'How I Met Your Mother' Season 7, Episode 22 Recap - 'Good Crazy'

Like Marshall in one of his middle of the night fake baby care drills, this episode seems a little sleepy. Of course, considering the cliffhanger ending, maybe it was all just leading up to the fireworks next week...

The title is "Good Crazy," and three of our protagonists are having minor nervous breakdowns as a result of their individual craziness. Barney's is probably the least complicated to explain: he doesn't like Quinn's job much. As he puts it, "I love that you're a stripper but I hate that you're a stripper."

He even goes so far as to fire one of his employees in order to give Quinn a new job that conveniently pays exactly what she makes while stripping (plus dental), but without the side effect of running into guys named "Dirty Larry" on the street who promise to wear very thin sweatpants the next time they see her at the strip club.

But Quinn isn't having it: she likes her job, and she doesn't need to be "rescued." For now, it looks like their relationship is on the rocks. In the bad way, not in the delicious glass of scotch way.

Speaking of scotch, Ted keeps seeing Robin everywhere, which is bad because things are still pretty awkward. It's also bad because he's not literally seeing her everywhere, he's seeing her face on other people while he's talking to them. That can't be healthy.

Barney convinces him to find a "palate cleanser" through online dating, and while the first two dates are disasters, the third seems to go well enough (despite him still seeing Robin in all three of them). The "palate cleansing" doesn't work, though, and Ted is left to go find Robin and make things right.

Marshall's crazy is about the baby, as he's really getting into the whole parenting thing a bit early. He has a practice watermelon, and he's even waking up every three hours at night to get accustomed to the sleep schedule of a new parent.

All of this is driving Lily nuts, so she tricks him into thinking that they're going to a "baby boot camp," when in fact Barney is taking Marshall to Atlantic City to unwind. There, he convinces Marshall to take one full hour of "bro time," during which they turn off their phones and Marshall gets so drunk that he needs subtitles.

Unfortunately, while that's going on, Lily is going into labor. It looks like next week will have Barney rushing a way-too-drunk Marshall back to New York to be there when the baby arrives.

Here's the problem with all that: it all seems a bit tired. Barney and Quinn's storyline has been stretched a bit, and the jealousy thing isn't exactly new territory for sitcoms. Neither is the whole "oh no, everything's going wrong while she's going into labor" thing. The redeeming storyline is Ted's, but it didn't come to much of a resolution.

And in all of this, the jokes felt very flat tonight. The ones that did land, landed softly, and the rest of the sort of whiffed. The "condolence high five" was the only good gag of the episode, though Ted's Batman-laden train of logic gets an honorable mention.