No Tomorrow (How I Met Your Mother)

"No Tomorrow"
How I Met Your Mother episode
Episode no.	Season 3 Episode 12
Directed by	Pamela Fryman
Written by	Craig Thomas & Carter Bays
Production code	3ALH12
Original air date	March 17, 2008
Guest stars
Vanessa Minnillo (Ashlee) Terrell Lee (Bouncer)
Season 3 episodes
Wait for It We're Not from Here Third Wheel Little Boys How I Met Everyone Else I'm Not That Guy Dowisetrepla Spoiler Alert Slapsgiving The Yips The Platinum Rule No Tomorrow Ten Sessions The Bracket The Chain of Screaming Sandcastles in the Sand The Goat Rebound Bro Everything Must Go Miracles

"No Tomorrow" is the 12th episode in the third season of the television series How I Met Your Mother and 56th overall. It originally aired on March 17, 2008. It was the first episode to air after the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike concluded.^[1]

Plot

Ted, Marshall and Lily decide to spend Saint Patrick's Day holding a board game night at Marshall and Lily’s new apartment, rather than drinking green beer with a green-suited Barney. Barney, although insulted, accepts his fate and leaves alone. Soon after, Barney calls Ted, having procured a cab and two hot dates for the night. He proposes his theory of "No Tomorrow" and that "today" will have no consequences, and finally convinces Ted to join him by promising him one of his dates. Future Ted reveals that the Mother was present at the party that he and Barney attended that night.

Meanwhile, back at board game night, Marshall and Robin discover that Marshall and Lily’s new apartment is crooked. Marshall convinces Robin to keep it a secret from Lily, at least for the time being. However, when a painting on the wall suddenly moves, Lily senses something weird. To cover the truth, Marshall concocts a story about the ghost of a Confederate general haunting the apartment. Eventually, the secret comes out and Marshall, Lily and Robin end up inventing a game called "roller luge" as a means of getting over the crooked floor.

Meanwhile, out with Barney, Ted discovers that, for one night only, the universe seems to work in reverse and rewards him for every bad deed he does. He ditched Marshall and Lily and found himself with a hot date, then he and Barney ditched their dates in line outside a club, and inside they found themselves outnumbered by greater than or equally hot women. He puts two expensive bottles of champagne on someone else’s tab, and is presented with free caviar. The biggest reward comes when he gets hit on by a sure thing named Ashlee (Vanessa Minnillo). To test his theory he asks Ashlee if she would have a one night stand with him and then forget about it entirely the next morning, to which she agrees, thus confirming his theory. Then, Ashlee confides in him that she is married, which fills him with panic and guilt. Barney approves of Ted's actions but disapproves of his reluctance to proceed. Back with Ashlee, Ted hesitates and then gets punched out by the man whose tab he had used.

Ted wakes up at home the next morning with a black eye and fond memories, telling Marshall that after police arrested the man he got to drink for free for the rest of the night. However Marshall is far from impressed and reminds Ted that he committed Credit Card fraud and kissed a married woman. To further the point, he reveals that Ted had accidentally pocket dialled his phone the whole time. Seventeen voice messages are played and remind Ted of how he abandoned his date at the door, ordered champagne on another person's bar tab and wanted to sleep with a woman with no intention of seeing her again (all while extremely drunk). Ted finally realises that the night was actually different from how he remembered it and actually acted like a jerk all evening and thanks Marshall (who, along with Lily, are still living with Ted while their apartment is fixed).

Ted returns to the club to retrieve his phone, which he had left behind. He doesn’t find it, but he grabs an abandoned yellow umbrella and walks home in the rain. Future Ted reveals that his eventual wife had been at the club that night, but they did not meet and he's glad because he knows that if they had, she would not have liked him.

In the last scene, Barney wakes up next to a dumpster, proclaims, "I'm awesome" and stumbles away.

Music

• "Beautiful Beat" by Nada Surf
• "Siobhan" by The Tossers

Continuity

• In "Brunch", Ted states that Barney always uses 83 percent when he makes up a statistic. Barney says in this episode that there was a "Great Dude Shortage" in New York City in 1883.
• Ted acquires the yellow umbrella, which is instrumental in the shorter version of the story of how Ted met the Mother as revealed in "Wait for It".
• When carrying Lily over the threshold, Marshall hums the same tune he sings in "Spoiler Alert" when he is getting ready to do laundry.
• The painting Marshall hangs in the new apartment is the same one whose hanging prompted the sword fight in The Duel.
• When Marshall plays the first message for Ted to show him how badly he has behaved, the first flashback shows Ted and Barney outside the club acting drunk. However, by this point neither has had a drink.
• This episode marks the second actual appearance of the Mother on-screen (although she is mostly obscured by the yellow umbrella, she may be the woman Ted stumbles upon when going to confront Barney about his "no tomorrow" theory). The first appearance is at the end of "Wait For It" when she walks by outside of MacLaren's (again, obscured by the yellow umbrella).

Barney's blog

Barney tells us how much he enjoys St. Patrick's Day and shares some of the limericks he has written for "A Stinson For A Dream," his forthcoming book of poetry.^[2]

Cultural references

• Barney wears a green suit for St. Patrick's Day and is compared to The Riddler, Gumby, a sidelined basketball player, a pool table, Peter Pan, and a leprechaun.^[3]
• After learning his friends will not go St. Patrick's Day clubbing with him, Barney states that it is "so not Raven." The Disney Channel was running a sitcom called That's So Raven at the time.
• As Barney tries to convince Ted to go to the club, he says that night will be "Bropocalypse Now" and "Bromageddon," references to the films Apocalypse Now and Armageddon, respectively.
• When Ted and Barney are in the club, Barney states that the "universe is talking to us." Ted replies "We don't have to build a baseball field, do we?", referencing Field of Dreams, one of all main characters' favorite movies (except for Robin).
• Robin describes the slanted floor of the apartment as like the last 20 minutes of the film Titanic.^[1]
• Marshall, Lily, and Robin play a game of Hungry Hungry Hippos Lily found in her new apartment.

Critical response

Donna Bowman of The AV Club rated the episode B+.^[4]

Michelle Zoromski of IGN gave the episode 8 out of 10.^[5]

Several critics speculated on whether actress Nicole Muirbrook, who is credited as "Woman" in the episode, could be the titular Mother.^[1][4][5][6]

Joel Keller of TV Squad described the episode as "above average" and wondered if the show would survive to be renewed for a fourth season. The article also included a poll asking if the woman Ted ran into was the mother or a red herring thrown in by the writers.^[1]

Omar of Television Without Pity rated the episode with a grade B.^[3]

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d} Joel Keller (2008-03-17). "How I Met Your Mother: No Tomorrow". TV Squad. Weblogs, Inc.. Archived from the original on 2008-03-20. http://web.archive.org/web/20080320110126/http://www.tvsquad.com/2008/03/17/how-i-met-your-mother-no-tomorrow/. Retrieved 2010-04-04. "In one of the party scenes, Ted and a young woman briefly encounter each other and say "excuse me." Wonder if that's the infamous mother...?" 
2. ^ Stinson, Barney (2005-11-15). "Barney's Blog: St. Barney's Day". CBS. Archived from the original on 2008-03-22. http://web.archive.org/web/20080322231359/http://www.cbs.com/primetime/how_i_met_your_mother/community/barney_blog/. Retrieved 2010-05-03. "The alcohol flows like the swiftest Irish spring, chicks wear skimpy green outfits to commemorate the destitute émigrés of the Potato Famine, and even amateur pick-up lines like "Kiss me I'm Irish," "I wanna shamrock your body," and "Baby, you can banish my snakes" are surprisingly effective." 
3. ^ ^{a b} Omar G. "How I Met Your Mother: When They're Sixty-Four". Television Without Pity. NBC Universal. pp. 7. Archived from the original on 2008-04-14. http://web.archive.org/web/20080414054822/http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/show/how_i_met_your_mother/slantytown.php. Retrieved 2010-04-20. 
4. ^ ^{a b} Donna Bowman (March 17, 2008). "How I Met Your Mother "No Tomorrow"". http://www.avclub.com/articles/no-tomorrow,12874/. Retrieved 2010-04-20. "Clues, coincidences, and crazy-ass theories: That girl that Ted bumped into and exchanged brief "sorries" with -- was that the mother? Because if so, um, she doesn't look like the marrying type."  Rating B+
5. ^ ^{a b} Michelle Zoromski (2007-10-16). "How I Met Your Mother: "No Tomorrow" Review. The suit's made of green.". IGN (News Corporation). http://tv.ign.com/articles/860/860476p1.html. Retrieved 2010-04-20. "And of course, this episode serves to bring us just a little bit closer to meeting the mother. Does anyone else think it was the woman Ted bumped into at the bar?" 
6. ^ "‘How I Met Your Mother’: We Think We Figured Out Who ‘Your Mother’ Is". New York Magazine. 2008-03-18. http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2008/03/we_think_we_figured_out_who_yo.html. 

External links

• No Tomorrow at TV.com
• No Tomorrow at the Internet Movie Database