How I Met Your Mother: “The Bro Mitzvah” (Episode 8.22)

We’re counting down the episodes until Barney marries Robin, and it’s time for the ultimate bachelor party. Except it’s up to Ted and Marshall so… it’s nothing like a Barney party. It does include a contortionist (of balloons), the star of The Karate Kid (to most of us, anyway) and Atlantic City (sort of).

Nothing is going well until the stripper shows up. That’s when things turn even more How I Met Your Mother-esque and the stripper turns out to be Quinn, Barney’s ex-fiancé. The first few minutes alone let you know that the rest of the episode was trying too hard to be funny.

While Barney and most of the gang are at his bachelor party, Robin is having dinner with her soon-to-be mother-in-law having a terrible night. First Mrs. Stinson believes Robin is a virgin and tries to explain “where things need to go” on their wedding night. Then once it’s cleared up Robin isn’t a virgin, Mrs. Stinson begins telling stories from her heyday, which includes a night with Crosby, Stills and Nash.

Both sides of the first half of the episode are completely undesirable. The majority is spent on lackluster jokes, including the running gag that Barney is exactly like Ralph Macchio, whom he hates, and Lily is extremely turned on by Ralph. Right before the mid-episode commercial you find out Robin and Ted set up the terrible bachelor party, but does that excuse the first half of the episode from not having any rewarding jokes? No. You can make a character go through hell, but it better be funny.

Even the big reveal about how Robin set this all up didn’t truly provide anything of quality. First of all it was extremely obvious in an very not-funny way. The only legendary part was the big reveal that the clown was—wait for it—the actual karate kid: Mr. Cobra Kai himself, William Zakba.

Everything in this episode felt like a complete letdown. I was OK with the writers deciding to give Barney a terrible bachelor party, but I definitely felt that he deserved a legendary episode even if it was filled with blunders. Instead we were given a forgettable episode that was a poor prelude to Barney and Robin’s wedding.