| Episode cast overview: | |||
| Josh Radnor | ... | Ted Mosby | |
| Jason Segel | ... | Marshall Eriksen | |
| Cobie Smulders | ... | Robin Scherbatsky | |
| Neil Patrick Harris | ... | Barney Stinson | |
| Alyson Hannigan | ... | Lily Aldrin | |
| Malin Akerman | ... | Movie Stella | |
| Judy Greer | ... | Royce | |
| Chris Kattan | ... | Jed | |
| Jason Lewis | ... | Movie Tony | |
| Arshad Aslam | ... | Brian | |
| Jeremy Glazer | ... | Bruce | |
| Jacob Hopkins | ... | Billy | |
| Gloria Calderon Kellett | ... | Rachel | |
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Miranda Lilley | ... | Patricia |
| Tom Virtue | ... | Minister | |
Ted has just started dating a woman named Royce. Like all the other relationships he's ever had, he's waiting to learn what baggage Royce is carrying that will ultimately ruin the relationship. When Ted and Royce go to see a movie called The Wedding Bride, Ted learns that he too carries some baggage, namely that he was once left at the altar. What makes this baggage worse is that the movie, which is now a big hit, was written by Stella's husband, Tony Grafanello, about Ted and Stella's relationship and break-up where the Ted character, named Jed Moseley, is painted as the bad guy and the Tony character the good guy. Perpetually happy Marshall helps Ted understand how to deal with his baggage. Written by Huggo
This episode is about the baggage that everyone has and that Ted realizes he has too in this episode. Reason for that is that Tony Grafanello, the reason why Ted got left at the altar by Stella a while ago, has made a movie about this story, called "The Wedding Bride". But this movie is entirely different from the events that happened in season 3 and 4 of How I Met Your Mother. In the movie version, Ted - under the name of Jed Moseley - is pictured as the biggest imaginable jerk and Tony is the endearing and good-looking guy. After Ted has seen this movie with his new date Royce (Judy Greer who is obviously appearing in every single sitcom on air currently), he is outraged and unsure how to react to this. Contrary to what I expected, he doesn't confront Stella and Tony about this, but tries to live with this baggage. Surrealistically, this unfunny romantic comedy turns out to be the 5th- highest-grossing movie of all time in the show and Ted is confronted by it everywhere he goes. To the movie: of course they exaggerated everything, but it was totally unfunny. Actually I really hated the scenes of this movie because I didn't remember Tony as such as a jackass as he proves to be with writing this movie. But besides that, this episode delivers some hilarious gags and actually does without any unnecessary sub-plots most of the time.
Neil Patrick Harris does one of the best performances of his lifetime in this episode! He has little screen time, but every time he's awfully funny and made me laugh out loud more than once (especially the final scene in the cinema with him using "kiss" as an euphemism for a way ruder word, supposedly starting with an 'f'). The other cast members have nice moments as well, although the screenplay tries to hard with the characters of Marshall and Robin, in my opinion. Another great idea of the crew was to show the baggage of people by putting a suitcase in their hands on which we have hilarious one-liners, just as "Still likes Oasis", "Pacific Islander fetish" and "Slept with Barney" - 3 times.
But this episode still suffers from the usual issues that this show has developed in seasons 4 and 5. I was often unable to agree with the writers' sort of humor and, as I said, the movie was utterly dumb. Maybe I'm being a little too harsh with it, but when I compared it to all other movies and TV shows existing, I can't possibly give it more than 5/10 points.