How I Met Your Mother: Tick, Tick, Tick

     I am incredibly torn on which column in the HIMYM season record to put this episode.  Much like last week, I was certain where it was going to until the last 5 to 10 minutes and then things changed.  Unlike last week, those final minutes didn't clear things up me, but only muddied them up.  I've made it pretty clear on this blog why I watch HIMYM, I'm looking for a good laugh, and this episode, short of a few good lines about sandwiches and hard meat, seemed to run as far away from laughter as if could.  That's a problem when you're a sitcom.  As I've said in the past, there is room for drama in sitcoms but it needs to be surrounded by funny and in the first few seasons of this show the writers seemed to be masters at doing that.  But that mastery is a distant memory at this point in the game.  Of late, episodes that jump into the dramatic aspects of the group's life leave behind the jokes.  If I was looking for large doses of melodrama I would have kept watching Gray's Anatomy.
     Yet, the final scene of Tick, Tick, Tick was such a well written, well set-up punch to the stomach moment, I don't think I can put the episode in the loss column.  I can see where some people may complain that it just further delays the inevitable, a too often used tactic the last few seasons, but does it matter?  Unlike past delay tactics, the pay off was to great to pass up.  The question now is, where do they take Barney's character?  Does he go groveling back to Nora? (God, I hope not) Does he go back to whoring it up? (Fingers crossed!) Is he able to hang out with the group anymore?  I know if I was him I wouldn't want to see Robin's face.  How do you face someone who would leave you in that position?  In all honesty, how does Barney ever get back together with her now?  We're talking about a character that was scared of intimacy and finally left himself be vulnerable only to get cut down.  It's certainly a dose of his own medicine, but how does he come back after all the growth we've seen?
     Of course, the reason this moment may have hit me so hard was we were so close to getting rid of Kal Penn!  Like Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown at the last moment, I was sure this was the moment his horrible character would be punted out of my life only to have the writers renege in the end.  It hurts my soul to think my time with him will be extended at all.  He was originally contracted for two more episodes, so there is still the chance that the Robin/Kevin relationship comes to an end in the next two episodes, but I also feel that would be a sell out to the moment just created.  Why break Barney (and our) hearts for two more episodes?
     So, in the end, I'm going to cop out again, keep straddled on the fence and put Tick, Tick, Tick in the tie column (I am a hockey fan after all).  This season's record stands at 3-5-2.