The episode opens with Ted introducing a new girlfriend, Cathy, to his friends. There's an adorable little montage of him falling for her; this montage comes back around in a few minutes. Ted's friends all hate Cathy, but they won’t tell him why. They don’t want to “spoil it” for him. As they’re explaining this, we find out that Marshall is mere moments away from finding out if he passed the bar exam.
Barney tries to interrupt him to show him a disgusting viral video. Marshall yells at him.
Here’s the first thing they do perfectly, with regards to the writing: They sum up the stakes for the audience. Marshall reiterates “This is my career, everything I went to law school for, what I’ve been working towards for three years”. Then Robin asks how many people fail, Marshall tells her it’s about half, and she freaks out.
Stakes: ESTABLISHED. Marshall canNOT assume he passed, and this is a Very Big Deal.
As the website with the results updates, Marshall realizes he lost his auto-generated password and can’t see his results. There’s a quick montage of Marshall finding out everyone else’s status, all his friends and family calling. Everyone is stressed out, but there is an alternative: the results will be mailed to Marshall, arriving in a few weeks.
We go back to Ted’s problem, in which he is trying to figure out what’s “wrong” with Cathy. He badgers the group to tell him and they eventually do and Ted’s image of her is spoiled forever (he hears glass shattering, as if an illusion is being shattered). There’s another montage of him falling out of love with her, doing all the things they were doing when they were falling in love, but now Ted hates it all.
Ted wants to like Cathy and he asks Marshall how he got over Lily’s loud chewing. Shattering glass is heard and now Marshall cannot un-hear Lily’s loud chewing. Lily brings it up with Robin, and the cycle continues. Illusions shattering everywhere.
This is the second thing the writers did really well: the writers gave us a really, really powerful distraction. This whole “spoiler”/”shattered illusions” storyline is super funny, it’s fast-paced, it gives everyone in the audience something to latch on to. Throughout the episode, the gang is accused of:
Chewing too loudly
Singing nonsense songs for mundane activities
Correcting people’s grammar/language usage
Using incorrect grammar/language
Using annoying catchphrases
Spacing out when the conversation isn’t interesting
Using an annoying voice sometimes
These are super real flaws. This is exactly the kind of stuff you complain about regarding co-workers, casual friends/acquaintances, and even (if you’re a terrible person) your real friends/family. This distraction works beautifully because it’s realistic while also being over-the top. It’s funny and it gives everyone at home a chance to say “I KNOW SOMEONE WHO DOES THAT TOO!!!”
Woven into this is another scene in which Barney forces Marshall to watch a disgusting viral video by pretending it’s a hack into the Bar Association’s website to see Marshall’s bar exam results.
This is the third thing the writers did perfectly: They gave us yet another distraction, but tied it directly to the original problem at hand. Barney’s only able to get Marshall’s attention because he's lying about the bar results. We’re reminded quickly of what the real meat of this story is, but we’re distracted immediately by Barney’s antics. They also describe the video, which sounds truly disgusting, which is also distracting. Even more so, they show Barney and Marshall smiling at it. This throws the audience off even further.
The whole gang starts arguing about all their flaws, their shattered illusions. It goes on for a while, everyone is shouting, everyone is angry, everyone is involved in this chaos, and they get absolutely furious with one of Marshall’s nonsense songs.
“WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!?!?” They ask.
“It’s the password to my bar results," Marshall replies quietly.
He had created a mnemonic device to remember the auto-generated password and sang it for days so he wouldn’t forget. He logs in, and finds out he’s a lawyer.
The moment is far more satisfying than if he had found out at the beginning of the episode, and I’m going to argue it’s even more satisfying than it would have been if the entire episode had been dedicated to the mystery/problem.
It reminds me of what is probably the most famous Brooklyn 99 cold open.
The Brooklyn 99 writers follow the exact same steps:
Jake and the woman are in a police interrogation room, looking at a lineup. We don't need to establish the stakes any more clearly than that. A crime has been committed, she's a witness, he's a detective, they're gonna try to catch a criminal.
We are immediately distracted by something outrageous and silly: a singalong of the Backstreet Boys' "I Want It That Way". It's instantly relatable, since that song is endlessly popular and nobody can resist singing along when given a chance.
Jake looks to the witness, who gravely shakes her head "no" and they move on to the next suspect. The writers are reminding us that there is something serious going on here, even though they go right back to the silliness.
Then at the very last second, when we're riding the high of the successful singalong, the story is resolved. "Number five killed my brother".
Jake's reaction at the end - "Oh my god, I forgot about that part" - is the same reaction we all had when Marshall said "It's my password." We all, as the audience, had the same reaction as the gang did on the show: "Oh my god, I forgot about that part" even though that was the part we were supposed to be thinking about the whole time.