'How I Met Your Mother' Season 9, Episode 4: Where's the Mother?

"How I Met Your Mother" is inching closer to Barney and Robin's wedding, as well as the end of the series, but the momentum that seemed to be building toward the series finale lost a significant amount of steam in the season's third week. For the second week in a row, viewers didn't get any closer to learning more about the series' reason for being, the elusive "mother."

In this week's episode—technically the season's fourth episode, thanks to the two-episode premiere week—Barney and Ted try to negotiate a make-up after Barney reveals he witnessed the intimate moment between Ted and Robin at the Central Park carousel at the end of last season. Ted argues that the incident was merely a "weird moment" between friends, while Barney claims that it was a clear violation of his infamous "Bro Code."

Marshall makes a prolonged appearance in the episode via Skype on an iPad, while Lily and Robin embark on a side plot in which Lily encourages Robin to cultivate new female friendships.

The glaring missing piece in the episode is the absence of Cristin Milioti's still-unnamed mother character, who we haven't seen since premiere week. There's no guarantee that Milioti will appear next week, either; a preview for the episode only teases another poker game among the gang, which was a central event in this week's episode, too.