Name: How I Met Your Father season 2 episode 2
Director: Pamela Fryman
Released: 2023-01-31T13:30:00

In episode 2 of How I Met Your Father, one of Sophie’s major flaws creeps up to the surface as she deals with stress and Sid makes his feelings known about Meredith. The episode is streaming on Hulu.

Recap

Future Sophie tells her son that she used to have a problem with lying, especially when she was under stress or feeling insecure, and nothing was more stressful than waiting to find out whether her photograph was sold at the gallery show.

Present day Sophie is constantly on her phone waiting to find out as Valentina tells her she needs to calm down. They arrive at Pemberton’s after a yoga class and see Jesse with Meredith and the others.

Sid is being very passive-aggressive toward Meredith but no one points it out initially. Ellen complains that Rachel hasn’t texted her even though they exchanged numbers days ago.

Sophie and Valentina walk in and Sophie immediately fabricates a lie about selling her photograph for tons of money to look good in front of Meredith.

Ellen is moping around about the fact that she hasn’t heard from Rachel and Charlie comforts her. He suggests they clean up her place and then leave the door to her apartment slightly ajar so that Rachel is enticed to come in.

Sid and Jesse are chilling at the apartment with Meredith and Sid makes a couple of grilled cheese sandwiches for him and Jesse. However, when Meredith tries to reach out for one, he doesn’t let her have any.

They argue and Jesse breaks it up immediately. Sid says he’s still got his issues with Meredith and she tells him that maybe they should air their grievances with each other and get it out of the way. This prospect does make Jesse quite nervous.

Sophie and Valentina are discussing Sophie’s compulsive lying problem when a neighbor from their building, Ramona, lets Sophie know that she’s going into labor so Sophie can get ready for the home birth photoshoot.

She also asks Sophie if she can help her out with the process since her midwife is stuck in traffic somewhere. As soon as she leaves, Sophie admits that this is the consequence of another occasion where she lied about being involved with many home births before.

They set up the birthing pool in Ramona’s apartment but fill it up with extremely hot water. All the while, Sophie is still worried that she’ll never sell her photograph and end up as a failure.

Sid has an entire list of issues with Meredith but when the first few seem very petty, Jesse asks him to skip the worst one and Sid mentions the “burrito incident”. It was the day of Jesse’s first music recital at the elementary school and around the same time, Sid was preparing his own meals.

As he was leaving home, he told them not to touch the burritos he had made. Sid stopped off at home once again before going to the recital and he saw Meredith eating one of his burritos. She claimed that she was starving and sick so she couldn’t help herself.

Jesse gets too stressed out by this situation that he gets up to make drinks for them. While he’s gone, Sid says that it wasn’t just the fact that she ate his food but something else and Meredith tells him that she’s changed from the person she was back then and asks him to drop it.

Charlie and Ellen have spruced up the place but as soon as they leave the door open, other people from the apartment show up thinking it’s a party. Everyone turns up except for Rachel and Ellen cannot fathom why.

Sophie and Valentina continue to fumble in their attempts to create a calm environment for Ramona and when she shows up asking them what’s going on, Sophie finally owns up to lying about her experience.

Ramona goes into labor and Sophie and Valentina have no other choice but to help her deliver the baby as they wait for the paramedics. Ellen walks over to Rachels’s apartment and asks her why she hadn’t texted yet.

Rachel says that she got in her own head about what to say and panicked. Ellen says she panicked over the situation too and they bond over their shared social anxiety before agreeing to go on a date right then.

The next time Sophie meets Meredith, she comes clean about lying earlier and revels in the fact that she helped deliver a baby. Right then, she gets a call from the gallery informing her that one of her photographs sold, making her immensely happy.

Sid thinks about the secret he kept for Meredith, remembering how when he caught her eating his burrito, she was actually pretending to be sick and telling someone on the phone that she wasn’t interested in going to the recital for Jesse and a bunch of random kids.

Review

This episode has some good moments and the jokes occasionally land quite well. The episodes do grow on the viewer but cannot be considered exceptional.
Having Meghan Trainor show up as a guest star with little to no reaction showcases one of the flaws of having a recorded audience track. The showrunners could have avoided the concept altogether and it would have had a better impact.
Ramona’s birthing montage was over the top and what you would expect in this series but that doesn’t make it an entertaining sequence and more of a tolerated set piece.