Episode 'How I Met Your Mother' Season 6, Episode 18 - 'A Change of Heart' Recap

Last night's "How I Met Your Mother" was all about the heart, literally and figuratively. After Marshall's dad passes away, the whole gang decides to get their hearts checked, except for Barney.

Is it because he's so afraid of emotional commitment that he doesn't even want to know what his heart is doing? Nope. He's just scared.

The doctor has him wear a heart rate monitor for 24 hours to keep track of any irregularities.

The checkup isn't the only thing Barney is scared of, either. He finds himself falling for Nora, despite his many "one rules," and when Nora drops a big bomb on him, he actually has a moment of cardiac arrest: she wants to get married and have kids. Bonus points to director Pamela Fryman for the use of the EKG, it's a nice touch and makes a big impact later.

Barney, of course, plays along (the exception to the "one rule" is always "unless she's hot", and Nora certainly is), but watching him you get the feeling that he might believe what he's saying, somewhere deep down. Such is the talent that NPH brings to this show.

Meanwhile, Robin starts seeing a guy who goes by Scooby, and it turns out he's a dog. No, not like a hound dog, cryin' all the time, not like a rascal who mistreats women...like, a real dog. The sight gags are easy to take, but the long string of dog puns? Prepare yourselves, people.

Later, the gang makes brownies using a bag of "sandwiches" (wink wink) from Scooby, but the real focus of the episode is Barney, who finds himself falling for Nora even more. He even agrees to meet her parents, which is the one "one rule" with no exception. But when it's time for Barney to take things up to Nora's apartment, he blows his cover.

When Lily finds out what he did, Barney gets a good smack (two, actually), and Lily reveals to him that he wasn't lying when he said all those things about getting married, he lied about lying. Here's where the heart rate monitor comes back into play: the doctor reveals from the EKG readout that when Barney saw Nora, his heart "literally skipped a beat". Yes, it's a little overly sentimental, but come on. That's cute.

So Barney takes off to find Nora, confess his feelings, and meet her parents. The meeting goes incredibly well, until we see that it was all in Barney's head (another nice bit of editing by Fryman). False alarm on the Barney love, I guess. Will Nora return and make Barney doubt himself even more? Let's hope so.

There was some really nice depth to Barney's character that came out of this episode, a great addition to the show considering Barney is traditionally a pretty one-dimensional character. Things are really getting good as this season wraps up!