearances | |
| |
"The Poker Game" is the fifth episode of the
sitcom How I Met Your Mother
, and the 189th episode overall.
Plot
On Friday at 6:00 PM, 48 hours before the wedding,
strip poker
and gets her special blouse). Lily counsels him that in a marriage, the husband always stands by the wife. This prompts Barney to declare that he's severing his ties to James and Loretta after realizing that they're both selfish, but claims Robin ordered it so.
Lily is visibly displeased at Ted's plans to give Barney and Robin three wedding gifts.
Future Ted says her anger stemmed from Ted's apparent failure to give them a wedding gift six years before; Marshall repeatedly signaled Ted about it ever since (even as he was about to marry Stella). When Ted is questioned about the present, he insists that he sent them a coffeemaker as his gift but also dropped his own hints for Marshall to acknowledge it. Lily discovers that Ted never got a thank-you note because Stuart passed it off as his present; he claims the item further strengthened his marriage to Claudia. Ted reconciles with Marshall by placing an order with their old Chicago pizza haunt Gazzola's
and having a delivery man send it to Marshall as he and Daphne pass through Chicago. Future Ted then reveals he received a thank-you note from Marshall four months later.
Loretta lets Robin keep the blouse, but warns that she's not yet finished with her.
Critical reception
The A.V. Club's Donna Bowman graded the episode a B+, stating that weddings will always have something that offends some of your loved ones. She hinted however, that the ending may set the stage for a bigger showdown between Robin and Loretta later in the season.[1]
Bill Kuchman of Popculturology praised the episode for its
flashbacks to the show's past, calling the Katie Holmes as the Slutty Pumpkin cameo a "nice callback to HIMYM's history."[2]
Max Nicholson of IGN gave the episode a 7.3/10 rating saying it "made good use of flashbacks, but nevertheless felt a bit stagnant."[3]
References
- ^ Donna Bowman (October 14, 2013). "The Poker Game". The A.V. Club. The Onion. Retrieved August 13, 2017.
- ^ Bill Kuchman (October 14, 2013). "'How I Met Your Mother' 'The Poker Game' Recap: All In for an Episode That Feels Like a Classic". Popculturology. Retrieved August 13, 2017.
- ^ Max Nicholson (October 14, 2013). "How I Met Your Mother: "The Poker Game" Review". IGN. Retrieved August 13, 2017.
External links
- "The Poker Game" at IMDb
