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The Goat (How I Met Your Mother)

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"The Goat (How I Met Your Mother)"

"The Goat" is the 17th episode in the third season of the television series How I Met Your Mother and 61st overall. It originally aired on April 28, 2008.

Plot

The episode begins with the aftermath of the events of "Sandcastles in the Sand": Barney and Robin are in bed together. Robin proposes that they pretend their tryst never happened, and Barney agrees. However, Barney feels quite awkward and uncomfortable around Ted at MacLaren's later in the day. Hoping to find an excuse for his and Robin's actions, Barney seeks out Marshall to help him find a loophole in the Bro Code, a document very important to Barney's life as a bro. Allegedly written by Barnabus Stinson in the 18th century when Benjamin Franklin and George Washington were too busy to write it themselves, the Bro Code proves to be a very tight document that Ted has followed flawlessly and Barney fails in finding a loophole. Though she seems fine with it at first, Robin finds the secret even harder to keep than Barney and eventually admits to Ted that she and Barney slept together. That night, when Barney picks up Ted in a limo to take him to Ted's 30th birthday party, an outraged Ted yells at Barney, telling him how wrong it was to sleep with his best friend's ex-girlfriend. Ted ends his rant by telling Barney that he not only does not want to be bros anymore, but also does not want to be his friend anymore.

Meanwhile, Lily rescues a goat named Missy when a farmer brings it to her kindergarten class and horrifies her students by going into great detail about what will happen to Missy when she visits the butcher. Lily plans to give the goat away to animal control, but becomes attached to the goat while waiting for Ted to arrive at his birthday party. Older Ted reveals at the end of the episode, after hinting at the destruction the goat would do, that he had the story wrong: Everything involving the goat actually takes place during his 31st birthday, at which point — Older Ted also reveals — Robin is living in the apartment.

Continuity

  • The goat in Ted's bathroom on his 30th birthday was first mentioned in Ted's voice-over narration in the first season episode "Milk".
  • The goat was chewing on Robin's washcloth, suggesting that a year later, Robin would be living with Ted.
  • Barney refers to storing a mental image of breasts as a "BPEG", a concept he first discussed with Marshall in "Where Were We?." According to Barney, it stands for "boob images."
  • The Bro Code is an actual book released as a tie-in for the show. Several of the quoted articles in the show are the same as in the book, although under different article numbers.
  • Lily asks if Barney is "all smooth down there", but in "Columns" she saw Barney nude when she painted him, but did not include his genitials painting him all smooth like a Ken doll.
  • In Zip, Zip, Zip, Ted gives Barney his blessing to pursue Robin, before their relationship commences. Ted gets upset with Barney for hooking up with Robin after their relationship ends.
  • After Ted reveals to Barney that Robin told him about their hook-up, Ted makes a remark about Barney wanting to nail his mother. In Little Minnesota Barney reveals that he kissed Ted's mom when he dropped her off at the airport, which he elaborates (and embellishes) upon in Home Wreckers, in which it is revealed that this happened immediately after the events in Brunch.
  • This episode sheds more light on what Barney does. When Marshall is waiting in Barney's office he comments on how if contracts with Portugal go wrong they may declare war on America. Later Barney mentions that the company hires a hypnotist before they give a deposition.
  • While on the roof with the goat anticipating Ted's arrival at his party, Lily tells Barney that "Stella just arrived." However, Ted (as the narrator) later realizes that the events involving the goat took place a year later, in the episode The Leap, by which point he and Stella had broken up. In fact, Stella moved to California as described in the epilogue of As Fast As She Can, the episode immediately preceding The Leap.

Critical response

References

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