How I Met Your Mother: 4.01 ‘Do I Know You?’ Recap

Original Air Date: September 22, 2008

So, what was the How I Met Your Mother gang up to over the summer?

Ted was happily engaged to Stella, who we learn said yes to his marriage proposal after he envisions her saying no in several of the worst possible ways (laughing, incredulous, admitting she preferred the high school rival who called him Turd instead of Ted all the time).

Marshall coped with being unemployed (by continually asking everyone what they’re doing).

Lily threw herself into her painting.

Barney recovered from the bus accident with physical therapy.

And poor Robin developed a deep hatred for her news-anchor job.

Ted’s glowing relationship with Stella is put to the test by his pesto with peanuts when he cooks for her one night and uses the nut, unaware she’s deathly allergic to them. The incident reinforces Marshall’s earlier observation that Ted knows very little about who Stella is as a person, probably because they’ve only known each other a few months. Marshall’s suggestion? Slow down and learn more about her. Ted’s response? But I love her.

Stella recovers quickly, but during a Q&A session with Ted, she reveals she’s never seen Star Wars, Ted’s all-time favorite movie. Marshall freaks when he learns this and becomes convinced Stella’s love (or not) for the movie is a compatibility test. If she doesn’t like the movie when she does get to see it, Ted shouldn’t marry her. Ted disagrees and says it’s just a movie … until he watches it again and sees the light.

Fortunately for him, after catching the movie and hating it (she thinks it’s stupid), Stella tells Marshall she’s perfectly capable of lying about that little fact for the rest of her life to make Ted happy. Even Marshall has to agree then that Stella is a good catch for Ted.

Meanwhile, Barney confesses to Lily that he’s in love with Robin when the kindergarten teacher notices something is up. Predictably, this is not a good thing for the notorious womanizer, who describes the development as a disease, as in he slept with Robin one time and caught feelings, the best one-liner of the episode by far.

Lily initially misinterprets Barney’s confession, however. Although he claims to be in love, he doesn’t want to be Robin’s stupid boyfriend, which might explain why he’s perfectly happy to yearn for her all the time but settle for only thinking about her when sleeping around with women like the one who’s in his apartment during the chat with Lily.

Determined to help Barney with his Robin problem if he’ll only forsake the philandering, Lily sets Barney and Robin up for a date together with neither realizing it. Barney acts like a nice guy who listens the whole time, which freaks Robin out. So, when Barney atypically gives her genuinely good advice and encourages her to apply for another news job where she’d be doing important work, Robin repays him by being a true wing-woman — she sets him up with the busty waitress.

In the end, Barney follows along with that and chooses bimbos over love. When Lily forces him to chose between love of Robin and sleeping around, Barney selects the latter, explaining in his ode to bimbos that such air-headed women make him want to pretend to be a better man, not actually be a better man. Still, his longing look at Robin on television after Lily leaves hints his feelings for Robin are far from gone.