By Mike Frey
Synopsis: Ted has just met a girl named Holli and he wants to call her just moments after she leaves MacLaren’s. He thinks it would be cute, but Barney and Marshall — and apparently Jesus — want him to wait the appropriate three days before calling. It’s the Three Days Rule, which, according to Barney, Christ created right before inventing the high five. Ted tries to establish his own “I Like Her, I Call Her” rule, but let’s just say that Ted is no Jesus. Barney and Marshall make him promise that he won’t call Holli until three days have passed. They didn’t, however, say anything about sending a “texty text,” so Ted lets his thumbs do the talking.
Despite some missteps — like breaking out his red cowboy boots and joking about getting married — Ted seems to be doing pretty well with Holli via the texting machine. He should, since Holli is really just Barney and Marshall telling Ted what he wants to hear. In order to save him from making the same mistakes he always makes with women, they’ve reprogrammed his phone with their number in place of Holli’s so he’ll text “I love you” to them before he makes the mistake of blurting out to the real Holli. Plus, they like messing with him, so there’s that. Along the way, they pick up a co-conspirator named, Stan — a honeydripper of a security guard, who in turn picks up Robin by the end of the episode.
Robin first hears about Stan from Barney and Marshall, who reveal their plot to her. She, in turns, clues in Ted, who decides to take revenge by revealing to “Holli” that he sometimes has gay dreams about his best friends. Barney and Marshall, of course, are less concerned about the content of Ted’s dreams than they are about figuring out which one of them he considers his best friend. In an effort to get the answer from him, they’re forced to listen to a fake dream of his about famous architects such as Frank Gehry and I.M. Pei. It may have almost made Buckminster Fuller do a spit take, but Barney and Marshall found it less than amusing — especially after Ted reveals that he knows what they’ve been doing and that he has contacted the real Holli. He takes her on a date, where she proceeds to do all the things that Ted’s friend didn’t want him to do. Maybe there is some merit to the Three Days Rule after all.
What We Liked:
• The fact that the sight or mere mention of a naked lady makes Ted laugh like Beavis and/or Butthead.
• Stan. He may be a big badass security guard on the outside, but on the inside he’s just a teddy bear — a teddy bear who quotes Pablo Neruda.
• The thought of a talking teddy bear, which reminds us of Teddy Ruxpin.
• The idea that, at the time of Jesus’ resurrection, people mostly spent their time “working the loom and trimming their beards.”
• “I’m cuddly, bitch. Deal with it.” — ME (a.k.a. Marshall Erickson, star of Ted’s gay dreams)
What We Didn’t Like:
• The sight of Barney and Marshall reading architectural magazines while wearing old cheerleader uniforms
• The thought of a future when evil robots destroy humanity and force Ted to “get down” with either Barney or Marshall
Best Barneyisms:
• “Girls whose names end in “ly” are always dirty — Holly, Kelly, Carly, Lily.” [Even Marshall can’t dispute that theory, but don’t get Barney started on girls whose names should end in “y” but end in “i.”]
• “We wait three days to call a woman because that’s how long Jesus wants us to wait.”