Today in TV History: ‘How I Met Your Mother’ Took Us to The Mall

Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone. 

IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: November 20, 2006

PROGRAM ORIGINALLY AIRED ON THIS DATE: How I Met Your Mother, “Slap Bet” (Season 2, Episode 9) [Watch on Netflix or Amazon Prime]

WHY IT’S IMPORTANT:  The early seasons of How I Met Your Mother unfolded in … well, not obscurity perhaps, but certainly not under the spotlight that the later seasons did. This series had a slow build in a lot of ways: critical appreciation, mainstream attention, popular buzz over the identity of the Mother — all those things accrued over time. So much so that by the final season, the weight of expectations and the heavy sighs of critics (who by that point had passed through the enraptured-evangelization phase into the irritated-exhaustion phase) was too much for its finale to bear.

The period while a show is still building its following is often remembered as a somewhat magical time. You’re not sure if everybody else is watching this show, and all of a sudden, one particular episode is its tipping point. “Slap Bet” is How I Met Your Mother‘s tipping point, and probably its best episode. The premise is simple and grows to insane, multi-leveled proportions. Initially, it’s just that Robin (Cobie Smulders) has a secret: she hates malls, to the point where she refuses to set foot in one, but she won’t say why. The mystery of it gets kicked up a level when Barney (Neil Patrick Harris), who is so certain that Robin’s secret has to do with pornography, makes a bet with Marshall (Jason Segel). And not just any bet: a slap bet. Presided over by slap-bet commissioner Lily (Alyson Hannigan).

The rules of, and haggling over, the slap bet make up the bulk of the episode, and a good deal of the episode’s funniest moments. But not THE funniest moment. While all that slapping would have made the episode one of the show’s best, it’s the ultimate revelation of Robin’s deep, dark mall secret that elevates “Slap Bet” to all-time status.

How I Met Your Mother was a good show, but not a great one. A great show might have been content to let Robin Sparkles exist in perfection within this one episode. How I Met Your Mother always had a tendency to try to catch lightning in a bottle, over and over again. Both Robin Sparkles and the slap bet recurred, to diminishing returns. But the sad tails to both stories only, in hindsight, enhance just how magical of an episode “Slap Bet” truly is.

[You can watch the “Slap Bet” episode of How I Met Your Mother on Netflix or Amazon Prime]

Joe Reid (@joereid) is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn. You can find him leaving flowers for Mrs. Landingham at the corner of 18th and Potomac.