The show opens with future Ted explaining how Christmas is about spending time with family and because his real family is all weird he’s going to spend it in Manhattan with his other family. We then start with Marshall explaining that he has one last final and while Lily is decorating the apartment into “Christmas eve winter wonderland” he won’t look at it until he’s finished his paper. Then Lily finds their old answering machine which has some old messages on it. One of which is Ted’s and he is consoling Marshall while Lily is gone and calls her a “grinch”, except he didn’t say “grinch”, he said a bad word.

We also find out Barney is “sick.” He doesn’t want to admit it, but he is. He explains that it is mind over body. Whenever he begins to feel sick he just stops being sick and is awesome instead. True story.

The rest of the episode is about Ted and Lily arguing about the message Ted left and what he called her.

Here are the best lines from this episode:

• “I’ll be back at 5. Save me at least 20 cookies and do NOT clean the bowl!” - Marshall
• “I don’t kiss your mother with my mouth, yet.” -Barney
• “My nose is just overflowing with awesome and I had to get some of it out” - Barney
• “Damn voicedial!” - Ted
• “Merry Christmas ass-face” - Lily
• “I know something you could get her that would blow her mindhole” - Ted

Not to be a Scrooge, but I have to say this wasn’t one of their better episodes in my opinion. I thought it just lacked the zap that most of the episodes have. It really just felt like they decided late to have a Christmas episode and wrote something quickly. I’m not against some side stories, that aren’t all about lovey-dovey relationship stuff, but this episode was all about Ted and Lilly and everyone else just seemed to be there because they have to be. The one really good scene was the flashback when Marshall said “I couldn’t find outside.” What’d you think?

You can find a full write up with spoilers at TVSquad.com