Legendaddy

Season 6, Episode 19, Aired
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8.6
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Barney meets his father and is shocked by the differences in their lives. The rest of the gang learn their "gaps", knowledge they should have by now, but don't.
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Fan Episode Reviews (5)

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  • Barney meets his father.

    10
    "Perfect"
    By Jon_MW_14, Sep 06, 2011
    "Legendaddy" is an awesome How I Met Your Mother episode! I love how the gang has an intervention for Barney. I love how we finally get to meet Barney's father and he's John Lithgow who played The Trinity Killer on Dexter. I love how Barney says his father's all cool, but then you see the reality of it and his father's kind of lame. It was really cute how Barney's father was teaching him how to use tools so Barney could steal the basketball net. I give this episode a 10/10.moreless

  • Best laugh of the night, Breaking the Tension division: Barney takes the screwdriver from Jerry and raps the handle of it against the backboard.

    8.0
    "Great"
    By colten97, Apr 24, 2011
    Men and their dads. This relationship permeates just about all of the art made by people of my generation. Its ubiquity certainly points to a huge crater left in the male psyche by absent or inadequate fathering. And this season of HIMYM has been singularly father-obsessed, from Marshall losing his dad to Barney wondering if he wants to gain his. We've even gotten glimpses of the female side of the equation, with Robin suffering under her father's desire to have a son instead of a daughter.

    There are two ways Barney finally meeting his father could go. It could be an Event: as a Very Special Episode or as an excuse for crazy guest stars and super wacko hijinks. Or it could be a turning point in quite another sense, an episode that starts setting up the pieces for changes still to come. "Legendaddy" is the latter. It's not the home run the promos have been setting it up to be, hyping John Lithgow's appearance and trading on Barney's breakout character status. No, it's just a moment that Barney would like in some ways to pretend never happened. But he can't. Not a breakthrough. Just a pivot toward the future.

    What Barney is looking for in a father, it turns out, is someone to validate and explain how awesome he is. The legend of Jerry, hard-partyin' roadie, has remained evergreen in Barney's memory. And when Jerry himself shows up on Barney's doorstep clutching his son's letter, Barney feels compelled to invent the daddy he doesn't get. Instead of drinking neat whiskey and scamming girls' numbers like a pro, Jerry drinks skim milk and begs barflies to write down random digits. Instead of tours with the Stones, Jerry has produced two non-fiction books about asparagus. When Barney tells the Barney-ized version of his awesome dad to his friends, Jerry gives a familiar neckroll and shoulder set before heading out to pick up chicks. In reality, Jerry tries to loosen his neck and gets a crick in it, wincing in pain.

    And that's why the gang stages an intervention at Ted's long-neglected dream house so that Barney will go to dinner with Jerry, his wife, and his young son. Barney at first searches for ways to avoid insulting the decor, so conspicuously lacking the modernist, corporatist taste that he espouses. Then he takes to challenging J.J., Jerry's other son, for first place in their father's affections, deriding his lack of a job and wimpy physique. "What gym do you go to?" Barney demands. "Fourth period," J.J. offers. "More like you're having your fourth period, amirite dad?" Barney crows, earning a "Got him again, son!" from a Jerry who seems just as eager to find his way into these strange affections.

    Meanwhile, the gang is poking holes in each other as usual, exposing the flaws-here, gaps in common knowledge-that compromise their public images of competence. Ted learned the word "chameleon" from reading it in books, leading him to pontificate to his clase that Daniel Burnham was "a true architectural Chamma-Leon." Robin thinks the North Pole is fictional, like Narnia. Lily has terrible aim, leading her to fling beer bottles against the wall when trying to toss them to Marshall. And Marshall just wants to be the butt of his friends' jokes again, but he has to beg them for a burn since they've all been walking on eggshells around him after his dad's death.

    I see where the writers are going in their attempt to bring this all together. The house where Ted is already arranging the family he knows he's going to have someday, getting ahead of himself in a typically idealistic fashion. Marshall's determination to re-enter his usual routine after undergoing a shock that is at the same time devastating and completely normal. And Barney pinging wildly back and forth as he tries to calibrate his course forward between an ideal that exists only in memory and imagination and a reality that is distressingly predictable and ordinary.

    They don't quite pull it off, do they? The lines never intersect to form a figure that lifts off the ground and shows us something new. But they achieve a few quite remarkable minutes, as do Neil Patrick Harris and John Lithgow, in the strange setpiece of Barney trying to tear the basketball hoop off of Jerry's garage. Back comes the motif of the screwdriver, briefly introduced in the cold open as Barney calls the super instead of hauling out the toolbox as Ted would have done. Barney's determination to make off with a piece of the normal childhood he never had-angry, as well, that J.J. is getting the best of Jerry-leads to a moment when Jerry does get to act like a father and Barney gets to learn like a son.

    Best, though, not to make too much of this moment, iconic as we all might like it to be. It's not the end of fatherless Barney but the beginning of a new stage of his maturation. We all knew Barney's transformation would end up being the most difficult; he's seemed so comfortable so long being a cartoon, and many of us, frankly, don't want him any other way. The birth of a new Barney will be painful, but if it comes with more images like his leaving with the basketball goal under his arm, it will be a process worth seeing through to the end. Even for those of us without father issues.moreless

  • Legendaddy=legendary (spoilers)

    8.0
    "Great"
    By sodapopgirl721, Apr 09, 2011
    It finally happens, we finally get to meet Barney's dad. The fact that it's John Lithgow is just a bonus, who i;ve been a huge fan of since 3rd rock from the sun. Barney's dad tracks him down and wants to meet him but he's not a ladies man daredevil roadee anymore, he's a regular suburban dad, something Barney never had. And now he has a family and another son named after him. This is a great episode because it has the Barney we're all used to making fun of people and having to be the best and the insecure Barney who breaks down that his dad's other son is named after him and got a basketball hoop and everything Barney never had. This has been a phenomenal season, every episode just keeps getting better and better.

    The subplot was like the gang's annoying habits but it's their gaps in knowledge which is brought up when Ted sees Barney doesn't know how to use tools (which his dad teaches him in this episode). Robin didn't know the North Pole was a real place and Lily has terrible aim and Ted as we know can't pronounce words correctly. Marshall notices the gang not pointing his gaps out and begs them to as they've been trying not to upset him since his dad died. They list his gaps, like he can't wink and he always misses a beltloop, etc.

    This was a great episode because it had the funny and the emotion and Barney finally getting to meet his dad. Another great episode of HIMYM!moreless

  • 619

    9.0
    "Superb"
    By Canogaparkcindy, Mar 26, 2011
    A fantastic outstanding episode of How I Met Your Mother. Season 6 just may be one of my favorite seasons of this show. How I Met Your Mother may have lost it's groove last season, but this season has just been amazing in every single way, and from what I heard the final episodes are even better, can't wait.

    So I guess we can all agree that Neil Patrick Harris is the best thing about this show, then? He pulls off the emotional scenes so well, and the fact that it ended so abruptly like that was just amazing and emotional.

    The comedic side of things: I think Robin's gap was the funniest. Thinking the North Pole was a fake place, it really reminded me when Joey from Friends though the Netherlands was a fake place, just absolutely hysterical. Overall, superb installment to a superb season.moreless

  • Legendaddy...

    7.5
    "Good"
    By AjMc91, Mar 25, 2011
    After a few weeks off How I Met Your Mother returned this week with "Lengendaddy", an episode that despite its title, continued with the slightly more serious and emotional plots that I've come to expect of the back half of the show's sixth season. The gang has its first intervention in a while following Barney's father showing up on his doorstep. As Barney recounts their first conversation in thirty years, we initially believe his father (played by the master that is John Lithgow) to be an older version of himself. Cool in every possible way that a father could be, I was almost a little disappointed when the cheesy happiness of their reunion was cut short as Barney's dad reveals to his friends that he is a simple suburban father and that his newly found son is disappointed by him.

    Using the intervention tactic that has popped up throughout the show's run, Barney's friends get him to give his father another chance, leading to the inevitable emotional confrontation that you'd expect from this kind of story, which ultimately gives payoff to the episode as a whole and felt a lot like it moved the character of Barney on to a slightly more grown up version of the world. Although focussing almost entirely on Barney, "Legendaddy" occasionally reverted back to what the rest of the group was up to whilst Barney had this emotional journey. After it is discovered that Barney doesn't know how to use a screwdriver at the start of the episode, the friends begin to pick at the "gaps" that they each have too. Whilst I imagine its intent was to be the comic relief in a character-centric episode, and it was humorous to some extent, my problem with it is the lack of continuity with the show's canon. Each character's supposed obvious flaws have been entirely created just to give them something to say in this particular episode and have never been alluded to before.

    It's not the first time that the writers at How I Met Your Mother have done this, and I'm certain it won't be the last either, but if you ignore the forced nature of the humor and take the heart of the episode as what it was really all about, "Legendaddy" wasn't half bad.moreless
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