“Blitzgiving” | ||
← | HIMYM episode 6x10 (122) | → |
First aired: November 22, 2010 | ||
Director: Pamela Fryman | ||
Writer: Theresa Mulligan Rosenthal | ||
Barney's Blog | ||
The "Curse of the Blitz" is passed on after the gang spends a wild evening with bad-luck pal, The Blitz. As a result, they end up spending Thanksgiving with Zoey.
Recap[]
Ted is excited to be hosting his first Thanksgiving, complete with a TurTurkeyKey - a turkey stuffed with a smaller turkey. However, when he plans to leave the bar early, the gang warns him about ending up like "The Blitz."
Starting back in college, Steve "The Blitz" Henry would often leave early and end up missing epic adventures and moments. The next morning, upon hearing what he missed, The Blitz would exclaim "Aw, man!", the catchphrase of whoever was under the Curse of the Blitz, which dates all the way back to the first Blitz, Matt Blitz, who dropped out of Wesleyan right before the school went co-ed.
Ted dismisses the idea of becoming The Blitz himself. But the next morning, he awakes to find his friends sleeping all over the messy apartment. They mock him for being The Blitz. To top it all off, Ted finds Zoey asleep in the bathtub.
Ted learns that the previous night the gang had bumped into Zoey in the bar. Lily prepared to lead the gang in hating Zoey, but after a while they became good friends because they were kind of drunk. Zoey recognized Lily from her artwork and suddenly she was welcomed into the gang.
Zoey even dared Marshall to send a picture of "his junk" to a stranger. It was then that The Blitz himself showed up and joined the gang. He is ecstatic to find that he has passed on the curse to Ted.
Ted is less than ecstatic to learn that the gang's antics with Zoey and The Blitz (who prefers Steve now that the curse has been lifted) have broken the oven preventing him from preparing his TurTurkeyKey. After Barney's apartment, Marshall and Lily's apartment and even Steve's apartment have proven unsuitable, Lily suggests they try Zoey who invited them the night before as her own plans fell through. On the way to Zoey's, Barney decides to take a separate cab rather than squish into the same cab as everyone else. When they arrive, Barney is horrified to learn that his absence has lead to the Curse being passed to him.
Zoey welcomes the gang to her apartment, though she and Ted continue to clash. The gang turns to "Wang Guy" (the recipient of the picture of Marshall's junk who has since returned the favor) for advice. Wang Guy assures them that enemies can indeed become friends. Still, things come to a head when Ted angrily compares her to the "evil stepmother" from Cinderella and she throws them out.
In the cab, Lily shows a stuffed turkey she has stolen from Zoey. The tag reveals it to be a gift for someone named Hannah. Ted connects the dots and realizes that his "evil stepmother" remark hurt her more than he realized as she was miserable about her own stepdaughter not spending Thanksgiving with her. He directs the cab back to Zoey's apartment. Barney is too busy sulking about the curse to see they had left, and then doesn't even notice that Zoey had been walking around half-naked. Back at the apartment, Ted asks for Zoey's forgiveness, saying that he understands her feelings for Hannah, and the group sit down to enjoy the TurTurkeyKey. Future Ted says it's how he and Zoey finally became friends.
As Barney and Steve are about to get in the elevator to leave after dinner, Steve steps out to get his coat when a woman enters and her dress gets stuck in the doors and flashes Barney. Barney says "Thank You God!!", and Steve realizes he has become the Blitz again and says "Aw, man!"
Continuity[]
- The cardboard oven is another example of how, as Lily learns in World's Greatest Couple, Barney makes his home as inhospitable as possible so girls will leave.
- Lily employs her vigilante brand of justice, introduced in Aldrin Justice, when she steals the turkey soft toy from Zoey's apartment after she kicks the gang out.
- Ted and Marshall are eating a sandwich in the flashback to their college days. This is Future Ted's euphemism for smoking marijuana, first used in How I Met Everyone Else.
- The group is unable to go to Marshall and Lily's home for Thanksgiving because of the "worse-than-usual" smell coming from the sewage treatment plant. Their neighborhood was first seen in Dowisetrepla, where it is revealed that its nickname is shorthand for "down wind of the sewage treatment plant".
- Zoey mentions having bought Lily's paintings over the Internet. Marshall created a special website for Lily's artwork in Everything Must Go.
- Ted says "copyright pending" for his "turturkeykey", a reference to Barney's catchphrase patent pending.
- In I Heart NJ, when Ted misses out on something special with his friends in New York or with Stella in New Jersey due to riding the train, he exclaims, "Aw, man!" like the Blitz.
- The first "Blitz" shares his name with the GNB accountant Marshall mentions, in The Playbook, giving up on romance just before getting into a civil union with a man. As the first Blitz's misfortune was that he dropped out of Wesleyan right before it went co-ed, they are probably different people.
- In Say Cheese, the gang discover that Barney poses the exact same way in all photos, and discuss Marshall's inability to take a good photo. In the gang's Thanksgiving group photo with Zoey, Barney strikes his standard pose, while Marshall has his eyes closed.
Future References (Contains Spoilers)[]
- Ted develops feelings for Zoey by Oh Honey, where he discovers that she and the Captain have gotten divorced, and they start dating.
- When Ted suggests giving the turkey to her stepdaughter next year, Zoey replies "Yeah, right... Next year", hinting at her pending divorce.
- In Oh Honey, Lily's "hate rule" is seen again when Ted uses it as a way to stop being friends with Zoey and every gang member lay the blame on each other.
- In Gary Blauman, when Future Ted reveals what most characters had been doing, Blitz is mentioned again as he misses out a jackpot on slot machine.
Gallery[]
- For a listing of all images on the wiki tagged as being from this episode, see Category:Blitzgiving images..
Memorable Quotes[]
Ted: | I baste alone. |
Zoey: | Oh, I'm sure you're a master-baster, Ted. |
- —Zoey mocks Ted
Everyone: | THE GENTLEMAN!!! |
Ted: | What was that? |
Barney: | Oh Blitz you had to be there. |
Ted: | I'm not the Blitz! |
- —Ted upset about being the new Blitz
Marshall: | Life moves pretty fast Barney, if you don't stop and look around once and a little while, you might miss it. |
Ted: | Lily, do you have any idea how many people I’ve blindly hated for you? I’ve hated Renée Zellweger with a burning passion for 8 years, only to discover you meant Reese Witherspoon! |
Lily: | Hey, I will hate her until I get my money back for You, Me and Dupree! |
Ted: | That's Kate Hudson! |
Everyone except Barney: | (Chanting) Dance on the oven! |
Barney: | (Chanting alone) Make out with Zoey! |
Barney: | No! Y-You Robin, Robin. I will pay you to be The Blitz. $100! No-- $10,000. No-- 60 bucks. What's a lot of money for someone like you? |
Future Ted: | And just as Barney looked away, it happened. |
All: | The Gentleman! |
Barney: | What happened? I saw it! |
Steve: | Aw, come on, Blitz. Now it's just sad. |
Barney: | Aw, Man. |
Barney: | And here's the twist, Babaka. Because Ted left early, he's now The Blitz! |
Taxi Driver Babaka: | But Barney, now you left the group. Wouldn't that put you in danger of becoming The Blitz yourself? |
Barney: | No. I... Because... Step on it. |
Notes and Trivia[]
Goofs and Errors[]
- When Steve's history is being described, he says "I just got Madden 2k1 and I can't stop thinking about it." In this scene Robin is seen at the booth. However, Madden 2k1 came out in August of 2000, long before Ted met Robin in 2005.
- It's possible that the Blitz got Madden 2k1 in 2005, for whatever reason.
- Ted mentions hating Renee Zellweger for eight years (since at least 2002). However Lily suggests the instigating event was the movie "You, Me and Dupree" which came out on 2006.
- This may just be due to Lily's further confusion as to which actress she hates and why.
- It's mentioned in Okay Awesome that Ted hates parades but Robin states that he was singing at this particular parade, which he seemed to enjoy.
- He could have simply enjoyed it on the off chance that it was so great. This off chance would make sense, given the 'Blitz Chances'.
Allusions and Outside References[]
- Jorge Garcia makes several references to the series LOST, like making up a phone number with the numbers 4815162342 and telling his friends he feels like "the Blitz curse" was like The End living on an island for eternity. His character in LOST also considered himself unlucky.
- The gang has an inside joke where they shout "The Gentlemen!" Also, The Blitz takes the form of mist when it is passed from person to person. This is very reminiscent of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Hush" (in which Alyson Hannigan played Willow) where a group of villains called "The Gentlemen" steals people's voices, and they exit the host as mist.
- The gang makes reference to the film Ferris Bueller's Day Off when describing their participation in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.
- Marshall and Ted talk about a time when they listened to Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon. The event is a reference to Dark Side of the Rainbow. They did it again by playing "Weird Al" Yankovic's Greatest Hits and watching Apocalypse Now.
- Steve Henry makes a comment about missing Double Rainbows when he was the "Blitz", a reference to the viral video about such an incident.
- While being the Blitz, Steve Henry played old video games such as Tomb Raider, Madden 2K1, and Grand Theft Auto.
- Barney and Marshall parody a duet to the tune of Scottish folk song, "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean", which the a capella group Shag-a-rats sang in Slutty Pumpkin.
- TurTurkeyKey is a play on the actual culinary creation Turducken.
- Steve comments that he will be enjoying "Kraft Croft Night: Mac 'n' cheese and Tomb Raider". This refers to a popular brand of macaroni and cheese (Kraft) and the main character of the video game Tomb Raider, Lara Croft.
- Lily and Ted make references to hating Renee Zellweger, Reese Witherspoon, and Kate Hudson. Lily also wants her money back as she hated You, Me and Dupree.
- Zoey paints Robin's face like Paul Stanley from Kiss.
- Ted calls Zoey as the Evil Stepmother from the classic tale of Cinderella. Coincidentally, Jorge Garcia and Jennifer Morrison would later appear together in the fairy-tale themed series Once Upon a Time, where they play Anton the Giant and Snow White's daughter, Emma, respectively.
- Lily references classic cartoon character rivalries such as Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner and Tom and Jerry in describing Ted and Zoey. She made up fake episodes where they call a truce.
- For some reason, Road Runner is referred to as a "she", despite obviously being male.
- The skateboarding dog is a reference to One Three Hill's Dogust Kellerman, a bulldog who also rides a skateboard
Music[]
Other Notes[]
- When the group chants "dance on the oven" to Robin, Barney instead chants "make out with Zoey."
- Jennifer Morrison and Jorge Garcia would go on to costar on ABC's Once Upon a Time, which makes a lot of Lost references too.
- Jason Segel sneezes when the group stands in the kitchen talking about how they buttered in Lily to slide her down the hallway. In many outtakes you can see him sneezing and it not being taken into the final cut.
Guests[]
- Jennifer Morrison - Zoey
- Joe Nieves - Carl
- Jorge Garcia - Steve Henry (The Blitz)
- Audra Griffis - Girl
- Roger Narayan - Babak (Barney's cabbie)
- Craig Cackowski - Cabbie
- Rachele Brooke Smith - Lady in Red
Podcast[]
Featuring an interview with Craig Thomas, Theresa Mulligan Rosenthal and Matt Blitz.
Reception[]
- This episode premiered to 8.728 million viewers. [1]
- Donna Bowman at the A.V. Club gave the episode an A-. [2] She claimed to "love the mile-a-minute episodes like “Blitzgiving," the ones with so many ideas that the writers can barely fit them all on the screen...I just want to see more episodes like "Blitzgiving," an episode stuffed with a slightly smaller episode, risking too much of a good thing and giving us, most appropriately, a feast".
- Angel Cohn at Television Without Pity gave the episode an A-. [3] She "was worried about this episode because Jorge Garcia doesn't seem like he has the widest range in the world. But, while there were occasional weird comic-timing moments, he seemed to survive well."
- Robert Canning at IGN gave the episode an 8 out of 10. [4] He felt that "there was a lot to have fun with concerning the cure of The Blitz, and for the most part, the episode worked this well... But I think the main set up of the episode could have had some stronger jokes attached to it".
- The St. Petersburg Comic Review gave this episode 9 out of 10 stars. "...a tur-turkey-key...and The Blitz."
References[]
- ↑ http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2010/11/23/monday-finals-lie-to-me-adjusted-down-hawaii-five-0-up-no-change-for-chuck/73278
- ↑ http://www.avclub.com/articles/blitzgiving,48015/
- ↑ http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/show/how_i_met_your_mother/blitzgiving.php
- ↑ http://au.tv.ign.com/articles/113/1136323p1.html
External Links[]
- Blitzgiving at the English Wikipedia
- Blitzgiving at the Internet Movie Database
- Blitzgiving at TV.com
- Blitzgiving at CBS Press Express
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