How I Met Your Mother” likes to introduce its own lingo for relationships, friendship and life. There was the Lemon Law. The Crazy/Hot Scale. The Bro Code. And now we have the reacher and the settler, which almost sounds like the name of an indie movie like “The Squid and the Whale.”

The reacher and the settler comes into play after Marshall (Jason Segel) reveals that all the crazy stories he’s been telling about his co-worker Jenkins are actually about a woman. Unfortunately, the sight gag of having a man perform the stories, which included downing a jar of maraschino cherries and going topless, and then a woman was kind of lessened by the news that Amanda Peet was guest starring in the episode. From the start, I figured, as I’m sure many of you did, that Jenkins was actually Peet.

Given the slightly scandalous nature of the stories, Marshall avoided pronouns and just let Lily (Alyson Hannigan) continue to assume that Jenkins was a he. After hearing how Marshall had bonded with Jenkins over the Vikings and some town that Marshall’s dead grandpa haunts, Ted (Josh Radnor) was a little angry.

“If you tell me you have a thing for a woman that is not your wife, I will drag you outside and kick your ass,” he says. I will help you, Ted! Let’s never go the adulterous route with Marshall and Lily. Not that I think they will.
Thankfully, Marshall just thinks of Jenkins as a big brother, but he still freaks out when Lily decides to surprise him at work. Peet hilariously pretends to be a French woman investigating a cheese problem, but Marshall, who’s never been very good at keeping his cool, blurts out that she’s Jenkins. Lily has no reaction. She’s not jealous because, as Robin (Cobie Smulders) and Ted explain, she’s a settler and Marshall’s a reacher. She’s out of his league and he could never do better than her, which is kind of an ouch thing to hear from your friends.

Marshall is denial about his reacher state and sets out to make Lily jealous, which works out a little too well when Jenkins plants one on him. Too bad Lily doesn’t believe it happened. That is until Jenkins tells her about it. Slowly, Lily begins to hand over her phone, scarf and earrings to Barney before defending her man with a right hook.

In another case of denial, Robin thinks she’s a celebrity with Ted’s students when she gets recognized at a college bar. Ted seemed a little harsh, which seems to be a trend in this episode, when joking about how no one watches her show. But Ted’s entire class does watch it. They just do it while playing a drinking game with one simple rule: Drink when Robin says, “But, um.” When Robin finds out about it, she decides to “but, um” them into a drunken stupor by repeating the words over and over. Ted’s class the next day basically turns into nap time as everyone, Ted included, nurses their hangover.

Readers, do you agree that Marshall’s a reacher and Lily’s a settler? Did you enjoy Peet’s guest spot? And what rules should be added to the Robin Scherbatsky drinking game?

How I Met Your Mother” likes to introduce its own lingo for relationships, friendship and life. There was the Lemon Law. The Crazy/Hot Scale. The Bro Code. And now we have the reacher and the settler, which almost sounds like the name of an indie movie like “The Squid and the Whale.”

The reacher and the settler comes into play after Marshall (Jason Segel) reveals that all the crazy stories he’s been telling about his co-worker Jenkins are actually about a woman. Unfortunately, the sight gag of having a man perform the stories, which included downing a jar of maraschino cherries and going topless, and then a woman was kind of lessened by the news that Amanda Peet was guest starring in the episode. From the start, I figured, as I’m sure many of you did, that Jenkins was actually Peet.

Given the slightly scandalous nature of the stories, Marshall avoided pronouns and just let Lily (Alyson Hannigan) continue to assume that Jenkins was a he. After hearing how Marshall had bonded with Jenkins over the Vikings and some town that Marshall’s dead grandpa haunts, Ted (Josh Radnor) was a little angry.

“If you tell me you have a thing for a woman that is not your wife, I will drag you outside and kick your ass,” he says. I will help you, Ted! Let’s never go the adulterous route with Marshall and Lily. Not that I think they will.
Thankfully, Marshall just thinks of Jenkins as a big brother, but he still freaks out when Lily decides to surprise him at work. Peet hilariously pretends to be a French woman investigating a cheese problem, but Marshall, who’s never been very good at keeping his cool, blurts out that she’s Jenkins. Lily has no reaction. She’s not jealous because, as Robin (Cobie Smulders) and Ted explain, she’s a settler and Marshall’s a reacher. She’s out of his league and he could never do better than her, which is kind of an ouch thing to hear from your friends.

Marshall is denial about his reacher state and sets out to make Lily jealous, which works out a little too well when Jenkins plants one on him. Too bad Lily doesn’t believe it happened. That is until Jenkins tells her about it. Slowly, Lily begins to hand over her phone, scarf and earrings to Barney before defending her man with a right hook.

In another case of denial, Robin thinks she’s a celebrity with Ted’s students when she gets recognized at a college bar. Ted seemed a little harsh, which seems to be a trend in this episode, when joking about how no one watches her show. But Ted’s entire class does watch it. They just do it while playing a drinking game with one simple rule: Drink when Robin says, “But, um.” When Robin finds out about it, she decides to “but, um” them into a drunken stupor by repeating the words over and over. Ted’s class the next day basically turns into nap time as everyone, Ted included, nurses their hangover.

Readers, do you agree that Marshall’s a reacher and Lily’s a settler? Did you enjoy Peet’s guest spot? And what rules should be added to the Robin Scherbatsky drinking game?

Marshall took center stage as he mused everyone with stories about Jenkins, his new co-worker. Whether it’s eating a whole jar of maraschino cherries, stripping in a bar or peeing outside the cab window, stories about Jenkins seemed to entertain the whole gang. The only problem was everyone but Lily knew that Jenkins is a woman. And it didn’t help that she came in the form of Amanda Peet.

When Lily found out the truth about Jenkins, however, she was pretty cool about it. Marshall, on the other hand, couldn’t accept the fact that he couldn’t make his wife jealous. The problem got worse as Jenkins kissed Marshall at work since she was so wasted from playing the Robin Scherbatsky drinking game. Yes, there’s a drinking game about Robin and I’ll tell you more about it in a bit.

As expected, Marshall cringed and came clean to Lily, who thought her husband was just making up tall tales to make her jealous. In his final attempt to make Lily jealous, Marshall told Jenkins to talk to Lily about the kiss, and it worked because hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

The other portion of “Jenkins” was just as hilarious. It’s about Ted discovering the real reason why everyone in his class watches Robin’s show. Evidently, college students weren’t interested in the news nor were they interested in seeing hot Robin. Robin’s show airs so early in the morning that students are still in the bar playing a drinking game they’ve come up with every time Robin says “but um,” and apparently she says it a lot.

All in all, I enjoyed this Barney-less episode. Did you?

Neil Patrick Harris and Amanda Peet from 2012

 

 

by Marc Malkin

Amanda Peet may be getting a call soon from the folks over at How I Met Your Mother.

Neil Patrick Harris says he’s itching for the 2012 star to guest on the CBS show…

“I have a bit of a boner for Amanda lately,” Harris told me last night at GQ’s Men of The Year party at the Chateau Marmont. “You know, she’s never guest-starred on any shows before and plus, she’s already worked with Jason Segal once on [the upcoming flick] Gulliver’s Travels.”

Perhaps HIMYM producers should enlist Segel to make the first call. Harris laughed, “It’s always easier for us to try and entice people who have worked with other castmembers.”

As for being named Trailblazer of the Year by GQ, Harris said he’s, of course, honored, but especially thrilled with the photo they ran of him looking like a very dapper magician in a velvet suit (top hat and bunnies included!). “It’s all magic-based and very Dean Martin-y,” he said. “It’s one of my favorite pictures.”

Fellow honorees at last night’s soiree included Clint Eastwood, Tom Ford, J.J. Abrams, Kobe Bryant, Inglourious Basterds star Christoph Waltz and that hunky tall glass of vampire blood Alexander Skarsgård, along with January Jones, Shenae Grimes, Hunter Parrish, Chris O’Donnell, Eli Roth and Ben McKenzie.