Episode no. Season 4
Episode 16 Production code 4ALH16 | Directed by Pamela Fryman Original air date March 9, 2009 | |
Written by Craig Gerard
Matthew Zinman | ||
"Sorry, Bro" is the 16th episode in the fourth season of the television series How I Met Your Mother and 80th overall. It originally aired on March 9, 2009.
Contents
Plot
At 1:45 am, Robin gets up so she will be in time for her 4 am talk show that she anchors. Ted tells his friends that Karen, his girlfriend during high school and college, is now in town.
Marshall and Lily are not happy with this news. They tell Ted how annoyed they were by Karen's pretentiousness, how Ted imitated her opinions and how Karen always cheated on Ted, left for a few months, and got back together with him. The gang agrees he should not call Karen, but Ted admits he already called her. They say he should not ask her to lunch, but Ted admits he already did. The group discusses the four different reasons one would have lunch with an ex: They want to get back together, as depicted in Lily's lunch with Scooter; they want to kill you, depicted in Barney's lunch with Wendy; they want to give back something you left behind, depicted in Robin's lunch with "The Iron Man"; or they want to show off how well they are doing, depicted in an eight-year-old Marshall having lunch with eight-year-old Nicole.
Ted reveals that he has entered a relationship with Karen, facilitated by the sleeping pills Robin has been using to help her keep up with her schedule. Lily is frustrated to hear this, and states the true reason she hates Karen: while she was painting Marshall in the nude, Karen entered and "lingered". Ted tells the rest of the story: while they were hooking up in her apartment, Karen's boyfriend entered. After the boyfriend left, Ted confronted Karen about it and said he never wanted to speak to her again. Karen later dumped the boyfriend. The gang is happy to hear this, but ask Ted how he could know Karen dumped him if he never spoke to her again. Ted quickly says that he and Karen called each other again, patched things up, are now back together and she is coming to the bar. Karen enters the bar and the gang unhappily greets her.
The previous day at work, Marshall was playing basketball with his office colleagues and forgot his suit pants. He called Lily to come over and give him pants. Lily gave the pants to Barney to give to Marshall, but Barney cut them up. Barney finds this story amusing and tries to tell it throughout the evening, while Marshall and Lily are less happy about it.
Critical response
Donna Bowman of The A.V. Club rated the episode with a grade B+.
Michelle Zoromski of IGN gave the episode 8.3 out of 10.