Two out of three dates recommend 'The Naked Man'

Let's skirt past the implications of future Ted regaling his teenage kids with a tale of how a one-night stand helped him recover from getting abandoned at the altar. Monday's episode of "How I Met Your Mother" confirmed the obvious: this CBS sitcom consistently has been the funniest show of the season.

You wouldn't think there would be any new territory to cover in yet another sitcom revolving around the lives of white, New York City 30-somethings. But that was before Monday's scene with Barney and Ted brainstorming with each other on the phone about which naked pose to spring on their unsuspecting dates.

And an extended scene with a near-naked Neil Patrick Harris is all the motivation my wife needs to tune in. (I know, I know, but in her fantasy world, the woman thinks she can change him.)

Barney thought he had mastered the art of seduction already, what with his magic tricks, secret identities and mystery "gadgets" that intrigue married Lily so much. Then Ted walks into his apartment and sees Robin's date sitting on the couch naked, waiting for her to return from a phone conversation outside. It turns out that "The Naked Man" is Mitch the date's go-to stunt to salvage a date with a woman way out of his league.

His paunchy belly and thinning hair don't inspire any Dr. McDreamy comparisons, and his obsession with his five fantasy football teams doesn't do much to wow the ladies. But Mitch explains to Ted it's all about the element of surprise, waiting for the woman to leave the room before stripping nude for the perfect "shock and awww" moment of charm and bravado.

Ted doesn't buy Mitch's claim that "The Naked Man" works two out of three dates, but when he returns to the apartment with Lily, Marshal and Barney to make sure Robin didn't shoot Mitch, they discover that she left the time-honored dorm-room signal to keep roommates from barging in and interrupting a hook-up.

In this case, it was a take-out menu from an appropriately named Chinese take-out restaurant dangling from the doorknob.

"Mr. Wang's is back in business?" an incredulous Marshall asks.

While the rest of the gang takes inspiration from Mitch's go-to move, Marshall calls "slut" on Robin and castigates her for sleeping with a guy she barely knows. Those of you who saw the movie "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" recently probably laughed at the sight of actor Jason Segel playing a disapproving Marshall.

This is the same actor who flaunted his own unchiseled nakedness in an uncomfortably funny breakup scene in his movie role. Now he's the one shaming Robin into a second date with Mitch to prove that the only thing standing between her and sex is clothes.

But even Marshall's wife rolls her eyes at his declaration that true love is the sole reason for sex, and Lily soon sets out to compile a list of 50 reasons to do the deed. The list starts with "can't fall asleep at 3:45 a.m." and moves on to include making up, breaking up, and - perish the thought - "nothing good on TV."

Meanwhile, Barney decides it's time to expand his repertoire to include "The Naked Man."

"I'm like Batman," Barney explains to Lily. "But this Mitch fellow, he's like Superman. He just rips off his clothes,and he's good to go."

So Barney finds his Naked Man target in their hangout bar, while Ted calls an audible at the last moment and decides to break out the Naked Man during a date gone sour. Ted apparently is turned off by women who treat waiters like dirt and who laugh while sharing stories of old people toppling down stairs.

The question then, is which Naked Man pose to strike. With the help of some Austin Powers-inspired props to block their naughty bits, Barney and Ted go through a whole repertoire in their dates' apartments. There were the obvious (the Superman, the Thinker), the funny (the Burt Reynolds, the Captain Morgan) and the creepy (the Coppertone baby).

Ted wavers for a moment when he spots a collection of his favorite Pablo
Neruda poems in his date's apartment, but he sheds the clothes (again)
after she calls Neruda "a turd" and complains that "it's all in
Mexican."

Back in Brooklyn, Lily was breaking out her own version of The Naked Man to restore Marshall's faith in true love (reason No. 50 on Lily's list), for the episode's true "shock and awww" moment.

As Mitch warned, however, The Naked Man works two out of three times, and Barney ends up as the unlucky Naked Man.

Lucky for my wife, she's left with one more scene of an overexposed Neil Patrick Harris scurrying for cover on the streets of Manhattan.