Barney

We’re going to meet Barney’s mother on How I Met Your Mother tonight (played by Frances Conroy from Six Feet Under). This may or may not turn out to be one of those situations where the character in the flesh can never live up to the unseen character from Barney’s descriptions and various flashbacks — where we’ve never seen her face — but the “meet the folks” episode is a rite of passage that most TV characters must go through eventually. In introducing the parents of a main character, the writers have several options.

One thing I was keeping an eye out for in the season premiere of How I Met Your Mother is whether they’d continue the trend they (unconsciously) started last year, of having Ted (Josh Radnor) be selfish, immature, and kind of a jerk. He did not disappoint: knowing nothing about the woman he’s going to marry, committing criminal negligence, and becoming freakishly obsessed with whether or not she likes Star Wars is an impressive tally for one episode, and continues his devolution into, as he put it tonight, “15 year-old me.” Barney is now officially a more mature and compassionate character than Ted.