How I Met Your Mother: 'Big Days'; High Six for an awesome episode!

So many of the things that were wrong with How I Met Your Mother last year were addressed in 'Big Days'. For starters, we're given a strong development on the mother-meeting front. After cleverly leading us into believing we were seeing the second of the 'Big Days', we instead find out Ted is giving a speech as the best man at another couple's wedding. We also find out that this is the day Ted meets his future wife.

This is interesting for two reasons. The first is that the writers clearly have made nice on their promise to be more story-arc focused this year, even though I understand their reasons for wanting to do more syndication friendly stories in Season 5. We're no longer floating about in HIMYM-limbo, there's a point in time that the audience, the writers, and the characters are heading towards. I'm someone who sits in the 'Lost was better once the end date was set' camp, so I'm all for this. Having said that, we don't really know when this wedding is taking place - it could be the Season 10 finale for all we know.

The second reason is that, unlike the ambiguous umbrella clue that could have turned up at any moment, we now know that Ted definitively meets the mother at the wedding. Unless a significant number of episodes of this show take place at weddings (and I hope to God they don't), as soon as we see someone annouce their engagement, we'll know it's not long away. Unlike the umbrella, we'll be able to see the end in sight (not that I think the show will end with Ted meeting the mother, but you know what I mean).

And is it safe to say we can guess the identity of the bride and groom? This show likes to tease us a lot, but considering all the hints of Barney's old spark for Robin returning, would a Stinson-Scherbatzky wedding be on the cards?

Honestly, I don't mind. If they get together, great. If they stay friends, also great. What I absolutely don't want is this to become a Sam/Diane thing, or even a Ted/Robin thing. The writers made a massive mistake letting Barney and Robin as a couple disappear before it really had a chance to make an impact, and if this is their way of saying, 'Ooh, maybe we should try this again', then I hope they know what they're doing.

'Big Days' was also plenty funny in it's own right, another step up from a lot of last season's offerings. My favourite gag of the episode was Barney's slow motion photo-taking of Cindy and her girlfriend as they kissed. Crude but funny. Marshall and Lily's B-story about Marshall's Dad being far too involved in their conception process provided a lot of laughs too, in a scenario I can imagine many parents-to-be finding themselves in. Marshall demanding silence while he weighed up talking to his Dad or missing out on sex made me laugh. Angry Marshall is always funny, as played by Jason Segel.

The Lily and Marshall storyline also gave me the other big step up from last season, which was that it brought a little bit of the heart back to the show. By far my favourite episode of last season was 'Of Course', where we found out how rough Robin was really taking her break up with Barney. Here, we get a really sweet scene where Lily explains to Marshall why she doesn't want people to be involved until she actually has a baby to talk about. Segel and Alyson Hannigan have got this relationship so down at this point.Marshall's response to Lily's concerns were so well written and acted, and gosh darn it, if Alyson Hannigan isn't the actress most capable of making me cry with just a sad face.

And briefly, it was a nice return for Rachel Bilson as non-'The Mother' Cindy. I'm always fond of when this show shows us how the characters we're not likely to see again have got their happy ending, and it was no different here.

A return to form for a brilliant show that had a poor season we'll be referring to in a years time as a 'hiccup'. Hopefully.

Great, great episode.

What did everybody else think?