Season 2, Episode 1: Where Were We?

“Oh man.  You guys did it, didn’t you?”

Season 2 of How I Met Your Mother starts with Ted and Robin getting back together and Lily leaving Marshall and going to San Francisco.

Exuberant in their new relationship, Ted and Robin are all over each other.  Marshall on the other hand is drinking beer on the couch 24/7.  After a month they try to cheer him up with strippers (Barney) and baseball (Ted), but he doesn’t really cheer up until Robin takes him to the gun range.

Ted and Robin have plans to go away for the weekend, but Marshall gets Lily’s credit card bill which send him into a funk.  He gets online and finds out Lily’s in New York at a hotel.  He calls, only to have a guy answer in her room.  Marshall wants to go there and beg her to take him back, but Ted ends up yelling at him.  He tells Marshall he’s pathetic and he’s blowing any chance the “real Marshall” has of ever getting Lily back.

Robin and Ted head out and call Barney from the road to check on Marshall.  Barney’s in a strip club and when he turns to give the phone to Marshall, Marshall’s gone.  Ted and Robin head to the hotel and find Marshall in the hotel bar.  Marshall tells Ted he went to Lily’s room with a speech planned, but when the guy opened the door, Marshall punched him.  Only Marshall didn’t punch Lily’s new boyfriend, he punched the guy who stole Lily’s identity.  Marshall tells Ted how those charges were the last link he had to Lily.  And now it’s gone.

Ted tells Marshall about how the very first time they met, Marshall was confident and happy.  Without Lily.  And Marshall says he was stoned and thought Ted was the Dean.  But Ted reminds him he needs to get back to the version of himself, before Lily.  And Marshall resolves to start being okay.  It takes him a while longer, but eventually he is okay again.

The Mother- I think this is going to be good for Marshall.  Everyone needs to experience being single as an adult.  It’s a necessary life lesson he hasn’t had yet.