How I Met Your Mother: 100 Legendary Episodes & Counting

Somewhere in the dead of January 2008, I found myself out of college for almost a year with my existence in a bit of a rut. Living at home, so-so job, far flung friends, and no significant other to speak of. Not the coolest way to be 24. But then my little brother gave me a deep dive introduction into the first two seasons of How I Met Your Mother and I discovered a charmingly fantastic and romantic world with just enough grounding to feel real, a world where it’s ok to not be sure what you’re doing with your life, even your late 20s and early 30s, as long as you stay optimistic and have a few good friends to commiserate with. Admittedly, that’s probably the same way post-grad quarterlifers in the 90s felt about the early days of Friends, but the feeling was new to me, dammit! Since then, it has been a weekly delight to drop in on Ted Mosby (Josh Radnor), brainy hopeless romantic extraordinaire, as he looks for love in NYC with four of his closest pals.

One thing that sets HIMYM apart from the pack is its novel premise: everything we see is a flashback from 2030 as Ted tells his early teenaged kids the increasingly meandering story of how he, well… check the title. This has given the show loads of creative freedom to flash backwards and forwards in the life of each character from childhood to old age and sometimes even to pull big crafty plot reveals out of thin air thanks to selective gaps in Ted’s memory. Joining Ted on his quest to find The One are Robin (Cobie Smulders), an up and coming newscaster with an awesomely shameful past as a Canadian pop star, Lily & Marshall (Alyson Hannigan & Jason Segel), happy newlyweds Ted’s known since college, and Barney (Neil Patrick Harris), a sharp dressed womanizer (over 200 girls & counting) who may or may not ever bother to search for something deeper out of life.

This week, the show suited up for a legend..wait for it…dary! 100th episode that brought Ted closer than ever to The Mother and gave NPH a chance to put his increasingly notable song and dance skills on display in the most amazing musical number I have seen in a very long time. We’re talking a cast of 50+ and music & lyrics to make Andrew Lloyd Webber weep, all in service of describing Barney’s love of suits. If that’s not awesome, I just don’t know what is. On the Mother front, Ted meets Cindy (The OC‘s adorable & talented Rachel Bilson, who really really deserves her own starring gig), a lovely Phd candidate at the university where he teaches architecture. But much to both their dismay, she flinches at the chance of violating student/teacher hookup policy, and Ted ultimately finds himself more attracted to her barely seen (oh, that ankle!) roommate who we are told with absolute certainty is indeed The Mother. It’s yet to be seen if Ted meeting her face to face will signal the end of the series or perhaps just the beginning of the final season, and I can see why some fans just get too sick of the writers yanking their chain about the whole Mother matter, but I couldn’t care less and I know I’ll be laughing, smiling, and cheering on the gang for as long as CBS & America will have them.

Season 5, Episode 12: Girls vs. Suits (originally aired January 11, 2010)

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Photographs courtesy of CBS and Cliff Lipson.