How I Met Your Father – A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Valentine’s Day

By: Gladys Luna

This episode is a collection of stories about a not-so-fortunate Valentine’s Day of each one of the characters. Future Sophie (Kim Cattrall) is happily dancing at her apartment accompanied by a funny teddy bear just as her son watches her and begs for her to stop. Sophie gives into his request and gives away that she was once given one of those as a gift from his father way before they were together. She also mentions he had a soft spot for that celebration since then.  This leads us to that moment back in time when the full gang is sharing a moment together at Sid’s (Suraj Sharma) bar on Valentine’s Day and having an open conversation about it.

As it is always expected, Jesse (Christopher Lowell) does not seem to have an affection for said day as he considers it to be just a lame excuse for the big companies to go big on merch and sell their products to those who believe in it. Of course, the rest of his friends do not agree at all with his line of thought, earning him the nickname of “Love Grinch.” The group opinions are diverse and each of them has a different expectation on how they will spend the day but soon they learn that things might take an interesting turn.

Sid seems to be the type of guy who enjoys celebrating Valentine’s Day and since he and his wife Hannah (Ashley Reyes) started their relationship it has been a tradition for them to celebrate it together. Today is no exception. The only tiny thing standing in the middle of their way is that Hannah is still on her way from Los Angeles to New York and the man only hopes she arrives just in time for it. Unfortunately, not so long after, he receives a message from his wife saying that her flight has been diverted and sent to another city due to a passenger’s emergency. This news immediately shifts Sid’s mood who feels that his plans have just been ruined. The importance behind it for him is because it was the day when he officially asked Hannah to be his girlfriend. It turns out that while they were still med students they had decided to start dating but without being exclusive. Sid was internally convinced that Hannah was the woman for him and vice versa but he didn’t have the courage to admit it until one Valentine’s Day he saw a picture of her posing joyfully next to Drew (Josh Peck) which ignited something within him. He crashed the party where the other two were at and confessed his feelings for her. Luckily for him, she actually ended up showing up at the bar saying that she had managed to get another flight straight to New York.

Moving on to Sophie (Hilary Duff) she begins to share her story of how she had plan to celebrate back when she was a kid but her anecdote gets immediately discarded given that it had happened before puberty. According to Ellen (Tien Tran), that does not count. So, instead, she tells them how while visiting her boyfriend at his dorm on Valentine’s Day she ended up meeting her now best friend Val (Francia Raísa). Apparently, Brendan (Olivier Paris), the guy in question, had been dating both girls and they found out just right there outside his door. The newly acquired information made the girls take a radical decision which was to get revenge against him. Thus, they ended up smashing his bike. Unfortunately, they later learned from Brendan that they had destroyed the wrong one.

On the other hand and with such very bad luck, we have Charlie (Tom Ainsley), who had been strongly attempting to find the right way to share his also failed Valentine’s story. He looks excited to let his friends know about the experience he had with a girlfriend from his past, but seemingly story telling hasn’t been convincing enough to gather his friend’s attention. He keeps delivering bits and pieces of said event but with no luck to be heard at all. That is until he finally manages to summarize his tale in a few sentences confessing that he was stood up by his date while he waited in bed for her, all covered in whipped cream that resulted in a broken heart and that also caused him an infection.

Ellen’s story is that she showed up carrying an ice sculpture shaped as her girlfriend Rachel (Aby James) while complaining that the latter had to leave New York to attend a family emergency. Given that this was going to be their first Valentine’s together, Ellen had planned a full day with her, a dinner by the candle light and the main gift will be said sculpture but now, none of that would be possible anymore. She has been trying to find some comfort on her friends’ unsuccessful stories but still, she misses Rachel. Luckily for her things are still yet to change when a delivery guy (Jesten Mariconda) comes right into the bar and hands Ellen a double cheese pizza. She is confused but right that moment Rachel calls to say she really wanted to be there with her and, even though they are not physically together, they can still have a dinner virtually and that is why she sent the pizza to begin with.

Now, last but not least, there is Jesse who we just discovered that has a reputation for saying “I love you” more often and more quickly than anyone else in there. He begins to share his story of when he was in third grade, but is soon interrupted by his friends reminding him of the rule that stories like that only count if they had happened after puberty. However, Ellen lets them know that Jesse started his puberty early on so his story actually can be counted. We see a young and lovely Jesse with a moustache pouring his heart out to his classmate Mariah (Amari McCoy) offering her a heart-shaped chocolate box while she is giving a presentation in front of the whole class. Sadly, she has no problem in dismissing him right away. Ellen says that he also did the same to a classmate he had in middle school named Olivia (Elizabeth Phoenix Caro) and he declared his love by playing the French horn for her. Sadly, it also didn’t work out so well for him. Then, Sid shares that Jesse did the same again when they were in college. Sophie doesn’t appear to be so happy with Jesse’s history. He insists in knowing why she seemed to be so upset and she explains that even though she was taken aback the time he confessed his love for her just after a few hours of started dating, it had made her feel special. Now, she feels like she is not. The woman acknowledges her own confession which makes her feel embarrassed and decides to move to another side of the bar.

Later on, Jesse goes to find Sophie and apologizes to her for making her feel less special than she is and takes the opportunity to explain that, although there was a time where he had a habit to say random I love you’s to every girl he used to meet, he suddenly stopped for a long while until he met Meredith (Leighton Meester). Then, she broke his heart and he thought he would never be able to say it again. Fortunately, he found her and everything changed. Sophie feels grateful for the clarification and accepts his apologies. He then asks her to tell him about the Valentine’s Day story that she couldn’t finish earlier and she says that when she was in school there was a father-daughter dance that she wanted her dad to attend with her but she didn’t have any information about his whereabouts so she put flyers all over the city hoping he would see them. Sadly, the only one who showed up was a pervert man looking for her but the school security were capable to take care of the situation. Jesse is surprised that even she had good reasons not to like the celebration that she still enjoys it and Sophie reveals him that chocolate helps her. It makes him try some of it making him change his perspective.