Episode 'How I Met Your Mother' Season 6, Episode 19 - 'Legendaddy' Recap

Guest star John Lithgow is here to play Barney's long-lost father. So, after 30 years of radio silence, is Barney upset about his dad being gone? Heck no! Barney's dad is "Legendaddy," he's officially the coolest dad ever.

 

Or is he? While Barney told the gang that his dad manages tours and is a total ladies' man, it turns out that he's actually a kind of dorky driving instructor from White Plains.

 

It's bad enough for Barney to see how lame his dad is, but then he invites Barney over to dinner to meet his new family, Barney loses it. He starts by picking on his half-brother and finishes by taking a basketball hoop.

 

Lithgow really puts on a comedy showcase in this ep ("I guess you could say I'm the LeBron James of drapes"), and the dramatic scenes between him and Neil Patrick Harris are surprisingly powerful. Barney has really advanced by leaps and bounds as a character in the past few weeks: first we saw him open up with Nora, and now we get a glimpse of his issues with his father.

 

Other highlights include the gang discussing each other's "knowledge gaps," as we discover that Lily has no aim, Robin thinks the North Pole doesn't exist, and Ted pronounces chameleon "cham-ah-lee-on." Marshall's testing of the gang's hyper-tolerance of him also makes a great montage: no Marshall, "The Phantom Menace" was not the best "Star Wars."