After nine seasons, the final episode of How I Met Your Mother airs in the United States on Monday, March 31. Curiata.com is reliving the series this week by looking back at our favorites of the 208 episodes.
I was late to the How I Met Your Mother game and, in a rare instance for me, I binge-watched the first four seasons over the summer of 2009. The whiplash of those first 88 episodes was perfectly encapsulated in the frenetic tale told in the second season episode “Lucky Penny.”
Ted Mosby, architect, has a job interview in Chicago but but he and Robin are late for their flight. As they try to wrangle their way on a plane, the couple recounts the series of events that led to their late arrival: Ted had a court date because Barney ran a marathon because Marshall broke his toe because Robin startled him because Lily was shopping for a wedding dress because Ted and Robin ate hot dogs because Ted found a lucky penny. Whew.
As I look back on the series, many high point stand out for me, but I was surprised how many were captured in this single episode. Barney’s subway collapse and Robin and Lily’s car-alarm chorus are two of the great moments in HIMYM history. “Lucky Penny” was situated in the middle of the greatest run of the series, the second season that came to form the heart of the show.
If you or someone you know has never seen HIMYM, “Lucky Penny” is a perfect introductory episode. It is a self-contained story that subtly communicates all the background information a new viewer might need to understand the characters and plot. Further, “Lucky Penny” has nearly all the elements that make HIMYM great: character development, intersecting plot lines, non-linear storytelling, and a perspective of how the events of the episode fit into the overarching story arc that led Ted to The Mother. Indeed, we learn at the end of the episode that had Ted made his flight and gotten the job he wanted, he would have had to move to Chicago three months later, taking him away from the future love of his life.
If there is one characteristic of HIMYM missing from this episode, it is a powerful emotional moment. The series knows how to do these especially well, from the blue French horn to the several break-ups throughout the series to the difficult realities of new life and abrupt death. In retrospect, we learn just how emotionally poignant the episode was, though. Ted never forgets how important this series of events was to the course of his life, commemorating that lucky coin by naming his first-born child Penny.
There are two types of sitcoms: those that stuff as many jokes as they can into 30 minutes of television and fade into oblivion, and those that use comedy to construct human stories we connect to. “Lucky Penny” captures the zeitgeist of high-quality, mid-2000s sitcom television.
Best Line: “Here’s how you run a marathon. Step one: you start running … There is no step two.”
Best Cutaway: Marshall’s marathon training
Mother Lore: Ted and The Mother name their daughter Penny. Also, as told by Future Ted in this episode, “But that’s not what happened. They didn’t reschedule. They hired someone else. And as it turned out, three months later, that guy ended up having to relocate to Chicago. Kids, funny thing about destiny, I thought I was destined to get that job. But I was wrong. My destiny was to stay in New York. Because if I hadn’t, I never would have met your mother.”