First off: As you may have seen in the sidebar, 3.17′s title is The Goat – you may remember that in the Season One episode “Milk” (which takes place on Ted’s 28th birthday), Ted says he has a story about a goat in his bathroom on his thirtieth birthday – well, it’s coming up.
Behind the jump: Small spoilers for 3.15 (The Chain of Screaming), medium spoilers for 3.16 (Sandcastles in the Sand), and HUGE spoilers for 3.17 (The Goat).
3.15: The Chain of Screaming: Lots of Marshall and Barney in this episode – Marshall takes Barney’s advice about dealing with conflict in the corpoate world, with disastrous results.
3.16: Sandcastles in the Sand: The basic theme of the episode is “revertigo” – HIMYMspeak for what happens when you run into someone from your past and revert to how you were back then. The A-plot is obviously Robin meeting Simon (James van der Beek), her first love. Her teenage crush returns, even though Simon’s a complete loser, something Barney tries to make her see. The others experience revertigo as well (possibly through flashbacks, as seen in The Platinum Rule) – Ted when he runs into Punchy, a guy from his college days, and Lily when she encounters her old friend Michelle.
3.17: The Goat: Starting small: The goat, Gary, enters Ted’s bathroom through Lily’s kindergarten class – he’s brought in by a farmer to show the class, and when the kids find out Gary’s destined to become Caribbean food, they pressure Lily into buying him.
AND NOW, THE BIG ONE – Barney is wracked with guilt over his violation of the Bro Code (think the rules from Wedding Crashers – “one Bro, will, wherever possible, always provideth another bro with brotection” is rule 53). He asks Marshall to examine the code, in hopes that there’s some kind of legal loophole that will absolve him, but no dice – Barney is left with no choice but to figure out how to break the news to Ted without ruining his birthday. Attempted resolutions include Barney concocting a girlfriend (he claims to be really serious about her, and that he even went so far as to steal her a blue instrument) with the intention of tricking Ted into stealing her, thereby cancelling out Barney’s own violation of the Bro Code.
Still haven’t figured out what Barney’s so guilty over? “Canoodling with Robin” – possibly following her disappointment over Simon in 3.16?
SOURCES: Peg Amy at TWoP [here], mikejonas at IMDb [here, here, here]