Note: Do not read on if you have not yet seen Season 8, Episode 21 of CBS "How I Met Your Mother" titled "Romeward Bound."
It's T-minus three weeks until the wedding and the pressure is on. Or should be, at least.
Lily, hard at work as The Captain's art consultant, is presented with an offer she can't refuse: move to Rome for a year to purchase art. And yet, she refuses. As amazing as the idea sounds to her, she's too afraid Marshall would go crazy if he put her career before his. Plus, with screaming Marvin on his hands, he might become bitter and desperate and stray.
Meanwhile at the bar, Ted notices an extremely attractive lady he recognizes from yoga class. He tells Barney she has the most ridiculous body he's ever seen -- redonkulous, in fact -- and Barney makes it his mission to get her to take off her coat. He even slips Carl a $100 to turn the heat up so the hot girl will get hot enough to take off her coat, but it's no use -- she covers up even more.
Just then, Robin joins them, and it turns out, the two ladies know each other. Barney, overjoyed by the thought of getting the threesome belt, doesn't even recognize that the hot girl is Liddy, their wedding planner.
Lily, now unemployed after rejecting The Captain's offer, heads over to Marshall's office to surprise him with brownies. When she finds him doing arts and crafts with his co-worker Bernard, Lily learns, much to her amazement, that the company has lost all of its clients months ago. Marshall had been lying to her (though not technically) and hadn't been hard at work for a while. She tells him she turned down the Rome offer because she thought he wouldn't want to give up his career and he tells her he'll convince The Captain to give her another shot.
Back at the bar, Liddy presents Barney and Robin with the menu for their wedding when Robin calls her fiancé and Ted out on acting weird. When they tell her, she's not only cool with Barney wanting to see another chick's body, she admits she wants to see it herself. Ted tells them that he almost asked Liddy out once in yoga class, but her body was so redonkulous he could not speak. It's like trying to explain the rainbow to a blind person, he tells them. So hot it can melt a Nazi's face off.
Barney laments Marshall's absence and says that if he were there, he could've asked Liddy to take off her coat and it wouldn't be weird. Since Marshall is married and committed to his dream girl for the rest of his life, seemingly creepy comments don't sound creepy coming from him. Robin, never one to miss an opportunity to rub monogamy in Barney's face, tells him to ask Liddy to take her coat off ... since he's about to marry to the girl of his dreams as well. He does, and she does, thus proceeding to blind them all with her perfect figure.
At Lily and Marshall's, Lily gets a phone call from The Captain telling her he's offering her the job in Rome again. Much to the gang's surprise, she declines. She tells them she's really scared she'll fail, get herself fired and lose Marshall to the super sexy Italian woman from her earlier fantasy. She says she can't screw up and throw her life in New York away, adding that she's not sure Marshall is really even into the whole "moving to Rome" thing. Meanwhile Marshall, decked out in Mobster white, walks around Little Italy like he owns the place. Just then, he gets a text from Ted telling him to hurry back home because Lily turned down the job offer again.
At the bar, Ted tells Barney to tone down the enthusiasm over other ladies and other lady parts. Robin may seem cool with it, he says, but she isn't really. Barney takes offense to the notion that Ted thinks he knows his fiancée better than he does ("Robin is marrying me, Ted. Not you."), and Ted apologizes for overstepping. Side bar: There's an unresolved issue there that needs to be revisited, and the sooner the better.
Out on the stoop, Marshall tries to convince Lily they should move. She explains to him that she's a scaredy cat, that she's afraid she can't live more than 10 blocks away from her native Brooklyn home. He tells her they'll be fine. Even if they don't have friends there and don't have the language (though Marshall is really fluent when it comes to Bogart and funions), they have their love and no one understands anyone else in the world better than they do each other. Lily is convinced. They're moving to Rome!
"How I Met Your Mother" airs Mondays at 8 p.m. ET on CBS.
