HIMYM Season....um...what season is it?

Whenever we start to complain about a show going out on top, this can be added to the list of shows that hung on too long.

 

I don't know that it hung on too long as in seven seasons was too long, it just keeps recycling plot contrivances in an effort to avoid forward motion and drag things out as long as possible. If they'd moved toward meeting the mother and establishing the early years of that relationship, you've got a boatload of material to delve into for years. But they refuse to do that.

 

But the show isn't really about Ted developing a relationship with the mother. It's how he MET her. I've always kind of assumed we won't actually meet her until the final episode.

Of course, Ted's poor kids apparently need to sit through every story he's ever experienced in the process. Gasbag.

 

I'd be interested to hear an honest and unvarnished explanation from the producers (which we will never get), but I think they were hoping to get three or four seasons out of it and tidy it up. Then it became a mega-hit, and the syndication per episode is just too much to pass up, so they have spent another three years padding the show and their wallets. And the whole creative plan just got thrown out the window when it became so big.

 

That's a good point.

 

Now that would be a twist. The mother is some random woman Ted banged who shows up to tell him he has a kid.

 

We're close. I think they have a few years' wiggle-room based on not having told how old the kids are.

 

The show has used the same clips of the kids for all seven seasons, hasn't it? That's one of the things that really bugs me. It's like the story is still being told in 2005, even seven years later.

 

I could swear there has been a tagline identifying the talk to his kids as being in 2030 and they're teenagers. If I'm correct, they aren't close to pushing that timeline yet. (Not that something like a timeline is going to matter anyway.)

 

The story is being told in 2030. It wouldn't make sense for the clips to be different. The idea is that this is all one incredibly long story he's making his kids sit through in 2030.

 

It is always a problem if you set an artificial limit like that on a television show. Totally different series, but Smallville ran into that with its "no flight, no tights" rules. It ended up just holding the show back, just as not meeting the mother yet has done with HIMYM.

 

That got very frustrating with Smallville. At some point, he kind of needed to become Superman. I gave up after season five or six (I never really cared for the introduction of Lois Lane ... He was Superman by the time he met her, dammit).