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Little Boys
HIMYM episode 3x04 (48)
Little boys - robin doug 2
First aired:
October 15, 2007
Director:
Rob Greenberg
Writer:
Kourtney Kang
Barney's Blog

Images (5)

Robin is awkward around the young son of a guy she is dating. To prove who has more game, Ted and Barney make a bet over who can sleep with a girl first.


Recap[]

Lily tells Robin she can set her up on a date with a guy named George. After she lists his good qualities, Ted points out that she has not mentioned his flaw (or as the gang call it, his "but...") though when pushed, Lily reveals that George has a son in her kindergarten class. Despite Robin's personal dislike of children, she goes on a date with George and winds up meeting his son, Doug.

After some initial hesitance and an argument about how cereal should be served, Robin and Doug actually hit it off. However, when Robin decides to break up with George before Doug becomes attached to her, Lily shows Robin a picture that Doug has drawn of "his new mommy." Despite Robin claiming otherwise, everyone else believes the woman in the picture is Robin. Lily informs Robin that if she breaks up with George, she must break up with Doug as well - Robin reluctantly agrees.

Meanwhile, Ted ridicules Barney's latest pick-up plan (a story involving snakes and an eye-patch) and the two argue about who has more "game," while Marshall is classed as irrelevant to his dismay. To settle the argument, Ted and Barney select a girl from the bar to see who can sleep with her first. While Ted is distracted Barney makes his move, only to be slapped in the face. Barney explains this is because he had already slept with the girl the year before and therefore, has won the bet, but Ted rules otherwise and begins his pick-up attempt and succeeds.

Ted and Stacey, the girl from the bar, have begun dating so he gloats to Barney about winning the bet. However, Barney makes Ted uncomfortable with thoughts that Barney has already been with Stacey and Ted breaks up with Stacey, admitting to Barney and Marshall that he was unable to get past the thought of her and Barney together. Barney reveals that he had not slept with Stacey at all; on the night of the bet, he asked Stacey to slap him to make it appear as though she hated him to set up the entire ruse that they had slept together. As Ted gloated his dates with Stacey, Barney learned various details about Stacey's life so that he could be there for her when she broke up with Ted. However, one month later, he finds himself bored and frustrated for agreeing to Stacey's request to take things slowly since her experience with Ted.

Robin goes to see Doug and takes advantage of the fact that he has never been dumped before by using "every cliché in the book" but she is interrupted by the arrival of George's new girlfriend, Brooke, whom she realizes is actually the woman in Doug's drawing. Lily tries to comfort Robin after her break up, but cannot believe she was dumped by a six year old. Robin claims she is done with kids but Future Ted narrates that she would eventually make her peace with kids and go on to appear in some important works of art - pictures drawn by his kids of themselves with Aunt Robin.

Continuity[]

  • Marshall claims that he and Lily have had sex 1053 and a half times, explaining that his mother called once. Lily tells the story of how this happened in Game Night as the most embarrassing moment of her life.
  • Ted likes the fact that Stacey can play bass. He mentions that his "perfect woman" can play the bass in Milk.
  • While the gang silently consider Robin's "buts", Lily thinks "but she's a gun nut" (previously referenced in Where Were We?​​​ and Moving Day) and Marshall thinks "but she didn't like Field of Dreams" (as stated in Ted Mosby: Architect).
  • Doug, who blackmailed Marshall in Monday Night Football, reappears as George's son.
  • The guy from the bathroom whom Marshall made "wildly inappropriate homoerotic comments" to later gives him his number.  He and Ted also get hit on repeatedly when the gang go to a gay bar in Single Stamina​​​.
  • Marshall tells Barney and Ted that he doesn't want to be left out of their debate about who has more "game." He previously complained about being left out by them in Third Wheel​​​.

Future References (Contains Spoilers)[]

  • The romantic montage during which Future Ted admits he started liking Stacey is similar to the one in Spoiler Alert​​​ with Ted and Cathy.
  • In Everything Must Go, Marshall insists that gay guys love him.
  • Barney tells Marshall that his idea of "game" is "slapping on a Dr. Seuss hat and flashing two tickets to a Spin Doctors concert." In Intervention, Marshall is seen getting "addicted" to his Dr. Seuss hat.
  • While arguing that he has more game because he's slept with more women, Barney reminds Ted that he showed him his "list." While he is seen with a list of his past sexual partners in ​Right Place, Right Time, he claims that he would never demean the women he slept with by putting them on a list in The Bracket​​.
  • Robin's issues with children come up again in several episodes, including Not a Father's Day​​​, Glitter​​​, and Bad Crazy.
  • When Doug enters George's apartment, Robin calls Lily and whispers, "It's here, Lily. It's looking at me." Ted does the same thing, referring to Missy the goat, in The Leap​​​.
  • Marshall not wanting to be left out of their debate about who has more "game" is addressed again in Definitions​​​ and Unfinished.   
  • Marshall argues that if dating is "the game", then marriage is "winning". When Barney meets the Mother, as seen in Platonish, she asks him if he wants to "keep playing the game", or if he wants to win, encouraging him to ask Robin to marry him, as he does in The Final Page - Part Two​​​.
  • Future Ted reveals that Robin had taken his kids on several outings, and in Last Forever - Part Two, it is revealed that she spent a lot of time with Ted and the kids following the death of the Mother in 2024 and that the kids would say they love their Aunt Robin towards the end of that episode.
  • Aunt Robin appearing, but the Mother not appearing, in the drawings is a clue about the Mother's fate.

Gallery[]

For a listing of all images on the wiki tagged as being from this episode, see Category:Little Boys images.

Memorable Quotes[]

Doug: Why are you getting so upset, Roberta?
Robin: Robin. My name is Robin. Like the bird, remember?
Doug: Whatever.

Ted: It doesn't matter. Robin hates kids.
Robin: I don't hate kids.
Ted: You told me even when you were a kid, you hated kids.

Flashback

Kid Katie: Robin, will you watch cartoons with me?
Young Robin: I go to school all week.

Can't I just have five minutes to myself to read Highlights and drink my juice?

Present

Robin: Okay, yes, kids are not my favorite thing in the world, but I like them.
Ted: Well, you don't want to have them.
Robin: I like sports cars, but it doesn't mean I want to push a Ferrari through my vagina.

Barney: Okay, Marshall?
Marshall: Yes.
Ted: Which one of us has more game?
Marshall: Neither of you guys has any game, right? Or else you'd be married like me.
Ted and Barney: What?
Marshall: If dating is the game, then marriage is winning the game.
Ted: Yeah. If you're playing in the women's league.

Marshall: I don't want to be left out.
Barney: Ted, you do not have more game than me. By sheer numbers alone, I win. Come on, dude. You've seen my list.
Marshall: You guys want to hear one of my lines?
Ted: First of all, I did not ask to see that list, and I am still horrified. And true game is about quality, not quantity, and a quality girl would pick me over you any day.
Marshall: Are you a model? That one's good because it's flattering. To the girl.
Marshall feels excluded on having game to get girls because he's only been with Lily.

Ted: She plays bass in a reggae band, and has a show this Friday. How cool is that?!
Barney: Oh, does she know that one song "hm hm chaca, hm hm chaca.." What's that song called? Oh right, is called every reggae song.

Notes and Trivia[]

Goofs and Errors[]

  • When Ted and Barney's bet is first established, Ted makes a rule forbidding the use of 'props'. However, Barney utilizes Ted's yoga mat in his attempt to seduce their 'target'.
    • It's also true that Barney leaves when Ted establishes the rules so that he can get a head-start with Stacey, making the established rules worthless.
  • Doug was last seen as a student in Lily's class last year (Monday Night Football). Unless he was left back (or it was not intended to be the same character though played by the same actor and given the same name), he wouldn't still be in Lily's class a year later. However, the kindergarten teachers sometimes change the class that they teach.
  • When Marshall is doing the math of how many times he and Lily have had sex in the last ten years, he mentions a two week lapse due to a fight, but doesn't mention the months they were apart in the beginning of season 2, when Lily was in San Francisco.

Allusions and Outside References[]

  • Robin says, "It's here, Lily. It's looking at me," when Doug enters the room for the first time. This is a reference to Ghostbusters.
  • Marshall says "If we were friends with Garfield, we wouldn't set him up on a date with Mondays", referring to the comic strip Garfield, created by Jim Davis.
  • Marshall considers it a character flaw that Robin doesn't like the baseball film Field of Dreams.
  • In one scene, Ted says that what Barney said to him was 'stuck in his head like a Chumbawamba song'. Marshall then asks which Chumbawumba song, to no reply. This is a reference to the British Pop group Chumbawamba, who have achieved chart success with only one song, 1997's "Tubthumping".
  • Barney says to Marshall that his idea of game is "slapping on a Dr. Seuss' hat and flashing two tickets to a Spin Doctors concert".

Music[]

Other Notes[]

  • Robin told Lily not to tell anyone that she didn't know the winner of a custody case got to keep the child. However, as Future Ted is narrating the story, someone must have told him.
    • Robin may have been the one to tell him.
    • It is also plausible Lily did not keep the secret as it is well established she is bad at this.

Guests[]

Reception[]

  • Omar G at Television Without Pity gave the episode a B+.[1]
  • Donna Bowman of The AV Club rated the episode C-. She complains the episode has a Friends-esque pair of premise and is "executed with a tin ear and slack discipline"[2] a criticism she even reiterates the following week.[3]
  • Staci Krause of IGN gave the episode 8.5 out of 10.[4]
  • The St. Petersburg Comic Review gave this episode 8.5 out of 10 stars. "Robin is not Dougie's new mommy."

References[]

External Links[]


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