An outstanding and sexy return to form after the alarming lameness of the previous episode!

In fact, the track record of How I Met Your Mother is so strong that one should probably look at the lame episodes as a sort of breather, a chance to catch your breath between the dizzying heights of the usual installments.

Tonight we had a mini Freak and Geeks reunion with Busy Philipps showing up as Rachel, playing off a leggy Danica McKellar making a welcome return after last season’s “The Pineapple Incident.” It’s always a pleasure to see Busy; she remains one of the sexiest girls on TV whilst always seeming approachable, even when the characters she’s playing aren’t. She deserves to be a much bigger star, and the only disappointment in her appearance was that we didn’t get to see her and Jason Segel interact. That would have been special.

Of course, How I Met Your Mother also deserves more success and better ratings. It should be as popular and well established now as Friends was back in the 90s. I can’t help but wonder, were HIMYM introduced by NBC back then and Friends brought forth by CBS two years ago, whether HIMYM would already be the cultural touchstone and ratings smash it deserves to be whilst Friends would still be struggling to secure its place in the zeitgeist.

Still, it’s always best to remain grateful for small wonders, like the fact that we’re now enjoying a third season of How I Met Your Mother when the odds really seemed against it last Spring.

Getting back to the sexy for a moment, can I just say VA-VA-VOOM? Again, HIMYM solidifies its place as one of the finest clearinghouses for hot women (and men, too, I suppose, given the appearances by Enrique Iglesias in the last two episodes) and sexy storytelling. In that sense it sort of reminds me of Coupling, and I’m sometimes amazed by how far an 8:00 sitcom will go to bring on the hotness. There was a pleasant surprise at the climax of the episode in that regard. When Ted emerged from his bedroom for the last time and found his living room empty, I thought for sure the show had taken the safest and cleanest route. It might have been funnier, but it wouldn’t have been sexier, and the final reveal that the tricycle (I loved the bicycle metaphors for sex!) was still waiting for Ted to ride was beyond awesome.

One small quibble I have with tonight’s episode, however, is that I wish the writers could manage to keep the ensemble together even more than they already do, because, after the first few scenes, Robin was pretty much isolated from the rest of the cast. Still, her B plot was funny, and she demonstrated once again that she’s got some chops for silly physical comedy.

I do think the show is weathering the Ted/Robin break-up well, and it’s probably inevitable that she’ d still have to be kept away from an episode that was so focused on Ted getting laid, but I look forward to a time when the personal dynamics will be resolved enough for everyone to get to enjoy the main plots together. As Alan Sepinwall has pointed out on numerous occasions, the show continues to combine Barney and Robin in a way that suggests a future pairing between the two. Every week now I see something else that convinces me that this is going to be in the cards somewhere down the line.

Some other things that tickled my funny bone in the episode include: Barney’s aggregate rules for validating a three way (including age, weight and prostitution status limitations), Marshall taking off his pants to play with the Nintendo Wii, Robin’s unshaven legs calling her out as a Turkish lesbian, Barney’s “you did it you didn’t do it you did it you didn’t do it” verbal dithering at the bar (as well as the fact that he brought the championship belt with him!), and the various bicycle metaphors for sex.

And one last thought on the matter of sex. I’ve hated Alyson Hannigan’s hairstyle this season, thinking it makes her look dowdy, but Lily in gogo boots tonight all but made up for it and brought her right back into the hotness zone where she deserves to be. One more time: VA-VA-VOOM!

So that’s my take on things. Now you!