Episode Summary

EDIT
8.3
out of 10
EPISODE RATING: Great
343 votes
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    "Mediocre"
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While helping their mother pack up her house, Barney and James find a letter that will let one of them meet his father. Robin sets Ted up on a blind date, but sets expectations he can't meet.
  • Why do you guys give this episode a high rating?

    3.5
    "Bad"
    Ok guys, this show is comedy not a telenovela or a drama series. The only funny scene I saw was at the end where Barney sang like a techno robot thing. All the scenes where cheesy, corny, boring. Even the story about Ted having set up by Robin in a date is lame... How about Marshall and Lily, they do not have to be there... The writer got lazy and put them there. They have come up with another story for those couples.. It's a waste of time and electricity.. Come up with some real funny stuff not just a lame episode just to fill the season. Sorry it just doesn't work.moreless
  • Barney, James, and the gang help Barney's mother pack because she's moving.

    9.0
    "Superb"
    "Cleaning House" is a great How I Met Your Mother episode. I love the return of James in this episode and I love how Barney helps James and Barney are helping their mom move. I love how Barney's childhood is filled with lies by Loretta. I love how she convinced Barney that he didn't make the basketball team because he was too good. I love how James is realizing that his mom lied to him as well. I love how James meets his birth-father and Barney pretends that Jame's birth-father is his birth-father as well. It was so sweet how Barney says that Loretta is the father he'll ever need. I give this episode a 9/10.moreless
  • Disappointing...

    5.0
    "Mediocre"
    Some things you feel. they dont need to be said.
    Barneys past was one of these things. It s called subtext. It s the place where you imagine because of little details the truth behind the scene. When someone explains it to you, it looses a lot of its power. And that happened in this episode. The writers sacrified Barney`s subtext to make an average and often not believable episode. The Robin/Ted-plot feeled just needless. The barney-plot was predictable and filled with cliches. The first episode of himym where i got bored and so by far the worst. I hope at least the next episode delivers a good setup for the rest of the season.moreless
  • 602

    8.5
    "Great"
    A really great episode of How I Met Your Mother, and to be honest, it was better than the premiere. We've got a sense of emotion that this show has been lacking lately. We got to see it in Barney's past, and how sad it really is.

    We got to see a lot of Barneyisms without having a Barney overload. The Ted and Robin plot was like a breath of fresh air. The interactions between them were absolutely hysterical. The situation on "overselling" or "underselling" it was actually pretty original and quite funny.

    You can't help but feel bad for Barney as this episode comes to a close, at the end, he decides he doesn't want to meet his father. At least we know, he's not actually crazy enough to believe that Bob Barker is his father. Because that was a bit ridiculous. We got to understand Barney more, for who he is, just a great installment of How I Met Your Mother tonight.

    A great balance of comedy and emotion with great development, great episode overall.moreless
  • 602

    6.5
    "Fair"
    Another episode of How I Met Your Mother that was surprisingly not that bad. I recently read that the writers for this show were going to make it less "sitcomy" (their words, not mine) but that is clearly not the case. They did the standard, "There's no way you can convince us to do that," and immediately cut to the group helping Barney move. And then there was the fact that they dealt with James finding his father.

    But ignoring that this was definitely a solid episode of How I Met Your Mother. Josh Radnor is still terrible, but the rest of the cast was good here. The only thing Ir eally did not like was the lame moment where Barney said that his mother was his father.moreless
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  • TRIVIA (1)

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    • Closed Captions: At the end of the episode when Barney tells Loretta that she was his father, closed captioning has Older Ted (Bob Saget) saying "Kids, Barney would learn the truth about his dad sooner than he ever could have guessed. But as he hugged Loretta on this, the last day he'd ever set foot in his boyhood home, he realized he had one hell of a mom." The first sentence is removed, and the second sentence is cut up and inserted not in its entirety.

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    • International Airdates: United Kingdom: December 30, 2010 on E4; Germany: September 7, 2011 on ProSieben;Czech Republic: January 16, 2012 on Prima COOL

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