'How I Met Your Mother' Season 9, Episode 9: 'Platonish' Recap

This week's episode of "How I Met Your Mother" finally began to connect the dots in the mostly blank story of how Ted met his future wife, even if the episode left the mother-to-be still frustratingly nameless. We still don't know how Ted met his kids' mother, but now we know how Barney met her.

The episode unfolded almost completely in flashbacks, as Robin, Lily and Barney explained a funny misadventure they'd had six months before the weekend of the Farhampton wedding. Lily and Robin had bet Barney that they could issue a challenge that he couldn't meet, and Barney gladly accepted their challenging challenge, which involved getting the phone numbers of random women in increasingly odd situations.

Meanwhile, Marshall and Ted debated, at a Harlem Globetrotters game, whether or not Ted had a platonic relationship with Robin, or if he still harbored a secret love for her.

Barney's downfall in his challenge came when he encountered a woman who refused to fall for his ridiculous seduction techniques and who managed to convince him that he was ready to commit to a relationship with Robin. The mysterious and convincing stranger was, of course, Ted's future wife (Cristin Milioti), but Barney never got her name or saw her again before the Farhampton weekend.

The revelation that Ted's eventual soulmate is partly responsible for Barney and Robin ending up together—thereby freeing Ted to move on with his life—is a nice bit of plotting, and hopefully it's the first step in drawing the series to a satisfying close.