How We Met Your Models | S3E10 "The Yips"

In the middle of a season that had just delivered "Slapsgiving"—an episode built on a reflexive, involuntary bond between friends that Craig Thomas called "beautiful"—the writers of How I Met Your Mother found themselves staring at a very different kind of creative prompt. The network had a Victoria's Secret fashion show special to promote, and they wanted the gang to use the models. "This was a bit of a business happening on this one," Josh Radnor says flatly. The result was "The Yips," an episode that both hosts agree is not their finest work, and one that reveals something honest about what happens when a show built on emotional intimacy is forced to play host to corporate synergy.

The central idea was strong enough. Barney Stinson, the show's legendary womanizer, gets the yips—a sports term for when something you've done a billion times suddenly becomes impossible. The cause is a crack in his origin story: the older woman he lost his virginity to, Rhonda, didn't remember their encounter as the world-rocking event Barney had built his entire identity around. "How much of Barney's personality was predicated on the idea that the first time he had sex rocked this woman's world?" Craig asks. Peeling back that fragility was good medicine against Barney seeming like the hero of the show. But the execution faltered. The Victoria's Secret after-party, which should have been Barne