How I Met Your Mother - Episode 7.01 & 7.02 - The Best Man & The Naked Truth - Recap

It’s been a long summer since we’ve left the gang at Barney’s wedding (in the future) and having Lily and Marshall be pregnant (in the present.)

 Lily and Marshall keep Lily's pregnancy from the rest of the group, and it leads to Marshall secretly drinking Lily's shots. He, of course, becomes completely drunk. After seeing so many babies at the reception, they decide to no longer keep the secrets from the rest of the gang. At the end of the episode Marshall’s drunkenness leads to the reception of Punchy’s wedding being ruined, because he steals the mic from Ted in the middle of his toast and says a few choice words that causes confusion among the guests.

Meanwhile, Barney tells the gang that he never actually called Nora but he did; she never picked up or called back. Robin, very obviously, still has feeling for Barney, and when Lily figures this out she convinces her to tell Barney, but Nora calls Barney at an inopportune moment, and Robin actually ends up telling Barney what he should tell Nora in order to win her over. 

The next day Marshall gets a call from Honeywell & Cootes: an environmental law firm. Garrison Cootes tells him that they’re interested in him, but that they just need to run a background check. Marshall starts googling himself to see if there’s anything that may lose him his job, and he stumbles upon an embarrassing video. He runs off to find his friend to ask him to take down the video, but they end up getting drunk and Marshall  makes another embarrassing video.  In the end, Cootes ends up hiring Marshall even after he finds the videos.

Meanwhile, Barney does meet Nora for coffee–albeit with a fake neck brace in hope of gaining some sympathy points–but Nora becomes upset with him for being such a liar. After spending the night (in the diner) with him she leaves, but Barney tells her he will not leave the diner until she promises another date. At the end of the episode she does come back and sees he’s still there. 

Also, Ted starts getting dates by hanging out by a newsstand and casually pointing out he’s on the cover of New York magazine. He dates two girls and doesn’t know which to invite to the Architects’ Ball. He ends up taking neither after seeing Barney’s feeling for Nora, because he realizes that is what he truly wants and he doesn’t feel that way about either girl. Ted takes Robin to the ball, but the best part is he sees Victoriaat the ball and his feeling rise up again. It really hints at the fact that Victoria may be the mother, but it could also just mean another long term relationship for Ted.