'How I Met Your Mother' Season 7, Episode 20 Recap - 'Trilogy Time'

"How I Met Your Mother" has always played with time, but there was something especially nice aesthetically about the time-jumping in this episode. Perhaps it was the threes?

We start off very high-brow, learning that Barney has been going outside to fart every night at 8pm in order to avoid doing so in front of Quinn. That's not the biggest problem, though: Barney is refusing to let Quinn move any of her stuff in, not even her coffee mugs, because Barney is Barney and he's resistant to change.

He's quite the opposite of Ted and Marshall, who wish for change every three years. Their dreaming about the future always happens when they sit down to watch the Star Wars Trilogy, which they've done every three years since they were back in college in 2003.

Thus we visit the years of 2003, 2006, 2009, 2012 and 2015, both in Ted and Marshall's idealized daydreams and in reality. The constants are these: Marshall always wants to have an awesome mustache, be a successful lawyer and have impregnated Lily multiple times. Ted wants to be a totally fancy and successful architecht (after he gives up on the band, that is), and have met his soulmate, who is thrilled to be married to him.

But of course, each time we see the reality, things are never quite as expected: Marshall can't grow facial hair, Ted's relationships continue to fail, Lily leaves Marshall at a point, Robin doesn't commit to Ted like he hoped. It's only when Ted panicks about where he might be in 2015 that we see that things will turn around: in fact, Ted's daughter will be born by then. There you go, folks, he'll have to meet The Mother within the next three seasons!

Barney is another constant, as all he hopes to be doing through this hypothetical decade is to be sleeping with beautiful random women. But when he looks forward to 2015, he finds that he doesn't want that anymore... he wants to be with Quinn. So he smashes his coffee mugs, accepts hers, and they fart in front of each other. They're a real couple now.

Barney also accidentally drops in some marriage talk, so it's looking more and more (especially with so few episodes left) that the marriage at the end of the season will indeed be between Barney and Quinn. Unless Robin interferes...

Notes & Quotes:

- "Isn't that right, honey? Oh, that's right, I'm alone."

- Ted and Marshall's ideal futures include Gore and Dean being elected president.

- "And then they never saw her again. Wazzzaaaaaap!"

- Back boobs. Only Barney would think of back boobs.