Band or DJ?

"Band or DJ?"

"Band or DJ?" is the thirteenth episode of the eighth season of the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother, and the 173rd episode overall.

Plot

Robin wants Barney to ask her father, Robin Sr, for his blessing on their wedding. They are surprised to find that her formerly strict father has taken a turn for the cool, wearing Hawaiian shirts, offering hugs instead of a formal handshake, and keeping himself up-to-date on Facebook. Despite his brighter demeanor, Robin Sr. nonetheless turns down Barney's permission to marry Robin. While Barney attempts to win over Robin Sr., Robin notes her father's repeated insistence to add him on her Facebook friends list and finally accepts the friend request. She is bitterly disappointed to learn that her father remarried to his girlfriend Carol without telling her (despite proudly proclaiming it on his page). Because of the elder Scherbatsky's lack of involvement in her life, Robin declares that she will marry Barney without his permission and will not invite him to the wedding. Barney later helps the two reconcile and Robin Sr agrees to her request to share a dance with her at the reception.

Meanwhile, Ted and Lily fight over whether to hire a band or a DJ for the wedding - Ted is determined to hire a DJ and blocks all of Lily's attempts to hire a band requested by Robin. With Marshall taking care of a constipated baby Marvin, Lily forces Ted to admit his unhappiness towards Robin and Barney being engaged by revealing a terrible secret of her own: sometimes she wishes she never became a mother. Though she loves Marvin and being his mother, she feels exhausted and unhappy that she was unable to fulfill her dreams as an artist. Ted finally admits hating the idea of Robin marrying Barney and feels extremely hurt, even though he's happy for both of them. Lily thinks that both she and Ted need to accept the pain in their lives and move on; Ted agrees to hire a wedding band.

Future Ted recollects meeting his ex-girlfriend Cindy and her partner, Casey, a week before the wedding and he revealed how the band Robin picked cancelled at last minute. Upon hearing the news, Cindy immediately suggests a replacement: her ex-roommate's band is available for the wedding since they were dropped from their gig. Future Ted goes on to tell his children that if Robin and Barney had let him hire a DJ, he would have never met their mother.

Music

• "Guiding Light" by Television plays at the end of the episode.

Continuity

• Lily stares at Ted with the same anger and background music from her "you're dead to me" look used in the season 5 episode "Slapsgiving 2: Revenge of the Slap"
• In admitting to Lily about being hurt that Robin pursued Barney, footage from previous episodes is used to exhibit Ted's pain, such as being beaten up by Natalie in the season 1 episode "Return of the Shirt."
• Lily's regrets over failing to follow her dreams of being an artist refers to her art fellowship in San Francisco, which happened between seasons 1 and 2. Her doubts about parenthood first surfaced in the season 7 episode "The Burning Beekeeper."
• Ted briefly dated Cindy in "Girls vs. Suits". She last appeared in the season 6 premiere "Big Days," where she was shown to have eventually adopted a daughter with her girlfriend, both of whom are with her on the subway.
• Although not mentioned by name, Robin brings up the band Marshall and Lily almost hired for their wedding, referring to The 88, whom they sought out in the season 1 episode "Best Prom Ever."

Cultural references

• When Lily first uses "confetti" as a euphemism for feces, she says that normally Marvin is "Rip Taylor in a diaper." This is a reference to the comedian typically tossing handfuls of confetti onto his audience.
• Ted refers to Robin's father as "a Stone Cold Slytherin."
• Robin's father explains that he and his wife got married after attending a Jimmy Buffett concert in Key Largo and says that they are Parrotheads. Later he agrees to dance with Robin at her wedding, but only if the song is "Cheeseburger in Paradise".
• Robin Sr has a Facebook account and expresses his fascination with the social media site's various functions, plus picture memes. Ted mentions his mother's review of Fifty Shades of Grey that she posted on Facebook. Marshall warns that Robin Sr could pester Robin with requests to play something "about gangsters and farming."
• In arguing his case to hire a DJ, Ted suggests bringing Kool & the Gang, plus their "friends" Beyonce, ABBA, the Bee Gees, Journey, and Queen.
• Lily is angry that Marshall and Ted will just hang out at MacLaren's to reenact scenes from The Departed.
• Ted's declaration of "I would have gotten away with it, if it wasn't for..." is a reference to the villains' rants in Scooby Doo.

Critical reception

Donna Bowman of the AV Club gave the episode a B+. She says that "Marshall and Lily’s storylines tend to be off in their own separate world—distractingly so" but then remarks that in this episode Ted and Lily's predicaments are united by the theme of "longing for the roads we did not take, no matter how rewarding the one we did take turns out to be".

Michael Arbeiter of Hollywood.com writes that Lily's " 'Holy cow!' revelation" about her "resentment of her new motherhood and sporadic desire to run out on Marshall and Baby Marvin ... isn't really worth the muster of its musical sting." About Ted's feelings for Robin he says "none of this is anything we haven't seen before."

Max Nicholson of IGN gave the episode a score of 7.0/10 (Good). He writes that "Robin Sr.'s scenes with Barney weren't particularly funny" but "his scenes with Robin were a bit more compelling" and "overall, this storyline felt pretty weak comedically." He comments that the story of Marvin's constipation "wasn't much more than one, long poop joke, the story did feature a fairly amusing 'whiz-bang' conclusion." He also notes that "the Ted not being over Robin thing is now officially tiresome." More positively, he writes that "it was really Lily's confession to Ted that stood out" and "it was nice that Lily was given a substantial arc."

Angel Cohn of Television Without Pity gave the episode a C. Cohn wrote that the episode demonstrates that the show is "going to beat this Ted loves Robin nonsense into the damned ground now." After Robin decides that her father's permission to marry is not important, Cohn comments that "we're not sure why it really was in the first place given her strained relationship with the man." Cohn also comments that it would have been better for Jason Segel to "have made Muppets 2 instead of sticking it out with this show another year."

External links

• "Band or DJ?" at IMDb