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ā€œThe Slutty Pumpkin Returnsā€
HIMYM episode 7x08 (144)
Perfect-on-paper
First aired:
October 31, 2011
Director:
Pamela Fryman
Writer:
Tami Sagher
Barney's Blog

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Ted runs into "The Slutty Pumpkin" but realizes that she is not the one. Meanwhile, Barney learns he is part Canadian and Lily has Pregnancy Brain.


Recap[]

Future Ted reminds his children about how in 2001 he met the Slutty Pumpkin, a girl in a provocative pumpkin costume who appeared to be very compatible with Ted, during the rooftop Halloween party. However, he lost the Kit Kat bar that she had written her number on and waited each year in vain for her to appear again.

In the present, Ted sees the slutty pumpkin costume in the window of a shop, where the owner willingly divulges the identity of the woman who rented it in 2001. Ted meets Naomi, the girl who wore the costume and has also been searching for Ted; they begin dating. Ted immediately realizes he doesn't love her at all, they in fact have no chemistry whatsoever, but can't bring himself to end the relationship so easily after finally finding the slutty pumpkin girl after all these years. When Ted decides that he needs to break up with Naomi, he's stunned to see she's wearing the slutty pumpkin costume again. This leads to Ted telling her that he loves her. They arrive at the Halloween party on the roof wearing the costumes they wore when they first met. When Naomi makes the Tootsie Roll drink, she confesses that she found their relationship as awkward as Ted did, but also didn't want to end it after waiting so long to meet him and tried to force him to break up with her by acting strangely. They break up amicably.

Meanwhile, Lily's judgment is impaired by the fact that she has "Pregnancy Brain," and impulsively decides she wants to live in the suburbs now that she and Marshall have inherited her grandparents' house. Though Marshall wants to live in the suburbs, he does not want to take advantage of Lily's state of mind. When they arrange for a real estate broker to assess the house, Lily tries to trick Marshall into giving in when trick-or-treaters arrive at the house. However, when Lily realizes how her Pregnancy Brain has affected her ability to make decisions, she decides she doesn't want to live in the suburbs and agrees to wait until she can think clearly before she and Marshall decide whether they want to move away from the city.

Robin learns from Barney's father Jerome Whittaker through Facebook that Barney's paternal grandmother was born in Manitoba, thus making Barney one-quarter Canadian. Barney is horrified and Robin goes out of her way to emphasize Barney's Canadian heritage to compensate for all the mockery she has endured from Barney over the years. She agrees to stop if Barney wears a Mountie costume for the Halloween party on the roof, but Barney resists and winds up wearing an Apollo Creed costume complete with an American flag backdrop and James Brown's Living in America as background music. When he returns home later, his Canadian side manifests and Barney futilely tries to beat him down.

Continuity[]

  • Naomi, better known as "The Slutty Pumpkin", makes her first appearance, after being mentioned heavily in Slutty Pumpkin. Many things described in that episode appear, such as the Hanging Chad costume Ted wore and the Tootsie Roll drink.
  • Barney wears the ducky tie on his arm, but doesn't seem to be wearing it when he's in Mountie costume.
  • The Barney's "USA!" cheer at the Halloween party is the same one he does in Duel Citizenship.
  • The montage of flashbacks of Barney making fun of Canada includes scenes from Last Cigarette Ever and Duel Citizenship.
  • Lily's grandparents originally wanted to move to Florida in Slapsgiving 2: Revenge of the Slapā€‹, but did not because of her father's unemployment.
  • Ted once again tells a girl he loves her at an inappropriate time.
  • While trying to convince Marshall to move to the suburbs, Lily tells him that they would have plenty of room. This references how Marshall feels as though New York is "designed for people who are smaller than him" as mentioned in I Heart NJā€‹.
  • Barney uses the phrase "Classic Shmosby!", first used by Punchy in The Best Manā€‹.
  • Future Ted references Future Robin's love for Halloween costumes in Slutty Pumpkin, the origins of which can be seen here.
  • Robin has a more negative view of having sex with "someone you have zero feelings for" than in The Naked Manā€‹.

Future References (Contains Spoilers)[]

Gallery[]

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

Memorable Quotes[]

Lily: Just because my body is growing a fungus...
Marshall: Fetus.
Lily: ...doesn't mean that my metal factories...
Marshall: Mental faculties.
Lily: ...are in any way funicular.
Marshall: ... No idea.

Marshall: Lily you just gave those children a stapler, a pair of sharp scissors and a pretty decent Pinot Noir.

Robin: Welcome to the tribe, hoser.

Robin: Yo, Canada!
Barney: What? (Robin starts laughing) Damn it!
Robin: You reacted to Canada now! Make you a deal: you wear this costume to the Halloween party tomorrow night and Iā€™ll drop it forever. (hands him a bag)
Barney: (as he sees what's inside the bag) You can't be serious!
Robin: Oh, Iā€™m as serious as a poutine shortage in Chicoutimi during a curling bonspiel.
Barney: I don't know what any of those words mean!
Robin: Yes, you do.

Ted: No part of it felt right, at first there was too much eye contact, then not enough, where do you look during sex?...
Barney: Umm... into the hidden camera, at future me watching it.

Barney: (after Robin tricked him into drinking Canadian whisky) Why are you doing this to me?
Robin: You have been ripping on Canada since Justin Bieber was knee-high to a snow blower. So, now, this Canuckā€™s going to beat on you like the drummer from Yukon Blonde hopped up on Timbits.

Notes and Trivia[]

Goofs and Errors[]

  • At the Halloween party on the roof top, Robin has blacked out two bottom, middle teeth. But later its on her top middle, then later back to the bottom.
  • The Slutty Pumpkin tells Ted that she'd been looking for him all over for the past ten Halloweens. However, the one place she seemed to have overlooked was the very party that they met at, a party that Ted went to year after year. In The Poker Game for instance, a fresh flashback would show Ted and the Slutty Pumpkin in the same party that presumably took place between 2001 and 2011.
    • It's possible, given how crowded the parties on the roof generally are, that she did check the roof, and simply wasn't able to find him in the thick crowd.
  • Robin reprimands Ted for having sex with someone he has no feelings for, but doesn't seem to have a problem with it when he did so in The Naked Man.
  • In the tag of the episode, when Barney re-enters his apartment, he is missing the ducky tie.

Allusions and Outside References[]

  • Barney makes a grand entrance at the costume party as Apollo Creed from Rocky IV, complete with flag backdrop and James Brown's Living in America as background music.
  • Naomi mentions that she came across lots of Big Lebowskis, Harry Potters and Antoine Dodsons through the last Halloweens.
  • When Barney discovers he is 1/4th Canadian, his line "No, it's not true, that's impossible!" is the same line uttered by Luke Skywalker when he is told that he is Darth Vader's son in Empire Strikes Back.
  • The famous Canadians Robin makes reference to are Justin Bieber, Yukon Blonde, and John Diefenbaker. Barney uses the expression, "heavens to Gretzky".
  • When Robin tells Barney that the Canadian one dollar coin is called a Loonie and the two dollar coin is called a Toonie, he says that it sounds like a Hanna-Barbera character.
  • Barney is split into two entities with a similar effect as Superman in Superman III.

Music[]

Other Notes[]

  • This episode was originally named "Perfect on Paper".
  • Marshall needed to be reminded to put holes in the jar for the fireflies. This was the second time Marshall needed to be reminded to put holes for containing animals. First was to put holes in the box for the mice for the prank in Milk.
  • Ted's younger self reminds him that he signed a contract when he was 15 to sleep with any girl who wants to sleep with him. He's holding a document printed by a dot matrix printer, which would've been commonly used when he was 15 in 1993ā€”though the introduction of inkjet printers were replacing them at the time.

Guests[]

Podcast[]

Featuring an interview with Bob Saget.

Reception[]

  • The episode attracted 10.49 million viewers. [1]
  • Donna Bowman of the AV Club graded the episode at B. Bowman gives guest star Katie Holmes praise for exceeding low expectations. [2]
  • Mohsin Akhtar of Metacritic graded the Episode B+, praising the 1/4 Canadian storyline. [citation needed]
  • The St. Petersburg Comic Review gave this episode 8 out of 10 stars. "...Barney is one-quarter Canadian!"

References[]

External Links[]


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