How I Met Your Mother: Too old for this

Combine Barney's unhealthy obsession with laser tag, loving references to renegade cop movie cliches and Ted's "Murtaugh" list of things 30-something Manhattanites are too old to do anymore, and you have almost the perfect set-up for a "How I Met Your Mother" episode.

Sprinkle in a subplot with Marshall ranting about the "everyone's a winner" mentality afflicting youth sports and angrily flinging balls at the kindergarten basketball team he's coaching, and you're there.

In Monday's episode, Barney's laser tag career comes to a controversial end as he's banned from his favorite shooting gallery for using one too many middle-school kids as a human shield. It turns out that parents tend to grow concerned when "the freaky man in the suit" keeps flinging their kids around and planting a shoe in their chests as he blasts away with his laser gun.

When the laser tag gallery's manager demands that Barney turn in his gun and ID badge, Barney launches a tirade straight out of every bad cop movie involving a shouting match between the exasperated sergeant and the rough-around-the-edges cop who refuses to play by the rules.

"I know I don't play by your precious rules, McCracken, but I get results!" Barney roars.

The fed-up laser tag gallery manager bears a small resemblance to Danny Glover Jr., which sets up a series of references to the venerable "Lethal Weapon" series of movies.

As Barney whines about his laser tag ban, Ted tells him it's time he accept that he's too old for the child's game. Ted announces that he's adding laser tag to the "Murtaugh list" he started when they turned 30.

The list, of course, is named after Roger Murtaugh, the veteran L.A. detective portrayed by Glover who's counting the days until retirement in the "Lethal Weapon" movies. Murtaugh spends a lot of time in the four — or is it five? I lost count after Joe Pesci and the one with the evil South African diplomat — Lethal Weapon movies, trying to keep up with his renegade partner Riggs (Mel Gibson) and muttering, "I'm too old for this [stuff]."

So, employing their best impersonations of Glover's husky voice, Ted and Marshall and the gang present to Barney their Murtaugh list, which includes pulling all-nighters, eating an entire pizza in one sitting and hanging posters on the wall without frames.

(That reminds me of a close friend growing up who sealed his immortality in college by attempting to wash down a family-size bag of Oreos with a gallon of milk in one sitting. One of the saddest reminders of our impending decline into middle-age came when we turned 30 and he could no longer finish off a Chicago-style, deep-dish pizza all by himself.)

Barney refuses to accept the validity of the Murtaugh list, and dares to complete every item on the list in 24 hours, risking a three-hour lecture on architecture from Ted should he fail.

With Robin as their witness to the gentlemen's agreement — sealed with a "Huzzah!" of course — Barney immediately starts knocking things off the Murtaugh list. The self-inflicted ear-piercing starts to look infected and smells bad, but it doesn't stop him from doing laundry at his mother's house.

Nor does it stop him from having a futon delivered to Ted and Robin's apartment to cross off, "crash on a friend's futon instead of getting a hotel room." The futon leaves him with a creaky back, however, which makes it almost impossible to toss back shots with strangers without a straw.

To raise the stakes, Ted offers to complete his own list of things they are too young to do, which entails putting on reading glasses, eating dinner at 4 p.m. and taking too long to answer the phone, among other things.

"Life is a meal, and old age is the dessert," Ted tries to explain to a skeptical Robin, who shows far more stamina than Barney when the two of them hit an all-night rave.

Ted struggles however when it's time to go to bed at 8 p.m., and Murtaugh delivers an epiphany when Ted settles in to watch a "Lethal Weapon" marathon. Murtaugh keeps saying he's too old for this [stuff], Ted observes, but he keeps doing them. So Ted spares a rapidly deteriorating Barney from sucking down a beer bong of warm Russian beers he found in the basement and agrees to help Barney toilet-paper the laser-tag gallery.

Which leads, of course, to the laser-tag gallery manager grumbling that he's too old for this [stuff] after he catches Barney, Ted and Robin TPing the place.

Poor Marshall misses out on most of the fun, however, because he's too busy coaching Lily's kindergarteners' basketball team. Lilly views it as a preview of Marshall's parenting style but quickly grows horrified at his 'Great Santini' approach, which involves plenty of suicide sprints and the withholding of orange slices until they make a shot.

Lily's coaching style leans the opposite way and includes her strumming an acoustic guitar and telling the kids the score is "fun to fun" as they meander around the basketball court.

Threatened by Lily with the silent treatment if he doesn't stop screaming at the tykes, Marshall suffers in silence during a 118-0 thrashing at the hands of Teen Wolf and his burly teammates. At least that's how he tells the story later on, and who are we to deny the show a "Teen Wolf" reference? A close second to "Back to the Future" in the Michael J. Fox canon, if you ask me.

One more reference to a pop-culture classic from the 1980s, though, and even this 39-year-old would have embraced his inner "I'm too old for this [stuff]."