'How I Met Your Mother' Season 7, Episode 8 Recap - 'The Slutty Pumpkin Returns'

The theme for Ted this season seems to be his past catching up to him. Already he ran into one girl from season one (Victoria), and things didn't turn out quite as he hoped. This time, Ted met up with another girl from his past: the Slutty Pumpkin.

Like Linus in the pumpkin patch, Ted has been returning to the same party for the last ten years in hopes of seeing the girl that got away, but she never showed up.

But in a happy accident, Ted walks by a costume shop that has a slutty pumpkin costume in the window, and very fortunately for Ted, the owner of the shop keeps a record of all renters.

So Ted knocks on Naomi's door, and sees the girl he fell for at that party ten years ago (played by Katie Holmes). She's lovely, they have a romantic dinner on the rooftop where they met, but there's a problem: they have absolutely no chemistry together. The kissing is all wrong, the cuddling is all wrong, and the sex is wayyyy wrong.

Moral of the story, don't say "I love you" to someone that you have no feelings for. Important lesson, kids.

So, how did Katie do? Rather well, I thought. She had some goofy stuff to do, including singing Barenaked Ladies songs, but she pulled it off.

That being said, the most fun to be had was in Barney and Robin's storyline, which had Barney coming to the realization that he was (gasp!) a quarter Canadian. Robin found no end to her delight in this news, and took the opportunity to tease Barney endlessly... until he showed up at the party dressed as Apollo Creed instead of Dudley Do-Right.

In the overall scheme of things, did we learn anything? Not really, no: we get that Barney and Robin can be really cute together. Interesting that neither Nora nor Kevin showed up in this episode, though.

Lily's "pregnancy brain" storyline had its moments, including that pretty funny exchange with her and Marshall using sexual language about pinball machine placement. But really, this was Ted/Robin/Barney's show this week.

Other notes:

-"No! That's not true! That's impossible!" Barney's "Star Wars" obsession remains strong.

-Barney singing "O Canada" into the mirror. Priceless.

-The Barney vs. Barney fight at the end. Making fun of Canadians will never get old.