Air Date: February 21, 2011
Marshall becomes obsessed with saving the environment, Ted runs into The Captain, and Robin tries to prove Barney has feelings for Nora.
The episode provides examples of:
- Audible Sharpness: Averted. The Captain draws and re-sheaths a sword, and the sliding sound is realistic.
- Character Filibuster: Ted proceeds to tell Wendy how he and Zoey got together:Wendy: I asked "How's your meat?"Ted: Oh... A bit cold.Wendy: I wonder why.
- Chekhov's Gun: Marshall is only saved from being fired because of the recent death of his father. "Legendaddy" features a subplot about Marshall being frustrated about his friends babying him for the same reason.
- Crash-Into Hello: Meeker goes to pick a fight with Marshall at MacLaren's and bumps into Wendy, who is carrying a big bag of glass bottles to the curb for recycling.
- Continuity Nod:
- Marshall's GNB Era coming to an end was addressed in "Natural History". In this episode he finally talks about quitting.
- Ted's story of how he hooked up with Zoey included scenes of "Oh Honey!".
- Distracted by the Sexy: Lily desperately tries to invoke this while Marshall is busy planning his proposal to GNB.
- Enemy Mine: How Wendy and Meeker hit it off: Their common hatred for Marshall.
- First-Name Basis, Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Future!Ted at first doesn't remember Wendy at all until she adds “the waitress” to the end of her name.
- Foregone Conclusion: Also counts as Foreshadowing ; at the end, Wendy asks Ted how his relationship with Zoey is, and he claims that it didn't end well.
- Freudian Excuse: At the end of the episode, it's revealed that Marshall's obsession with recycling was motivated by the fact that his father never saw him become an environmental lawyer before he died.
- Good Hair, Evil Hair: The Captain firmly believes that the man who had stolen Zoey from him must have a Pornstache.
- Happily Married: Wendy and Meeker, since Future!Ted runs into them in a Hong Kong airport, celebrating their second honeymoon.
- Newspaper-Thin Disguise: Barney hid at Café l'Amour from 5 to closing with a newspaper with two holes cut out.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Since Meeker was the only one to sympathise with Marshall's proposal, Arthur fires him, while Marshall gets a pass only because his dad died recently.
- Perspective Flip: The episode begins with Ted telling the story of how Zoey and him got together, with him as a good guy who respected her all the way. Later, The Captain retells the same story to Ted, but with Ted as the bad guy. Ted then realizes that he is the villain to him after he finds out he did steal Zoey from The Captain.
- Pet the Dog: Downplayed. Arthur refrains from firing Marshall since his dad just died, but that doesn't stop him from firing Meeker for supporting Marshall's proposal.
- Ripped from the Headlines: The Pacific Garbage Patch is real and was big in the news around the time the episode came out, though it looks nothing like the pictures the show presented. It's all small pieces of debris that are largely floating beneath the surface. Those images are more typical of rivers and coastlines where large debris collects.
- Put on a Bus: This is the Send-Off episode for Wendy the waitress.
- Ship Sinking: This episode also sinks the Carl/Wendy ship (a really minor one in the fandom).
- Sophisticated as Hell: The Captain describes his relationship with Zoey using allusions to Greek mythology, and caps it off with:The Captain: We had great, big boners for each other.
