How I Met Your Mother: Where Were We? (season premiere)

(S02E01) Fans of How I Met Your Mother all know how last season ended. It can all be summed up in one sentence: Ted and Robin got together and Lilly and Marshall broke up. So for the opener of season two, we pick up exactly where we left off last year. Ted and Robin are overjoyed that they're finally together, but they have to put that on the back burner while they try to nursemaid the shattered Marshall after the love of his life gave him his engagement ring and flew off to San Francisco.

Oh, and the kids are still there. Those two kids that the Bob Saget version of Ted talks to are still listening to his story, but their attention is kind of wavering. "Can you skip to the part where you meet mom? I feel like you've been talking for, like, a year," the girl tells Middle-Aged Ted. Uh huh. I'm with you on that one, sister. Hopefully, that little gimmick will slowly fade away this year so we can concentrate on our favorite five New York twenty-somethings.

I do think the move of having Lilly and Marshall break up was a good one. The Ted-Robin thing was starting to wear on me, mainly because it was following that Ross-Rachel trajectory that eventually became a parody of itself on Friends. Not to say that we won't see more Ted and Robin relationship hijinks in the future, but concentrating on another couple is the right way to go for now. And, anyway, Marshall and Lilly were way too cute last year; that couple needed a small dose of reality to make them a little more relatable.

Ok, so this entire episode consists of the Ted, Robin, and Barney spending the summer trying to help Marshall get over Lilly. We see very little of Lilly, in fact; just once in a fantasy sequence involving George Clinton (Marshall conjures it up after looking at her credit card bill) and at the very end. We do find out her last name, which I don't think we knew last year: it's Aldrin.

Anyway, just when we think Marshall's through being depressed, just when we think he's sobbed uncontrollably for the last time, he sees something that reminds him of Lilly and he breaks down again. Robin even tries to break Marshall out of it by bringing him to a firing range, but that only works for a short time (by the way, can I tell you how much I like the Robin character? Carter and Craig really do a good job of writing her as a "one of they guys" type, but with enough vulnerability to make her a realistic woman, too). It gets to the point where Ted just snaps and calls Marshall "pathetic." It's a good scene because it gives Ted some personality beyond the whole mopey longing act he had for most of last year.

I also liked the parallels Middle-aged Ted makes between the first days of a relationship and the first days of a break-up. "You both spend a lot of time in not wearing pants," he says, which is reflected in Ted and Robin's constant bedroom antics while Marshall languishes on the couch in his shorts. It's putting a bit of a cramp in the budding Ted-Robin relationship, but it speaks to how tight-knit the group is that they still want to help, even if it means sacrificing a romantic weekend to keep Marshall from confronting Lilly when he thinks she's come back to New York.

Oh, and when I said Barney helps out, I mean he helps out in his Barney-like way; he takes Marshall to a strip club. Barney's in fine form in this episode, and there are a lot of Barneyisms to choose from, but the Best Barneyism award for the week goes to his creative suicidal pantomimes that he does whenever he's around the oh-so-adorable Ted and Robin or the pathetic Marshall. From putting a finger-pistol in his mouth and pulling the trigger, to stringing himself up, to committing hara-kiri, it's all so overly detailed, it's really funny. "Stop being a couple!" he tells the new couple once, with a look of disgust on his face. A close second is his description of boob images that fill your brain; he calls them BPEGs. Thank goodness Barney's around; he stops HIMYM from getting too saccharine for its own good.

The episode ends on an interesting note: Marshall is finally over Lilly, after 67 days. But then we see Lilly, looking a little different, in a context that makes me think that it's going to take her a few episodes to work herself back into the fold. It's a very, very strong opening to the season, and right now the show feels like it's about to break out into a monster hit. They just have to get rid of Middle-aged Ted, and everything will be great.