How I Met Your Mother

[palmer_eldritch]

I still enjoy it.

Apparently the next season will be the final one, which is good because it's come to the end of its shelf-life. They probably should have ended it this year.

[KallDrexx]

It was supposed to end this year, but then in December they resigned it for one more season.

It is enjoyable but it's starting to get old.

[Hammond]

I still enjoy most of the time. I agree they should have finished it this year though. Some of the plot lines are getting a bit stale.

[Nayr]

Next season will probably be the final season.

Ted meets his future wife at Barney and Robin's wedding(the guitarist in the band. Who is in possession of the yellow umbrella.) and that wedding is apparently going to happen at the end of this season.

So my guess is that this season ends with him meeting her, then the final season has him dating and marrying her in the finale. Kinda like Fran Drescher's the Nanny, where she married the guy near the end, and the final season showed their married life.

Potential risk to it though. Such as what would happen if fans didn't like Ted's bride-to-be. Spent almost ten years hyping her up, but she's going to be judged according to every woman Ted's been with before. Victoria, Stella, Kare, Robin, Zoey, and every minor whore he's tried to woo. So she's got to be up to snuff.
 

[Nayr]

Next season will probably be the final season.

Ted meets his future wife at Barney and Robin's wedding(the bassist in the band. Who is in possession of the yellow umbrella.) and that wedding is apparently going to happen at the end of this season.

So my guess is that this season ends with him meeting her, then the final season has him dating and marrying her in the finale. Kinda like Fran Drescher's the Nanny, where she married the guy near the end, and the final season showed their married life.

Potential risk to it though. Such as what would happen if fans didn't like Ted's bride-to-be. Spent almost ten years hyping her up, but she's going to be judged according to every woman Ted's been with before. Victoria, Stella, Kare, Robin, Zoey, and every minor whore he's tried to woo. So she's got to be up to snuff.
 

[Rishathra]

Yo dawg, I herd you like quotes.

[Raguel]

I've yet to see a single episode I thought was funny. Funny bits here and there but never felt more than 'meh' for the entire ep.

[Nayr]

Whoops, wrong button up there. Supposed to have edited, not quoted.

My fault, since I cant tell the difference between a bass and a guitar.

[Ironwood]

I've yet to see a single episode I thought was funny. Funny bits here and there but never felt more than 'meh' for the entire ep.

The Playbook.

If you don't like The Playbook, there is SOMETHING WRONG WITH YOU.

And it is on.

[Nayr]

There was also the scene where Marshal get's covered with baby shit confetti.

[Lianka]

If you're Canadian, and in possession of all the passive pop-cultural references that entails, then this week's episode's Robin Sparkles storyline was full of win! 

[Bunk]

The fact that Tim's responded to it is even better:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/yourcommunity/2013/02/tim-hortons-creates-doughnut-imagined-on-how-i-met-your-mother.html

[Draegan]

THe show should of ended two seasons ago.  I can't wait for it to be done.

[Evildrider]

THe show should of ended two seasons ago.  I can't wait for it to be done.

It's still better than 90% of what's on TV atm.  Which is why it keeps going.

[Nayr]

THe show should of ended two seasons ago.  I can't wait for it to be done.

It's still better than 90% of what's on TV atm.  Which is why it keeps going.

Worst Case Scenario: They do a spinoff of the show focused on Barney telling Ted's kids how he met their aunt Robin. Complete with more shameless womanizing and crazy shenanigans.

Best Case Scenario: The final scene of the finale has the Mother sitting down to tell the kids how she met their father. And it ends with a loud and resounding "NOOOOO!"

[Abagadro]

There is some speculation that we will actually meet the mother at the end of this season and that next season will be just that: the mother telling the kids the events of the final season from her point of view.

[Nayr]

There is some speculation that we will actually meet the mother at the end of this season and that next season will be just that: the mother telling the kids the events of the final season from her point of view.

Or perhaps the two of them narrating together.

Unless of course Bob Saget has expressed a desire to leave the show.

[Special J]

If you're Canadian, and in possession of all the passive pop-cultural references that entails, then this week's episode's Robin Sparkles storyline was full of win! 

Don't watch the show but saw the clip and yes, that was full of win.  We're talking Gino Vanelli size win.

[Merusk]

So uh..

Turn it off after the umbrella scene.

Also: Filmed the end scene with the kids 9 years ago. This was planned since the first season.  http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20801686,00.html

[Chimpy]

I thought the final double episode was better than all the rest of this season. Which is not saying a whole lot, but still. It is over, now I can skip watching episodes I don't like if I ever watch it again and stick with gems like Slapsgiving.

As I was saying to a guy at work, the main problem I came to have with the show is that the main character is the weakest link both in the acting chops of the guy playing the part and the writing of the part. The other main characters (and even quite a few of the bit players) are just so much better.

[Evildrider]

So uh..

Turn it off after the umbrella scene.

Also: Filmed the end scene with the kids 9 years ago. This was planned since the first season.  http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20801686,00.html

[Soulflame]

The rest of my family has watched since the beginning.

They're not happy with the end at all.

[MahrinSkel]

I kind of saw it coming, there were some hints in the "flash forwards" (like the 'sandwich eating' scene at the reunion).
As much as any sitcom could be neatly wrapped up, this one managed it.

--Dave

[jgsugden]

I suspected the 'Mother dead' angle from the pilot. The daughter's comments in the previously filmed stuff were pretty much the same as mine....Why start the story there? The only other possibilities I saw were Mom dying and revealing that Robin was the birth mother. Those were both eliminated along the way. 

Suspecting the reason Ted was telling that story changes a lot of the meaning Behring Old Ted's lines.

I'd love for them to do a mini-series with each of the cast doinga recap as their older characters recount key stories from their perspective and we get to see how full of it Ted really was. Won't happen, but I would have fdone a few more of those stories, like the Robin one dort of was, along the way.

[Jeff Kelly]

Guys, don't buy into the "we planned this all along" schtick most TV producers now tell the media. It's mostly bullshit.

The HIMYM producers have gone on record several times with statements that they didn't even know if they'd survive the first season. Until about season 4 HIMYM was constantly 'on the bubble' and got almost cancelled a few times. They also said that they'd never have made Robin 'Aunt Robin' if they had known beforehand just how much chemistry Cobie Smulders and Josh Radnor had on set. They also said that their "Plan B" was to make Victoria the mother if they had been cancelled in the first season.

They filmed the ending tag with the kids in the first season for two reasons:

1. To not have to hire both actors as recurring characters over the whole series run, just for the little inserts of Bob Saget#s voice
2. Because both actors would have aged quite a bit over the course of several seasons but the producers wanted this to be 'one very long story' told to those kids.

In hindsight making this story so long winded that both kids visibly aged would have probably been a rather nice running gag though

No, they wrote themselves into a corner as the seasons dragged on and didn't know a good way out/no longer cared. Who knows. Ironically enough they had not one but three potential 'mothers' on the show that Josh Radnor had believable and great chemistry with. Cobie Smulders (Robin), Ashley Williams (Victory) and Cristin Milioti (Tracy/The Mother) and they didn't know what to do with any of them.

[jgsugden]

I'm not sure what we should not be buying for HIMYM.  It seems clearly planned out to me.

They had a long term plan from the start, but if they were going to get the axe at the end of Season I, they had a backup plan that made sense of things (Ashley Williams being the Mom). It couldn't be Robin, because they nixed that idea in the pilot, and if they did not go into a season 2, all they needed to do was wrap up what we'd seen in Season I, which was easiest to explain with 'Victoria'. 

They did the final kids scene at the end of Season 2 for the exact reason you mentioned: But it also makes it clear that by that point they knew EXACTLY why he was telling the story, and where it would end up (the Mom being 'met' in the finale, and it being revealed she died and Ted was looking for the kids blessing to bang his ex).  I fully 'buy' that the intention all along (assuming the series survived a few seasons) was to have Ted meet the Mom in the finale, have it revealed she died, and have him go after Robin at that point.  It is the whole point of having the story start with Ted meeting Robin.  The show lost momentum due to extra unnecessary seasons, but the plan was pretty clearly laid out all along.

Unlike Lost, Big Bang Theory, or a lot of other rambly shows, this one had a plan. 

[Viin]

Are you guys talking about the same show that I think you are talking about?

[Rasix]

This is a lot of analysis for a sit-com.

[jgsugden]

You do realize you're in a forum devoted to the show, right?

If there was ever a sitcom that had enough of a plan for it to be worth discussing, it is this one.  They did something ambitious and pulled it off, even if the final execution was a bit flawed.  It would have been if they'd gone out on top at 5 or 6 years, but the entire show run was respectable.

[Rasix]

You do realize you're in a forum devoted to the show, right?

If there was ever a sitcom that had enough of a plan for it to be worth discussing, it is this one.  They did something ambitious and pulled it off, even if the final execution was a bit flawed.  It would have been if they'd gone out on top at 5 or 6 years, but the entire show run was respectable.

Carry on.

[Jeff Kelly]

There were a lot of shows over the years where the showrunners claimed they had a plan and a narrative arc and pretty much all of those claims turned out to be bullshit, self confessed bullshit, eventually.

Most famous example of the last few years was Lost. Cuse and Lindelof claimed in countless interviews that they had a plan, that they knew the answers to all of the mysteries and that they knew how it should end. They finally admitted though that they pretty much made things up as they went along.

The realities of TV production make it almost impossible to have any sort of plan or narrative arc that spans multiple seasons (regardless of showrunners pretending otherwise) and the only claim where it didn't turn out to be bullshit by the end was Babylon 5.

I don't believe Bays and Thomas for a second when they claim that they knew how HIMYM should end in 2005 - 2006. They couldn't even have known how many episodes per season CBS would eventually order let alone if and when the show got cancelled or renewed. They also didn't know how things would turn out chemistry-wise between Smulders and Radnor.

The more likely scenario is that they always wanted the mother to only turn up in the final episode of the show and by the time they had been on air for nine years they simply ran out of ideas to stretch out the story even further.

Why they designed the final episode to be such a huge 'fuck you' to their loyal fans is anybody's guess though.

[MuffinMan]

I'm with jgsugden. How can you "not buy into that they had a plan?" If they filmed the ending with the kids in season 2 and stuck to that ending, then isn't that having it planned all along? They didn't even have the kids record lines that gave them leeway with going another direction. The Ted parts were newly recorded but the kids were saying things like "mom has been gone for six years" and "you're just telling us this story so you can ask out Aunt Robin."

They might not have had a plan for the in-between but there was a plan for the ending and they stuck with it.

[Merusk]

No, I totally get that they had a plan.  Blew my mind because of how badly they fucked up the parts in-between.

We got 9 years of "why Ted and Robin can't work-out" only to have him wind-up with her in the end.  Wut? The big reveal everyone assumed the show to be about - because of the title - winds-up shoved into one of bottom-ranked seasons for writing, gags and continuity. No reason to have dragged out Barney and Robin's wedding only to have the divorce take 10 mins.  Hell at least it got 10 mins unlike the "Oh yeah, your mom got sick and died, the end." for Ted & Traci.

[MahrinSkel]

Except that it's well-established that Ted is an unreliable narrator, who often re-arranges the story to make himself feel better about events.  That the whole story of 'How I Met Your Mother' is really about 'Why I Should Get Together With Aunt Robin' is very much something consistent with the 'voice' of the story.  There's no need to reprise the story of 'How Your Mother Got Sick And Died Slowly'.

--Dave