How I Met Your Mother: “The Last Page” (Episodes 8.11/8.12)

“The Last Page”—this week’s double episode that closed out 2012 for How I Met Your Mother—was right out of the show’s playbook. It was a textbook story that finally ended a long-running arc. No, not that story arc; the other one. Finally, and quite obviously, Barney and Robin end up together with a romantic or very creepy proposal, depending on how you look at it.

The first part of the episode dealt with a funny, somewhat meandering plot about grown people believing in jinxes, talking about who would be in their Silence of the Lambs pits and finally wrapping up with what seems like a big reveal.

It kicks off with Marshall and Barney both ordering a Scotch neat at the same exact time, resulting in Marshall jinxing Barney, something a flashback reveals hasn’t happened since the day Barney got hit by the bus a few seasons back. It’s a funny way to shut Barney up for an episode and let his antics take a different course. He mouths Destiny Child’s “Say My Name” draws detailed pictures of a barn and a knee and has his own speech bubble. All of this builds up to the “shocking” (not really) conclusion of the first part.

But meanwhile Marshall and Lily discuss their old college friend (played by Seth Green) who they played hacky sack with once, but he has been lurking in their lives ever since. When Ted goes back to their college to confront a professor (played by Peter Gallagher) who told him he’d never become an architect, the couple go along for the ride and bump into Daryl. Ted realizes that, even though he is the youngest architect to design a skyscraper in the Manhattan skyline, he is insane to seek approval from a professor who doesn’t even remember his name.

This part of the episode deals with the characters letting go of the past and does a good job of setting up the second part of the double header. Finally, in a moment of clarity, Ted realizes he needs to move forward in his life, but accidentally says Barney’s name when they’re alone, ending the jinx. Which returns us to that “shocking” (not really) final scene when Barney reveals he’s going to propose to Patrice.