How I Met Your Mother recap: Dating Gremlins

Any serious TV scholar can rattle off a list of shows that moved into Boringville after a pair of romantically star-crossed characters hooked up: Moonlighting, Frasier, Scrubs, Dora the Explorer ...

So one has to worry whether the fifth season of How I Met Your Mother will derail on the blossoming romance between Barney and Robin or Ted's quest to, you know, meet the mother of his future children.

In Monday's opening episode, no one is more intent on killing the joy in Barney and Robin's carefree hookups than Lily, who is determined to make them define the relationship. 

Poor Lily scares them with all her talk of double dates and fantasies of their kids growing up to marry each other, so Barney and Robin take their hookups underground and announce to everyone that they've decided to just be friends.

The news leaves Lily a sobbing wreck as she attempts to consume a gallon of butter pecan ice cream in bed while wailing to Marshall about all the cooking lessons and camping trips they will never get to enjoy with Barney and Robin.

Sympathetic to his wife's suffering, Marshall endures his own disappointment when Lily informs him with an incredulous glare that yes, the boat has sailed on sex tonight. Lily's anguish is short-lived, though, as the gang walks in on Barney and Robin hooking up.

Their sheepish explanation that they are happy keeping things casual holds no water for Lily, who immediately sets out to make them have the dreaded talk about where their series of hasty hookups is heading.

Elsewhere, Ted is suffering his own angst as he prepares for his first day of class as an architecture professor at Columbia University. (Tiny quibble here: So a 30-something architect with no experience in academia can start at an Ivy League school as a full professor? What, does he get tenure on his second day there?)

As a congratulatory gift, Marshall buys Ted a fedora and a bullwhip so that Ted can fashion himself after their favorite professor, Dr. Indiana Jones. The Dominator 8000 may be the best bullwhip on the market, according to Barney's whip guy, but it takes some practice to handle, judging by the nasty welt across Marshall's cheek.

Ted goes on to have the worst first-day-of-class ever, forgetting how to spell "Professor" on the chalkboard and making a fool of himself in front of 200 economics students before realizing he's in the wrong classroom. It turns out that Ted is not too far removed from the pompous, frizzy-haired, Depeche Mode-loving undergrad he used to be.

But running across campus 20 minutes late for his actual classroom leaves him no time to fret about how he should present himself to his architecture students, which is a good thing, because no one wants a professor who asks his students to call him 'T-Dawg'.

The whip comes in handy later as Lily removes the door knobs from Robin's bedroom door to keep Robin locked inside with Barney after an afternoon hookup. Lily refuses to let them out until they have the talk, with Marshall standing by to crack the whip and shout "NOT GOOD ENOUGH" when they insist they're just friends.

By that point, Barney fears that he may have fallen into a relationship after unwittingly breaking all three of his Gremlin rules to avoiding a relationship. As Barney instructs Ted in a flashback to one of their "Tuxedo nights", he equates women with the cute Mogwai from the 1984 movie Gremlins.

In other words, to avoid turning your one night stands into a horrifying relationship with a flesh-eating Gremlin, you must: 

1. Never get them wet, which means don't ever let them shower at your place.

2. Keep them away from sunlight, so don't ever see them during the daytime.

3. Never feed them after midnight, which means never let her sleep over or agree to have breakfast with her. (And yes, Ted, that means brunch is out also.)

With some prompting from Ted, Barney realizes he has broken all three rules with Robin. Still trapped in Robin's bedroom, Barney and Robin break down and talk as Marshall tantalizes them with the smell of pancakes and bacon from the living room. Their solution is to tell Lily that they agree finally that they are boyfriend and girlfriend, although they kid themselves into thinking they're lying.

Finally freed from the bedroom, with one last celebratory crack of the Dominator 8000 by Marshall, Barney and Lily leave the apartment. Clasping hands as they walk down the street, we're left to believe they're only lying to themselves with their snickering whispers to each other that they fooled Lily. 

A cameo by the ageless beauty that is Gremlins actress Phoebe Cates would have cut through the cheese factor there, but we'll consider that a missed opportunity. Now that they've got that out of the way, hopefully the rest of the season won't be spent chronicling the ups-and-downs of Barney and Robin's relationship.

Although we are left wondering what exactly would Barney have to do for randy Robin to say "flugelhorn," their mutually agreed upon "safe" word in the bedroom.