How I Met Your Mother

I considered keeping my review of HIMYM as a single entry. Splitting a sitcom up into seasons almost feels a little pointless as, if they do their job correctly, it shouldn't matter. The story should incrementally move forward but each episode, ideally, will be pretty self-contained and uniform. You don't look to a sitcom to change the way television is written or created; you look to a sitcom to make you laugh, create enjoyable characters and have just enough depth so that you care about them. For these reasons, How I Met Your Mother is one of my all-time favourite sitcoms. What started as a slightly gimmicky, catchphrase laden update to the Friends formula ultimately managed nine seasons of gradual maturation and consistently clever humour. HIMYM was never going to break any boundaries or push the envelope, but it has always been well written, enjoyable and laugh out loud funny. Personally, I'd taken a fairly long hiatus from the show, but we decided to revisit it from roughly where both Alison and I left off at university, and plumped for season six. I was not disappointed.

It's worth diving a little further into the (already noted) parallels between Friends and HIMYM, because I think they're a large part of the latter's appeal and success. The core construct of the will-they-won't-they relationship between two characters in a tightly knit friend group is something which just works. The characters have been updated from their 90's counterparts to feel a little more natural in a 21^st-century environment, but otherwise the two shows are practically identical. A coffee shop has been swapped for a bar, personalities have been reshuffled a little (Ross -> Ted, Chandler -> Marshall, Joey -> Barney whilst the three female Friends become fused into two composites, with Monica + kinky/quirky Phoebe -> Lily and Rachel + kickass/neurotic Phoebe -> Robin) and fashions updated but each episode is still a self-contained story about a group of twenty-somethings in New York.

Less obvious but equally present are the influences of sitcoms such as Scrubs, which lend HIMYM their skit based humour and meta ability to inherently mess with the TV format. As with Scrubs this leads to some standout episodes featuring musical numbers, impossible events and the ever-present ridiculousness of Barney's "plays" to pick up women. Also much like Scrubs, the show gets away with this by having a central gimmick that ties everything together, in this case the fact that everything we see is just the retelling of events by a future version of Ted. That's why the show revolves much more tightly around a single character than other, earlier sitcoms like Friends did, and why the boundaries of reality can be pushed at will. As with the use of JD's imagination in Scrubs, Ted's embellishments as he describes his past to his future children allow the show some breathing room that results in some brilliant sketch-based comedy.

If this blend of humour is why the show works then, much like Scrubs, it is also why the show ends up treading a fine line between the hilarious and the inane. For the most part I would say HIMYM walks this line in style and is the reason I think it is one of the finest sitcoms ever, let alone of more recent years. That isn't to say it is perfect. There are still some filler episodes and more than a few moments where Ted acts like a prat and you're just left thinking "well that elongated the story by at least a half dozen episodes", but for the most part these are short-lived or minor niggles easily set aside when viewing the show as a whole.

The writers' have managed to balance the show's humour and heart perfectly, with almost every episode feeling like it has advanced at least one character arc whilst containing multiple moments of laughter-inducing humour. It's incredibly moreish, but not because you're wanting answers or are constantly left with contrived cliff hangers, but because you find yourself having an immense amount of fun.

Incredibly, I don't have anything further to add from what I said about season six. I honestly thought the show would be feeling a little tired at this stage, but this has been another brilliantly entertaining season filled with yet more excellent episodes.

In many ways, this is the season where I feel like the characters start to grow up. It's the moment when Chandler and Monica decide to live together, to go back to my previous review's comparisons to Friends. That feels like a good thing, but it does make me a little sad. It means that the end is in sight. Still, with excellent characters like Quinn still being added to the show (even if that reveal means she's unlikely to stick around for long) the writers are on top of their game and I'm happy to ride it out for as long as it lasts.

Season 8 has been fun, but it's also felt like the writers were becoming a little stretched and the plot a little too convoluted. The constant focus on relationships, much of which seem to be moving incredibly quickly (how many engagements occur in this penultimate season alone?), is handled a little too inelegantly and begins to feel forced.

It feels like the writers have just realised that they needed to bring everything to a close but had left too many open threads to do so neatly. From the audience's point of view it is also the point at which the central 'mystery' begins to feel too played out. At this stage, I will feel equally cheated if Robin either is or isn't the mother and personally wish they'd just get on with marrying her and Barney off so Ted can meet the oft-cited girl with the yellow umbrella!

That said, season eight also has the misfortune of following two of the best seasons of TV comedy I've seen in a long while, so perhaps I'm judging it against a higher standard than normal. As a result, I'm both hugely glad and deeply saddened at the knowledge that there's only one season left. Season 8 shows that the series has to end, that the core concept relies on some sense of impending closure (how long has he been talking to those kids?) and that the further this is spun out the less it works. But, Seasons 6 and 7 also show how great these characters can be and how well they work, both as a neat summation of the culture of the early 21st century and as entertainment in their own right. Still, I feel like at this stage I just need to find out who the mother is and put that mystery to rest.

If Season 8 was the stumble of fatigue in an otherwise solidly executed run, then Season 9 was the determined final burst of stamina to reach the finish line. The writing, acting and storytelling were all back on point, often rivalling the best episodes of the seasons behind it (a whole episode of rhyme with Lin Manuel-Miranda? Yes please!). There are the occasional over-the-top embellishments that smack of "its the final season, so why the hell not?" (Boys2Men's sudden appearance felt particularly odd) but the show has always kept one foot in the surreal, so it still works. In fact, given how successful season 9 is at both producing entertaining episodes and wrapping up every possible thread that was still left dangling, I can't help but feel that season 8 had been elongated to give them time to do the final season justice.

Whatever the reason, the 9th season is the one that cements How I Met Your Mother in the hallowed sitcom hall of fame, in my opinion at least. Every episode weaves a wonderfully fine line between emotional gut-punches and comedy that leaves you in tears. No character is left behind, no matter how minor, with subplots like "Boats! Boats! Boats!" and even the girlfriend-with-no-name coming to tidy, clear ends. It's masterful storytelling and once again highlights how useful a gimmick Ted's future children are. You can have a slow pan over a half-dozen characters filling in their entire future, because that's how Ted is telling it. It makes sense, brings perfect closure and is entertaining to boot.

I will admit to finding this final season pretty damn stressful. I honestly don't think I could have hacked the ups-and-downs of Robin and Barney's wedding had I watched in a weekly, episodic manner. Even binging as quickly as possible was almost too stressful! Still, the stress proves how much these characters had been imbued with meaning. By the final episode you truly care about each and every one of them, which when you look back at how the show started is an impressive feat. Possibly more impressively is how quickly the viewer falls for "the mother". With each crossed-path and "Kids, that's how so-and-so met your mother!" the anticipation builds yet further until that, too, begins to add to the stress. For a show built on the question of "Robin and Ted?" it does extremely well to utterly convince you that, when the characters begin to ask the same question, the answer is actually "No!".

Which leaves only one element for discussion: the ending. Despite what I've just written, I think the ending is perfect. Back when it first aired I remember seeing a lot of negativity surrounding it, a feeling of being cheated somehow. We spend nine seasons building up to the "mother" only for her to be in a handful of episodes, die and be replaced with Robin, the girl you meet in the first ten minutes!? In the writers' defence, though, HIMYM has never been the story of the "mother". Right from the first scene of episode one, Robin has been the centre point. Why start telling your kids how you and Mum met with the story of how you met their Aunt Robin? So you can weave in the occasional reference to ankle sightings or the journey of a yellow umbrella? No, it made no sense for the story to take that tack unless Ted was actually telling another story. The story of how he's loved Robin from the moment they first met, but how life intervened. How he found an equal love with another woman after having his heart (repeatedly) broken. But, most importantly, how six years after that other woman's death, those feelings for Robin are still there.

How I Met Your Mother is not the story of meeting the "mother". It's the story of a widowed father asking his kid's permission to move on, to rekindle an old flame, someone who has waited for him (this time around). Yes, the "mother" was amazing and I think every viewer ended up routing for her to "win" but the story isn't about winning or losing, it's about love. By the end of season nine it's clear that the answer to "Robin and Ted?" is: yes! It's just that a bunch of other stuff had to happen first.

A perfect ending to a brilliant show. How I Met Your Mother is one of those shows that I will miss – and remember – for a long time. To put it simply: legend...

Wait for it...

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DARY!