How he finally met the mother (Season 9)

Neither show had many viewers.

I love TV like any other weirdo and I never saw an episode of FNL.

 

I agree. I'd rather have a relationship like Marshall and Lily had than any of the other relationships on the show. (Although I'm much more like the Mother than I'd like to admit.)

 

Marge and Homer?

 

I finally watched the final season, had been waiting for it forever to hit Netflix, even ignored this thread completely because I was always well behind on the series.

Not ashamed to admit I marathoned through it in two nights after work.

One, I always had a feeling he was telling his kids how he met his wife/their mother after she had died. Did not cross the mind because he was looking for permission to hook up with Robyn. In my mind it was always soon after her death, like on their first anniversary after she died or on the anniversary of her death.

I'm not as down on the final season as some, it definitely had some highs but the whole wedding setup dragged on faaaar tooo long. The final episode about the slap bet was largely pointless, and there was a lot more that the could have been trimmed.

I did not like that they went from the wedding in one episode to Robyn and Barney's divorce in the next after spending the entire season setting up the wedding, it was too jarring. However, I do approve of the final scene where Ted busts out the blue horn.

The series finale is a tough trick to pull off, especially in a series that had so many loose ends and inside jokes and plot lines -- It was one of the things that made the show great but in the end made for a clumsy final season.

The thing is, I'm not sure how -- even if they had another couple of seasons to pull it off -- they go from Barney and Robyn's wedding to 15 years down the line and cover their stories in a succinct manner. They were going to have to go montage mode at some point. It was not a series that could be left open ended like FNL. From the very outset of the series they had a finishing line, and as much as I liked the series, it was never going to go on a Simpsons-esque run.

While I understand the hate for the final season or two, I understand how they got there and also realized they painted themselves into a corner with the premise of the show.

I still really enjoyed the series as a whole, solidly in that 4 out of 5 ballpark, but the final season, to me comes in at about a 3. Again not terrible, but not great.

 

At least half, probably more, of the final season could've been axed in favor of telling the stories they crammed into the finale.

Hell, at least half of the final THREE seasons could've been cut with little to no negative impact. They could've started by aborting the entire storyline with fucking Zoey.

 

I enjoyed the presence of The Captain, which is tied to Zoey.

Interesting question: What's the last GREAT episode of HIMYM? I would agree with this EW Top 50 list and say it's How Your Mother Met Me. But if you throw out the entire last season, is it Time Travelers? Ducky Tie? P.S. I Love You?

http://m.ew.com/2014/03/27/how-i-met-your-mother-our-top-50-episodes/#30117156

 

Time Travelers.

 

Not sure about the last one before the final season, but I also agree that How Your Mother Met Me was the last really outstanding episode.

 

There were a handful of very good to great ones in Season 8, which was very uneven. "Time Travelers," "Weekend at Barney's" and "P.S. I Love You" were in the back half of that season.

At the time, I thought there was a wide consensus among the non-haters that "Gary Blauman" was really good.

 

I shouldn't participate in these discussions any more, because I really am just soured on the entire thing.

But, there was an episode in either the seventh or eighth season in which Marshall tailgated at his dad's grave that was really good. IIRC, it was right before they started the final Robin-Ted-Barney bullshit.

 

I've said it before in discussion of this show, but if they had made the plot of the series finale the entire last season instead of the wedding I think it would have been much more accepted. I know I would have felt better about it. The fact that they killed Barney and Robin's marriage mere minutes into the finale completely invalidated the whole season.

Why not spread everything you crammed in there out and really tell the story if that's what you wanted to do? Instead we got a whole season plus of a relationship that was rammed down our throats and that in the grand scheme of things was pointless.

 

That is part of why that final episode was so frustrating. They just wasted so much time the final few seasons, then they shoved all of that story into one episode.