'How I Met Your Mother' Season 9, Episode 16 'How Your Mother Met Me' Recap

This week's episode of "How I Met Your Mother" was a knitting party, as a multitude of loose plot threads that have been hanging for years were pulled together. More significantly, the episode was our first prolonged chance to get to know the Mother.

After a modified open featuring the Mother (Cristin Milioti), the episode settles into a recap of the last eight years of her life. We learn that just when Ted met Robin, the Mother's serious boyfriend died, dumping her into a years-long grieving process.

From there, we follow her through her college career, her ups and downs with her band, and her stunted romantic life. We also get a look at all the places where her life intersected with Ted's, this time from her point of view. We see the adventures of the yellow umbrella, the St. Patrick's Day party at which the pair could have met, the time that Ted dated her roommate, and the time that Ted accidentally taught her Econ class at Columbia. And we get a quick review of the events that led the Mother to Farhampton; we knew most of this already, but we got some new details about why she's ready, finally, to meet Ted.

All of the summary seemed rushed, and you could argue that it should have happened 15 episodes ago, but it's good to see that, with only a handful of episodes left, the series is finally getting serious about its conclusion. And Milioti's rendition of "La Vie en Rose" at the end of the episode was priceless.