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.

And I Don't Mean Rebecca

Did I think it coincidence when, after posting about Robin Sparkles yesterday on Facebook, I found sneak previews of the last Robin Sparkles debut video for the February 4 How I Met Your Mother episode? A little. I’d not given the pop singer a lot of credit (maybe through the haze of other fad pop singers…sorry) lately.
I suddenly feel inspired to change that.

The Under the Tunes episodes begin in the season two episode Slap Bet, where Robin confesses her fear of malls—but never explains why. As it turns out, her Canadian alter ego attributed her first song to malls: Let’s Go to the Mall.

Lamenting travelling cross-country as a sixteen-year-old pop star from the 90’s, Robin suffered from her mall PTSD in silence.

Barney uncovered her secret then, and he uncovered her other “secrets” since. He discovered two more appearances by the then-famed Robin Sparkles, Superstar. Her sequential, though not as successful, music video Sandcastles in the Sand featured her ex-boyfriend and a handful of other close acquaintances. This akin to her next job, guest-starring on a famed Canadian kid’s show called Space Teens with her childhood friend, Jessica Glitter. The two used math to solve space-issue problems and save the day!

Alternating seasons for the delayed discoveries—seasons two, four, and six—it’s fitting for the span of time that, now, Barney Stinson is so determined to find the last remaining Robin Sparkles episode.
Best get all those skeletons out of the closet before tying the knot. Certainly, if Robin trusted Barney as her fiancé, she wouldn’t be as bothered by his goal. Or would she?

Looking at the sneak image myself, I see a mockery of the stereotypical pop star “fall” on the horizon. The age when every childhood actress develops into adulthood and goes through changes that, for good or for ill, changes them.
Seeing as Robin is currently short a singing career, I’m assuming hers was “ill.”