Note: Full spoilers of the episode follow.
"The Broath," while fun and funny in parts, suffered from a poor choice of storytelling. We went through the entire half hour assuming one thing only to have the episode reveal the hidden truth. This has often worked for the series, but it's not the kind of thing you should be doing when you're trying to establish a relationship between Barney and Quinn.
It started with Ted taking the bro oath, or "broath," to never reveal Quinn's stripper career to the rest of the gang. Ted quickly broke the oath and also revealed that Quinn had duped Barney out of a lot of cash. This put the gang on high alert, and Quinn wasn't doing herself any favors with her controlling bossiness and apparent use of Barney for his money. This led to a patented How I Met intervention, which resulted in Quinn dumping Barney as all this "truth" came out. Devastated for having caused so much trouble, Lily, Marshall, Robin and Ted tried to apologize to Barney who would only accept another "broath" from all of them, including some same-sex kissing. But hold on! Here's Quinn laughing it up. The whole thing was a ruse!
This viewer didn't care for the switcheroo. Quinn is still new to this series, and so far she's been bitchy, conniving and did in fact dupe Barney out of a lot of cash. Still, Barney has fallen for the girl and the two have started dating. But I don't think we, the viewers, have fallen for Quinn just yet. Sure, we could see the potential in these earlier, tumultuous episodes, but have we been truly won over by the character? This was the episode where that should have been happening, where we should have been seeing Barney and Quinn as a couple and not some sort of one-note gag.

But even with this poor choice of narrative, the episode did have a few laughs. Marshall's desire to have cool sex stories to share was funny, until it got kind of weird and sad at the end with Peter Pan. Robin's overly exaggerated issue with living with Patrice was a highlight. Patrice makes cookies, Robin's screams, "You're smothering me!!" And the "Quintervention" bit hit all the right notes and never overstayed its welcome. But none of this could fully save what already started out as a flawed episode.
Rating | Description | |
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out of 10 | Click here for ratings guide | |
Arya, on her march back to Winterfell, shares a secret with ...
Connections for How I Met Your Mother
Popular TV shows in this genre: 1. Community 2. The Big Bang Theory 3. 30 Rock 4. Happy Endings 5. How I Met Your Mother |
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Popular TV shows on this network: 1. The Big Bang Theory 2. How I Met Your Mother 3. The Twilight Zone (1959) 4. The Wild Wild West (1965) 5. Lost in Space |
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