Honeydip

“They were right. You can’t force destiny. If it’s gonna happen, it’s gonna happen.”

--Future Ted

Did ‘destiny’ really happen for Ted this episode? “Subway girl” might be his last chance before he finds The Mother…unless she is the mother.

First, the Dobler-Domer theory: if both parties like each other mutually, a romantic gesture becomes ‘charming.’ But if only one person likes the other, the same romantic gesture becomes ‘creepy.’

While Ted’s friends find his stumble-upon Subway girl’s efforts to find him of the latter variety, Ted can’t let go of the attention. Robin, surprisingly, sides with Ted on this one…for an equally surprising reason.
Rather than fleeing a teen-idol stalker, Robin found herself crossing into Domer territory over a guy, during her Robin Sparkles years. She agreed the line indeed stretched thin, to which Barney Stinson decided to do a bit of investigating on his own.

Hence, Barney hops a plane to Canada in search of her old obsession, and Ted finds Subway-girl, Jeanette’s, compulsion to ‘finally met’ him lovable. Despite fires and alarms and backup legal pads.

“That day was known in music history as the day ‘grunge’ was born.”

On the day Robin Sparkles lost it, every Canadian can name which donut they were eating and where they selected the confection. Barney’s search results turned up the golden episode of Underneath the Tunes, Canada’s answer to VH1, where he discovers the name behind Robin Daggers’ final hit, “P.S. I Love You”: Paul Schafer.
We have to remember, this was the nineties.

As it turns out, everyone had his or her stalker whims and destiny confessions. Barney sees he was ‘obsessed’ to fly all the way to Canada and interview Robin’s exes; Marshall learns Lily went pounding down doors to meet him after college orientation.

And Ted? Future Ted leaves us with this last cliff-hanging quip: that everyone makes one mistake before meeting the person they’re going to marry. His was Jeanette.

And Jeanette is the last woman he meets before he meets The Mother.

Until next Monday.