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Right Place, Right Time
HIMYM episode 4x22 (86)
Right place right time
First aired:
May 4, 2009
Director:
Pamela Fryman
Writer:
Stephen Lloyd
Barney's Blog

Images (8)

Ted recounts the series of events that led to him being in the right place at the right time for a life-changing encounter. Barney prepares for his 200th conquest and Marshall abuses the Graphics Department at GNB.


Recap[]

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Future Ted describes to his children a day near the beginning of his struggling solo architecture career, where a set of circumstances began his journey to meet their mother. The cold open shows Ted walking down his street with a yellow umbrella, stopping at a newsstand, giving some cash to a homeless man, and stopping at a crosswalk before a woman's hand reaches over and touches his shoulder.

Going backwards, Future Ted describes his desperation when he began doing solo architect work. Ted takes a job from a chain restaurant company to design a building shaped like a Stetson hat. When he complains to Robin about his lack of inspiration, she tells him to get out of the house and clear his head. He agrees to go out for a bagel, and Robin tells him to take an umbrella because her station's clown weatherman said it would rain. As he comes down the steps, he turns right, but then turns left.

Ted explains that a few days ago, Robin vomited into a local woman's silk purse on her show because of food poisoning she got from one of Ted's favorite restaurants, Schlegel's Bagels. Ted turns the other way outside his apartment to go to his second favorite bagel place.

At MacLaren's, Barney shows Ted his copy of "Bro's Life", and notes that he will be going out with a supermodel featured in the issue (Petra Petrova). Barney declares that he is about to meet his goal of having sex with 200 women. He credits the number to an argument he had back in junior high. A bully named Matthew Panning taunted the young Barney, saying he had been with "a hundred girls," and Barney retorted that he would be with 200 women some day.

Unfortunately, as Robin checks over his list, she notices he has listed a woman twice, leaving Barney at woman number 198, not 199. He runs to his gym and sleeps with a female bodybuilder to get him up to 199, but when he returns to the bar, Robin tells him that the list uses a number twice, so the bodybuilder was actually number 200. Ted stops at the newsstand to check out the bodybuilding magazine "Muscle Sexxy" that Barney's number 200 is featured in.

During the discussion of Barney's 200 sexual conquests (which most of the other characters cite as "too many"), Marshall takes the conversation as an opportunity to take out some professionally-made charts, showing Barney's low "batting average" noting that only 1.2 percent of the women he approaches actually sleep with him. This leads into Marshall's addiction to the charts that the GNB graphics department make up for him, including a list of presidents' last names by order of innuendo and a Venn diagram based on Simon and Garfunkel's "Cecilia". Eventually, the gang pulls out the Intervention Banner, causing Marshall to pull out a chart to refute their claims of sagging interest in the charts. After the intervention, Marshall discovers the gang threw away all his charts, including the ones necessary for an important meeting on tax shelters.

Ted agrees to retrieve the charts, but finds them in the possession of an eccentric homeless man called Milt, who agrees to sell them for one million dollars. Ted negotiates to pay him on a dollar-a-day basis. After stopping at the newsstand, Ted crosses the street to give the man a dollar, and continues down the street to a crosswalk. As he waits he is tapped on the shoulder by a woman's hand. Future Ted talks about how fate is a funny thing, and that has control over your life, which is scary, but also beautiful, and that if anything had happened differently, the children wouldn't be there. He says that if he knew where all those circumstances were leading him, he would have gone back and thanked everyone involved, and in a montage Ted imagines going back and hugging everyone in the episode. The camera then turns to reveal that Stella is the woman behind Ted at the crosswalk.

Afterwards, Barney is at the bar, sitting with Matthew Panning, gloating over his success. The adult Panning is amazed and horrified that Barney has spent his adult life outdoing a lie he told in middle school, but after he leaves, Barney tears up the list, stating that he wonders what the rest of his life would be about now. He then turns to see Robin at the bar and she smiles at him.

Continuity[]

  • While Barney is seen showing the gang his list of previous sexual partners, which he mentions showing Ted in Little Boys.
  • Barney's gym, Total Rip Fitness, was previously seen in The Yips.
  • The intervention banner makes another appearance.
  • Ted sees Stella for the first time since gang followed her to Tony's apartment in Happily Ever After.
  • Marshall is seen delivering his fish list stand-up routine in order to buy Ted time to get him his charts. The gang discusses him doing the routine at an open mike night in Old King Clancy.
  • Barney is seen freaking out when Robin jokes about throwing up due to being pregnant. He has a pregnancy scare in Not a Father's Day.
  • Barney notes that Robin is "suspiciously quiet during this conversation about number of sex partners". Her number is high enough to dismay Ted when she tells him while dating, as shown in Slap Bet.
  • Barney requests "the highest of fives."

Future References (Contains Spoilers)[]

  • Barney having slept with more than 200 women is referenced again in Perfect Week, Unfinished, and The Perfect Cocktail. He crosses another milestone by Knight Vision.
  • Barney having had multiple pregnancy scares is referenced in Last Cigarette Ever and False Positive.
  • The low "batting average" Marshall calculates for Barney is consistent with Lily's statements in Perfect Week.
  • Unlike Ted and Marshall, Robin does not say that she is disgusted with Barney's number of sexual conquests. In Knight Vision she tells Barney that she loves his promiscuity.

Gallery[]

For a listing of all images on the wiki tagged as being from this episode, see Category:Right Place, Right Time images.

Memorable Quotes[]

Robin: Someone already put it up on YouTube?
Barney: Yeah...Someone. (looks away)

Barney: I request the highest of fives.

Marshall: This is a pie chart describing my favorite bars, and this is a bar graph describing my favorite pies.
Marshall talks about his charts

Ted: Okay Milt you win... I'm going to give you one million dollars.
Milt: Urinating...
Ted: The problem is, the ATM...
Milt: The Alien Time Machine.
Ted: Yeah, the Alien Time Machine, has a withdrawal limit. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to give you one dollar a day, for a million days.
Milt: That's, uh... That's 2700 years.
Ted: Yeah.
Milt: Deal!

Notes and Trivia[]

Goofs and Errors[]

  • At the beginning of this episode Future Ted tells us this episode was set in May 2009 despite occurring before Ted's 31st birthday which has already been established as being on April 25th.
  • In The Bracket, Barney claims not to have a list of all of the girls he has slept with. However, in this episode, he has a list. Although, as Barney is a pathological liar, it is likely that he didn't tell the gang about the list, so he could show them the scrapbook. It is also possible that the list was created after The Bracket.
  • Marshall's chart and math are presumed on Barney having a sexual history going back to when he was approximately 16. However, it was established in First Time In New York that Barney was a virgin until he was 23. Barney was born as a Scorpio in 1976 meaning he was 32 in this episode, giving him 9 years of sexual activity. This does conclude the figure to be a little over 2.1%.
  • When Ted is walking down the stairs of the apartment, the MacLaren's Pub sign was missing.

Allusions and Outside References[]

  • Marshall's Cecilia chart is a reference to a Simon and Garfunkel song of the same name. The opening lyrics are: "Cecilia, you're breaking my heart. You're shaking my confidence daily."
  • On Marshall's chart about his favorite bars, you can see at second place is "McGee's Pub", which is the actual pub that served as the inspiration for MacLaren's.
  • When talking to Matthew Panning in the flashback, Young Barney is playing Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. There is a 2nd edition Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Master's Screen on the table.
  • When Robin jokes about being pregnant after throwing up due to food poisoning, they are referencing Cobie's actual pregnancy.
  • When Marshall is showing Barney his charts, he compares the girls Barney slept with to one-handed pitcher Jim Abbott's batting average. Abbott has a higher batting average (.095) than Barney's slept-with percentage (.012).
  • Schlegel's Bagels is the cafe that's blamed for giving Robin food poisoning. Shlegel's Bagels is a cafe that actually exists in Arizona, not New York.

Music[]

Other Notes[]

  • Barney's 200th sex partner-to-be, Petra Petrova, is shown in Bros Life Magazine on page 83, Barney's iconic number, as has been shown numerous times in previous episodes.
  • Throughout the episode people tell Barney that 200 is too many women to sleep with. However, if Barney has sex with one new person every week it should take him less than 4 years to reach 200. If we take into account that he was a virgin until he was 23, that still leaves us with roughly 8 years of sexual activity. Under the assumption of him having sex with one new person every week, after 8 years Barney should have slept with over 400 women. This too is a low estimate because it is likely that he has sex with more than one new woman every week. If he sleeps with two new people every week then he would have had sex with over 800 women after 8 years of sexual activity.
  • Alyson Hannigan is once again absent in this episode due to the filming being during her last week of pregnancy.
  • Cobie Smulders is again visibly pregnant.
  • Robin says "But...umm" twice when explaining to Barney that he used the same number twice on his list.
  • Milt said that if Ted paid him $1 per day to fulfill his $1 million obligation, it would take 2,700 years. It is actually closer to 2,738 years.  
    • Most likely hes giving a rough estimate.
  • When Ted runs back to Schlegel's Bagels, you can see that the 'D' in delicious is bleached out. The medical investigator puts back the D while rating Schlegel's.

Guests[]

Reception[]

  • Donna Bowman of The A.V. Club rated the episode with a grade B+. [1]
  • Michelle Zoromski of IGN gave the episode 8.5 out of 10. [2]
  • Cindy McLennan of Television Without Pity rated the episode with a grade B. [3]
  • The St. Petersburg Comic Review gave this episode 8.5 out of 10 stars. "Can a bagel really make that much difference?"

References[]

External Links[]


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