“I can’t peanut butter it in your ass.”

If you don’t watch How I Met Your Mother, I feel sorry for you. It’s one of the few shows out there that manages to leverage the classic multi-camera sitcom format, while keeping an ongoing storyline and having characters with real emotional weight. It’s one of those genuine shows that can make you laugh and make you really feel for the characters at the same time.

This year, the two main actresses on the show, Alyson Hannigan and Cobie Smulders, both got pregnant mid-season, which was a tough logistical challenge for the show’s writers. Smulders isn’t showing too much thus far, but Hannigan had ballooned out and the last few weeks have barely managed to contain her baby belly. Some of the early attempts to explain Hannigan’s baby bump were very clever. Aside from the usual hiding of the stomach with a large purse, or a kitchen island, there was an episode where it was revealed that Lily, her character, was a former hotdog eating champion, which resulted in a few scenes of her, baby bump on display, scarfing down hotdogs. It’s funny to the audience, who is clearly aware of her real-life situation, but also serves a valid purpose. Tonight’s was even better.

In the opening scene, sitting in a bench at the gang’s favourite bar, she is told a joke that is referred to as “boy-funny.” The joke is quoted above, along with the punchline which the show refused to even utter. Upon hearing the punchline, Lily was so offended that she left. And as the narrator said “she didn’t talk to us for four weeks.” I’m guess there are four episode left in the season. In either case: Awesome.

Well, I gave Xander’s “growing up and out” episode a solo review, so I felt I had to do the same for Willow’s. Also, I absolutely love this episode. Of course, the weird thing here is that this isn’t a one-off, because there actually is arc development going on here, whereas The Zeppo was completely void of any of that. Of course, this episode has something up on The Zeppo: it’s written by Joss Whedon, AKA God. Which explains why it manages to beautifully interleave single episode story structure with ongoing arc elements.

But I’m gonna pretty much ignore the arc elements. It suffices to say: Faith bad, Mayor badder. On to Willow. Something about which I have had many a dream.

She finally realises that she’s boring. Well, she’s not actually boring; she’s a computer-hacking, witchcraft-performing, super-nerdy, super-sexy girl. Any one of those things on its own would mean she was not boring, and putting them all together is not a “two rights make a wrong” kind of situation. But anyway, she likes to think she’s boring and decides to be more dangerous. Which lead to her performing a funky time-folding spell with Anya, formerly the vengeance demon du jour for scorned women, that got messed up and led to her parallel world vamp version coming to in our world. And then the fun begins.

The jock whose homework was to be done by Willow get his ass womped, Willow gets to pretend to be a dominatrix psycho bitch, and last but not least we get our first overt clue to Willow’s future homosexuality. My personal views on homosexuality aren’t exactly as strict as Joss Whedon’s; for instance, just because you fall in love with a girl doesn’t mean you couldn’t also fall in love with a guy. Most people would stick to whatever side of the tracks they’re on, but if you’ve gone both ways before, you’re no longer bound to one side or the other. (To be fair, that might just be a part of my consistent delusion of hoping that Xander and Willow will end up together in the long run, because they’re perfect for each other)

There are so many school-boy-squealing, this-is-freaking-awesome moments in this episode but the best ones sums it up pretty well. Giles rushing like a little boy headed toward his mom to hug Willow. Nuff Said.