This series has a great setup. Ted, talking to his teenage children from the year 2030, reminisces about his days as a single man in New York before he met their mother. There are plenty of shows about single, usually career-driven 20-somethings fumbling through relationships, but between the setup and the chemistry of the group, this one worked better than most. I particularly appreciated the fact that two members of the group, Marshall and Lily, were an item from the start. It offered a unique contrast missing from many other such groups, although it did make things awkward when they started thinking about having kids. (Predictably, when they did have a son it never seemed to be much of a problem for them to get to the bar to have drinks with their friends anyway.)
Back in the first season, Ted falls hopelessly, not for the mom, but for the kids’ “Aunt Robin,” who he made a fool of himself over. She was clearly all wrong for him, but I enjoyed the ups and downs. I even managed to like Barney, although he took some warming up to. He’s creepy. He’s supposed to be, but he really, really, really is creepy.
This series had a good run. It often made me laugh, and I continued to enjoy the way the writers used the frame (of the father telling a story from the distant future) to tell stories in unique ways. It wasn’t always linear, but it was always well played. In fact, for a while this show was a close second to The Big Bang Theory on comedy, and for at least one season of watching both shows, I thought How I Met Your Mother managed to be better/funnier. (I can’t remember which season that was for either show, but comedies often have higher and lower points.)
But How I Met Your Mother did what I knew and feared it would do from the beginning — it lasted two seasons longer than it should have. Actually, I was willing to forgive season 8 if he really had met the mother at the end, but the last season — season 9 — was nothing short of a disaster from start to finish.
Season 9 took place over a weekend — the weekend of Barney and Robin’s wedding. Twenty-four episodes taking place (more or less) in forty-eight hours. There was not enough content to fill those 24 episodes, so there was a lot of flashing back and forward. The snail’s pace progression towards an event we had been anticipating for 9 years was frustrating, and the comedy was almost nonexistent. There were only a handful of episodes worth watching during season 9, all of them involving the mother.
But none of that was as bad as the two-part finale, which I watched this morning. I confess that after what I considered to be a long, dull season I was mostly watching out of nostalgia for the seasons I did enjoy, and to get a sense of closure. Now I wish I’d skipped it. I wish I’d skipped the whole last season.
The final episode of How I Met Your Mother was a travesty. It was worse than the worst thing I ever could have imagined. It undermined everything amusing about the show. The worst part is that the ending sort of made sense. It certainly explained a few things about the series that had been bugging me for years and almost made it seem like the writers were planning for this all along. But, and this is a big BUT, it was horrible.
IMHO, the final episode of this season broke the implicit promise laid out in the beginning. No, before the beginning, in the very title of the show. Granted, it became clear soon enough that the actual meeting of the mother was something that would happen at the end, but both in tone and in title it was clear that the show was about the life one leads and the and mistakes people make on the way to finding the right one. For some (Lily and Marshall) it is easier than for others, but I also appreciated the contrast of the not-always-perfectly-happy married couple.
But that’s never what the show was about. The whole thing, from start to finish, wasn’t even a comedy. It was a tragedy.
I have never been more disappointed in the final episode of a TV show in my entire life — and that includes the TV shows that got cancelled too soon and had to do a quick wrap-up.