Ducky Tie

"Ducky Tie"

"Ducky Tie" is the third episode of the seventh season of the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother and the 139th episode overall. It aired on September 26, 2011.

Plot

Marshall has acquired a blue tie with a yellow-duck pattern, which Barney despises because he finds the design unstylish. Now that Lily is pregnant, her breasts have gotten bigger, so Barney wants to see them; both Lily and Marshall refuse. The group decide to go to "Shinjitsu", a teppanyaki restaurant, for dinner, where Barney insults the cooking style, claiming he can do with ease all the techniques the chef can do. Marshall becomes angry and challenges Barney to do every technique, with permission to touch Lily's breasts if he succeeds. If Barney fails, he must wear the duck tie for one year.

Barney unnerves Marshall and Lily throughout dinner with suggestions that he is as adept at cooking as he claims. When he offers to call off the bet if he is allowed to see Lily's breasts for 30 seconds in the alley, they accept until Marshall realizes that Barney has been conditioning Marshall to associate Barney's sneezing with the desire to go to "Shinjitsu" as part of a future scheme to use Marshall if Barney ever wanted something from him. Lily and Marshall are confident they have won the bet until after dinner, when Barney easily executes all but one of the cooking techniques. In desperation, Lily pulls up her shirt and flashes her breasts at Barney, which distracts and prevents him from succeeding at the final cooking technique. When the group returns to MacLaren's, Barney reluctantly begins wearing the ducky tie.

Meanwhile, during dinner, Ted relays the story of what happened when he ran into Victoria again at the Architects Ball. Ted makes a long-awaited apology for cheating on her, which Victoria accepts although she is no longer angry. However, she is surprised to learn that Ted does not find it strange that he, Robin and Barney hang out every night, despite the fact that both men dated and broke up with Robin. When Ted offers to help Victoria wash the dishes at her bakery, he learns that she is going to be engaged to Klaus, a classmate from Germany, and becomes upset when he learns that she got together with him a day and a half after she and Ted broke up. They end up arguing, but begin reminiscing about their time together after Ted reveals he deeply regretted cheating on her and they had loved one another; they end up sharing a kiss.

Despite the kiss, Victoria realizes that she wants to be with Klaus and leaves to meet him for a trip in the Hamptons. Though he concludes the story there with his friends, Future Ted reveals that he had asked Victoria what she imagined their lives would be like had they stayed together. Victoria had responded that Ted's relationships over the past six years have failed because of Robin, telling him that she is a bigger part of his life than he realizes and warns him that the current friendship that he shares with Robin and Barney doesn't work. Though Ted had not believed Victoria at the time, Future Ted reveals that she had been right.

Music

• "Spit on a Stranger" a cover by Kathryn Williams. This marks the second appearance of the song in the series. The first appearance was the original version of the song by Pavement, and appears in the episode when Ted and Victoria first met, "Drumroll, Please".

Continuity

• The eponymous Ducky Tie makes its first chronological appearance. It was shown in the casino flashforward from "The Naked Truth" and previously mentioned by Future Ted in "The Best Man". In the later episode "Good Crazy," Barney claims that the Ducky Tie "came back" after he threw it away.
• This episode continues the gang's strange familiarity with all the girls that Ted has dated. In a deleted scene, the part where the gang try and guess who Ted ran into extends for over a minute as the gang reel of every girl that Ted has dated who has ever been mentioned or seen, all of whom are known as "the girl who...", with the exception of Victoria.
• The "bang-bang-a-bangity-bang" song at the Hibachi restaurant was first sung by the group in the season 5 episode "Of Course" and then by Barney in season 6 episode "A Change of Heart".
• When Ted and Victoria reminisce about their relationship they mention the drumroll, Barney's tape and Marshgammon. Ted says they played the game a few more times and he still doesn't understand it.
• Lily says "You son of a bitch!" in the same way as in "The Playbook" and "A Change of Heart".
• Barney's quest to see Lily's breasts finally comes to an end. His obsession was first referenced in "Robots Versus Wrestlers".
• Barney makes another reference to how low quality clothing makes him feel "ill". He first mentioned this in Sorry, Bro and The Fight.

Barney's blog

Barney writes a paragraph denouncing ducks.

Cultural references

• The gang's descriptions of many of Ted's ex-girlfriends, which usually start with "the girl who..." makes Ted think he dated "a series of Stieg Larsson novels," referring to the Millennium series.
• Barney's first joke about the ducky tie is a pun based on the name of the children's game Duck, Duck, Goose. He immediately follows it up with several mentions of hashtags.
• Barney sings "let your boobies show" to the melody of the line "Let my people go" from the song Go Down Moses.

Reception

Todd VanDerWerff of the AV Club rated the episode at A-.

The episode had 10.556 million viewers.

External links

• "Ducky Tie" at IMDb