Stuff

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“Stuff”
←	HIMYM episode 2x16 (38)	→
First aired: February 19, 2007
Director: Pamela Fryman
Writer: Kourtney Kang
Barney's Blog
Images (4)

Robin is upset when she learns how much of Ted's stuff came from his exes. Barney gets revenge on Lily for making him see her bad play by putting on a play of his own.

Recap

Ted has been confusing his memories of events with Robin with events with his previous girlfriends. To hide this, he repeatedly claims that he shared all of these experiences with his sister, so Robin does not get jealous. When he tells her this, she claims that he doesn't need to hide his exes, as they are both mature adults. When Ted reveals that a number of his possessions were given to him by old girlfriends, Robin is less calm and tells Ted to get rid of these things. Ted disagrees, so they ask Marshall, Lily, and Barney for their opinions. The group sides with Robin, and Ted eventually agrees to get rid of the gifts. Robin later reveals that her five dogs are actually all gifts from ex-boyfriends. This sparks the fight again, as Ted starts to see her dogs as the actual boyfriends. Feeling that this might be unfair, Robin agrees to give her dogs to her aunt for a while to make Ted feel better. Ted, seeing that Robin kept gifts from her old partners, decides to keep his, even though he had said he had thrown them away. This causes a big argument, after which they decide to move in together.

Lily forces the whole group to come to her play, despite protestations from Barney. The play is shown to be extremely long and dull, and all four of them hate it, though Barney is the only one to actually tell Lily his honest opinion. Lily argues that friends are supposed to be nice to each other and tells Barney that, if he were in a play, she would watch it and have only good things to say about it. Barney sees this as a challenge and puts on his own one-man show. When the show begins, it is clear the show (titled Suck It, Lily) has been designed to get back at Lily. During in the show, he repeats the word "moist" (a word that Lily was shown to hate earlier in the episode), sprays the audience (in particular Lily) with a water pistol, dresses as a robot, and plays the recorder terribly. Lily eventually gives in and admits she has nothing nice to say about his show, and the group then decide to leave. Barney, however, still wants to perform a second act, which is so bad that Marshall slaps him for the second time, thanks to the Slap Bet.

Continuity

• Marshall uses Bilson's game from Life Among the Gorillas of giving someone, in this case Barney, two fictional scenarios and asking them to choose by saying "What do you do? Go".
• Marshall slaps Barney for a second time after winning their Slap Bet in Slap Bet, where he uses the first slap.
• Robin is similarly unsentimental about possessions in Intervention.
• Barney hires actors for a performance in Milk.

Future References (Contains Spoilers)

• Barney is visibly displeased when Ted and Robin announce their decision to move in together, and attempts to sabotage them doing so in Moving Day.
• In Glitter, Marshall reveals that Lily eventually destroyed his Joey Buttafuoco pants.
• Barney engaging in complex and elaborate acts of revenge is seen again in The Exploding Meatball Sub and Unpause.
• While Robin's dogs are not seen after this episode, she has adopted new dogs by the final flashfoward in Last Forever - Part Two.
• Despite using asking others to help moving as an example of something they are too old for, Barney in Cleaning House amazes his friends by persuading them to help his mom move.
• During Murtaugh, Barney attempts to prove that he can complete a list of things that Ted believes he himself is too old for.
• Barney reveals in The Stinsons another example of how much experience he has with actors and producing a performance.

Gallery

• Robin relaxes with one of her dogs
• Ted helps walk the dogs
• Ted and Robin are interrupted by a dog

1/3

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

Memorable Quotes

Robin:	Do you still have feelings for her?
Ted:	(sarcastically) Yeah. I'm madly in love with her, and the only way I can deal with it is by holding on to a three dollar tube of lotion!

—Robin questions Ted's reason behind keeping a lotion of an ex-girlfriend

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Future Ted:

New York is famous for its theater, but there's many different levels. There's Broadway, off-Broadway, off-off-Broadway, homeless people screaming in the park, and then, below that, the play aunt Lily was in.

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Barney:

Moist, moist, moist, moist, moist, moist, moist, moist, moist, moist, moist, moist.

—Barney bothering Lily with the word she hates most in the world in his play.

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Barney:

Lily, I love you, but we're too old for this. Asking someone to come see your play is like asking someone for a ride to the airport, or to crash on your couch, or to help you move. Call a cab, book a room, hire some movers, and repeat after me: 'Friends don't let friends see their crappy play.'

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Notes and Trivia

Goofs and Errors

• Robin refers to her aunt as living with her 'lover', but then is unaware that her aunt is a lesbian seconds later when Lily mentions it. She only realizes her aunt is a lesbian in The Autumn of Break-Ups.
• when Ted and Robin go down to the bar to explain the argument they had upstairs, Robin has Ted's (AKA "some girl he dated") red hoodie on, and is zipped up. After Barney complains about the romance in flash-forwards and backwards, the hoodie is unzipped. They could've had sex, but then in more flash-forwards and back, the hoodie is zipped up and back to unzipped repetitively.
• When Barney begins his play, he enters the stage with eyeliner on, and make-up. Later, in his robot, water-pistol and recorder scenes, his make-up is gone. In the final scene of the episode when Barney's Robot falls in love, his make-up is back, but slightly smeared as he has eyeliner smudges under his eyes

Allusions and Outside References

• In discussing Marshall's preference for parachute pants, Robin refers to Joey Buttafuoco and the shooting of his wife while Ted brings up Bell Biv Devoe.
• When Barney mentions the clutter of Ted's apartment he compares it to the likeness of the restaurant Bennigan's.
• Barney's play features him singing a parody of the song Love of My Life by Queen.
• After Barney insults Lily's play, she tries to convince him not to be harsh about his criticism as they're friends, but Barney responds with a joke about The Smurfs, which Barney's actor, Neil Patrick Harris, starred in.

Music

• The Stooges - I Wanna Be Your Dog (not on DVD)
• Gary Higgins - Thicker Than a Smokey

Other Notes

• Paramedics were called during filming because Josh Radnor had a severe allergic reaction to the dogs especially in the scene where he is petting and being licked by the dalmatian. Up until this episode, Radnor was able to get by with "some Claritin and some thorough vacuuming."
• When Lily says "friends make each other feel good, they build each other up and support them. That's what being a good friend is about" Barney replies, "yeah, if you're a smurf". Ironically, four years after the episode aired, Neil Patrick Harris starred in the 2011 Smurf movie.
• The name of Barney´s play is "Suck it Lily". This can be seen in the playbill in the background right before the act starts.

Guests

• Terryn Westbrook - Staci Rawnsley
• E. E. Bell - Mystery Man
• Ashli Ford - Lauren Stein
• Diana Gettinger - Alison Moses
• Taylor Hoover - Jeannie Radford
• Jason L. Brandt - Hot Guy
• Rick Malambri - Floppy Haired Guy
• Evan Mann - Zach Grecco

Reception

• Staci Krause of IGN gave the episode an 8.9 out of 10, stating that the episode was one of the funniest "for How I Met's of recent memory".  She stated that she was "shocked, but in a good way" about how the Ted and Robin storyline was dealt with, although she looked forward to seeing how the relationship disintegrated from there, "because clearly, it had to."  She also found Barney's one-man play hilarious, but stated that the real scene stealers for this episode were the 'dogs'. 
• The St. Petersburg Comic Review gave this episode 8 out 10 stars. "Possibly the two worst examples of theater in the history of theater."

External Links

• Stuff at the English Wikipedia
• Stuff at the Internet Movie Database
• Stuff at TV.com

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