'How I Met Your Mother' Season 8, Episode 13: 'Band or DJ' Recap

Barney and Robin are engaged!

Unfortunately, not everyone is happy. Marvin will not stop crying. He hasn’t pooped in three days. Ted reminds Lily he is eating chili, so she refers to what’s missing from the diaper as confetti.

Robin comes in, and Lily finds out Ted is going to help with the wedding. Lily gets deeply jealous that he has taken over the planning.

They ask about Barney, whose panic attacks are coming further and further apart. Barney, however, has not asked Robin’s father for permission to marry her.

So she and Barney took her terrifying father out for lunch. Only something isn’t right… he’s hugging Robin, and wearing a Hawaiian shirt. He’s “fun” now.

“No child should have to see a parent go through that.”

Barney comes in and discusses which band should play at the wedding, and Robin tells everyone to put a hold on the wedding planning. Her father denied Barney’s permission to marry his daughter, before he even asked.

Barney reassures her he knows how to be persuasive. He goes to see her dad again—this time with dyed hair, because no grown man has blond hair apparently. When he wanted to marry Robin’s mother, he killed a bear… that’s just good manners in Canada.

Marvin still won’t poop. Robin thinks she might as well accept her father’s friend request on Facebook, but everyone warns her not to. She goes back to Barney’s, where her father is trying to convince Barney to shoot a rabbit. Robin has bigger things to worry about—her father’s Facebook page says he is married.

She tells him that she is already engaged… and since she wasn’t invited to his wedding, he’s not invited to hers.

Lily calls the band that she wants that is booked to see if she can talk the person who has them out of it, and finds out Ted reserved them so Lily couldn’t. Ted gets a little flustered about Robin’s wedding. Lily takes him outside to talk about it. Ted thinks back to all the times that he’s been hurt… the text message from Robin saying she was engaged was like every pain in his life times a million. Lily gives him an out—sometimes she wishes she weren’t a mom.

Ted admits he thinks Robin should be with him, not Barney.

Inside, Marshall notes that Marvin’s diaper is still empty. Marvin begins to smile… and confetti goes all over Marshall, multiple times.

Barney brings Robin’s father in to apologize to Robin. He does… and adds that he will divorce his new wife Carol. Robin tells him she just wants a normal dad, who will come to the wedding, and dance and smile. He agrees to dance to Cheeseburger in Paradise if Carol sings it.

Robin is just impressed that Barney got an apology out of her father.

Four months later—Ted is smug that the band cancelled. He runs into his ex, Cindy (Rachel Bilson), who is a lesbian, on the subway, where she tells him that her ex roommate, the bass player (with the fascinating ankles), is in a really good wedding band.

Flash forward to Robin dancing at her wedding with her father. Ted notices the woman playing bass in the band (no visual yet!), and perks up. It is the Mother.