Episode 3.4 - Little Boys

Our writing principle is actually based on this cold open. Lily starts out by saying, “Robin, I’ve got a guy for you!” and Ted asks, “What’s his but?” and the group argues about whether or not everyone “has a but”. You know, “She’s great, but…” They list a few specific ones, all via flashbacks and internal voiceovers:

• She’s great but she has a dead tooth

• She’s great but she has a pug she pushes around in a stroller

• She’s great but her last boyfriend had to get a restraining order and then his cat and vacuum went missing

• She’s great but she had a huge butt

• He’s great but he has a kid

• She’s great but she’s afraid of commitment

• She’s great but she’s a gun nut

• She’s great but she’s Canadian

• She’s great but she didn’t like Field of Dreams

The last four on that list all refer specifically to Robin, listed by each member of the group in their internal voiceovers. They all prevaricate about her, but they all do it in different ways.

This is more about the other characters than it is about Robin. Robin is the same person in all of those comments, and the “but” reflects the priorities of the person saying it. Lily is turned off by guns, Ted wants to be married, Barney is a bigot, and Marshall cares a lot about sharing pop culture and entertainment with the people he cares about.

The rest of the episode is mostly dedicated to Ted and Barney and a stupid bet about who can sleep with a random woman first. Marshall also thinks he’s the biggest player in the game, since he’s married to Lily, so he “won”. (I agree with Marshall, but that’s very much beside the point here).

This episode, in my opinion, is a lot like Episode 2.10 - Single Stamina, in that it seems like the writers came up with a scenario that would lead directly to the last scene, and the last scene is what they really wanted on screen. In Single Stamina, we met James and followed him and Barney through some brother-drama just to have a wedding at the end in which Ted and Robin weren’t together but were dancing together and Barney was holding a baby that changed his views on the world.

This episode ends with Future Ted pointing out that while Robin disliked kids intensely, she eventually came around and ended up loving two kids in particular - Ted’s kids.