How I Met A Woman I Spent Some Time With While Waiting To Be With My True Love 9x23: Last Forever

Quick Note: this review is a bit more blue than my usual fare - anger brings out the cussing in me. So apologies if you're easily offended by such things. 

I honestly considered just titling this post, then typing "Fuck you, HIMYM. Fuck you" in the body and leaving it at that. But I figured I might owe everyone a bit more than that, and that writing about this colossal failure of a finale, and a series, might help me process the complex emotions (well, mostly rage, deep, abiding rage) that I'm feeling in its wake.

How I Met Your Mother 9x22: The End of the Aisle

What's worse: a narrative blithely ignoring a flaw in its structure, trundling along, refusing to give voice to the problem, or a narrative which at least acknowledges an issue, but then attempts to resolve it in a relatively slapdash way?

The main thrust of this episode, which returns us to the "Robin freak out" part of the wedding weekend to which we flashforwarded last season (which prompted Ted to tell us the tale of breaking Victoria out of the same church at her wedding), has Robin finally putting to words what anyone watching the show realized long ago: Barney lies a lot, and even his biggest romantic gestures to Robin were built around hideously elaborate lies. It's good to know that Robin has realized this, and it's good to see the show's writers acknowledge it as well.

This prompts Robin to run off, right into the Mother. To her (and the show's credit), the Mother doesn't miraculously talk Robin out of fleeing her wedding: she just tells her to at least stop and take some deep breaths before making a big decision (it's the kind of advice you could plausibly get from a stranger at your wedding whom you just ran into, and not the kind of advice you get from your best friend's future wife, so I appreciate the restraint). This allows Barney the time to catch up with her and and unknowingly tell her exactly what she needs to hear: that he will never lie to her again.

How I Met Your Mother 9x21: Gary Blauman

In a testament to not judging an episode by its DVR description, this turned out to be much better than I was expecting when the episode synopsis had me questioning the logic of shoehorning in another "heretofore unseen but he's been there all along" friend of the gang three episodes from the end, as if there aren't more important things to be covering. In execution, however, the idea worked better, as Gary Blauman (who has made brief appearances before) was merely a vehicle to tell the story of Ted's first date with the Mother as well as an excuse to give us a series wrap on a bunch of supporting players from the past.

Now, I wasn't exactly dying to know what the future holds for Carl the Bartender or that Blah-Blah's name was actually Carol, but the montage at the end of the episode was exactly the kind of thing I like to see from a show as it nears the end, especially a show constructed like this one, when the ending is planned out with plenty of advance knowledge and in which the futures of various characters can be revealed without breaking the model of the show. We know the broad strokes, at least, of what the future holds for the main characters; only fitting then that we learn a little bit about the futures of the various supporting players in their lives as well. That it came in a mostly funny episode that sidestepped most of the season's biggest problems, all the better.

How I Met Your Mother 9x20: Daisy

Well, at least this episode didn't foreshadow the death of a major character...

Aside from that though, this wasn't a half bad episode. Certainly, as has been the case all season, the wedding-centric storyline was pretty lame. Tracey Ullman was fine as Robin's mother, but all the "I'm marrying a man just like my father" panic was not only cliche, but incredibly forced and not at all funny (one line aside). And, of course, the ending ominously sets up yet another ride on the Ted/Robin merry-go-round (this time begun by Robin), which we at least all knew was coming based on previous flashforwards.

But not only did the main plot of the episode circle back around to a plot point we'd all groused about previously (the abrupt way Lily conceded the argument to Marshall, and where she went in the middle of the night), but it also relied less on obvious callbacks to past gags on the show (Boats Boats Boats aside). Most importantly, it was funny. Granted, I'm a sucker for the Captain, even though he's always been more of a cartoon than an actual character, but I can't deny laughing at his forced attempts to work boats into everything. And Ted's Hercule Poirot-esque drawing room whodunit breakdown may just be the comedic highlight of Josh Radnor's season (though just like the Captain, I'm a complete sucker for any gags built around The Mosby Boys. Blame my love of The Three Investigators).

Then again, maybe for the first time ever this season, perhaps I'm just glad the Mother wasn't in this one. It's amazing what a difference ending on the reveal of Marshall and Lily's future daughter rather than a grim portent of death does for one's enjoyment of an episode.

How I Met Your Mother 9x19: Vesuvius

WTF?!?

Seriously.

W...T....F. 

If we are to take the implication of the final scene of this episode at face value, it seems that at some point between that scene, set in 2024, and 2030 (the year of SagetTed's narration), the Mother is going to die (presumably of a terminal illness, since they seem aware of her impending death in this episode). Now, the idea that the Mother's death is what prompts SagetTed to tell his kids this ridiculously long story has long been a theory proposed by some fans (along with a corollary that this would allow him to be with Robin in the future, hence explaining the show's seemingly odd fascination with that relationship in spite of its titular premise), but I've always assumed that was just a whacky fan theory (akin to how fans theorized that all the plot threads on Lost would eventually pay off).

How I Met Your Mother 9x18: Rally

I don't know. Maybe it was the Olympics-induced break, or the fact that this episode addressed a plot point I'd assumed the show would ignore (Barney being ridiculously hung over the day of his wedding), or the novelty of seeing the entire cast together after so much time spent fractured this season, or just the casual lesbianism, but I enjoyed it. It wasn't the funniest episode, nor the most groundbreaking or revelatory, but I chuckled a few times and didn't actively dislike the characters throughout. A little cartoon-y and over-the-top at times (as many episode this season have been), but as far as Farhampton-centric episodes go, this wasn't bad.

How I Met Your Mother 9x17: Sunrise

Pro: Barney's story was not about him getting cold feet and running out on the wedding.

Con: I still didn't care all that much about the actual story of Barney passing on all that he knows to a pair of random losers.

Pro: The Lily/Marshall fight is over.

Con: It concluded in a ridiculously abrupt and simple manner, and even though Marshall sort of learned a lesson, it still feels like he "won" and Lily just caved. Her coming back and then the two of them continuing their discussion, allowing Lily to make some of the points Ghost Lily made, would have given Actual Lily more agency in the decision.

Pro: It was nice to see Marshall's dad one last time, especially since he called Marshall on his BS, and 2006 Lily's interactions with Ghost Lily were genuinely entertaining.

Con: I guess both the identity of whomever picked up Lily and the entire idea of her running out on Marshall was ultimately no big deal?

How I Met Your Mother 9x16: How Your Mother Met Me

Honestly, I think the biggest issue with this episode was that there wasn't more of it. The concept (to show what the Mother was up to during the years we've been following Ted, showing the moments their lives almost intersected from her perspective) is a clever one and, frankly, a necessary one, but I want more, not necessarily from this episode, but from the series as a whole. The episode did a decent job of giving the Mother a character arc, one that carried through the eight years it spanned, grounding things so it wasn't just twenty-odd minutes of clip show paced "then this happened, then this happened, then this happened". That said, it did feel like that at times, simply because there's only so much room to work with in one episode, and that's where giving the Mother more screen time to cover this ground in other episodes could have alleviated the problem.  

How I Met Your Mother 9x15: Unpause

Moreso than any other except maybe the season premiere, this felt very much like a "final season" episode, harkening back as it did to Barney's origin and the season one/two break-up of Lily & Marshall even while it presented a flashforward look at the birth of Ted's second child. "What Barney does for a living" isn't one of those questions that I've been dying to have answered, but I nevertheless appreciate the effort, particularly since it amounted to more than just the "please" acronym gag and tied in with Barney's overall character arc (both in terms of his growth and his propensity for con games). Meanwhile, the pseudo-cliffhangery "Lily leaving in the middle of the night" plot is a bit of a false-starter (given that we know she comes back), but it's an effective way to use the show's history to move the characters forward even while it adds to the retrospective feel of the final season.

How I Met Your Mother 9x14: Slapsgiving 3: Slappointment at Slapmarra

As mentioned in the last review, I doubt I was as stoked about the reveal of the next slap as some segments of the show's audience, but I certainly didn't mind the end result, particularly since it led to another episode largely devoid of Whacky Wedding Weekend Hijinks. Plus, the show went all in on the kung-fu/revenge movie parody, all of which was elevated by the fact that the rest of the gang just went along with Marshall's tale (with each of Ted's assurances that Marshall wasn't lying involving college in some way), much to Barney's comical disdain.

And, while I may not have been dying to know the details of the next slap, it should be noted that the whole slap "mythology" is the kind of thing we've seen far too many serialized dramas forget, overlook or payoff poorly in their final seasons. HIMYM has always been more serialized than the average sitcom, and the writers deserve credit for making sure this relatively significant part of that serialization gets its due before the show signs off. Or, to put it another way, all this slap bet stuff is the kind of thing the final season of Lost would have screwed up.

That Boyz II Men ending was pretty weird, though.

Other Thoughts

How I Met Your Mother 9x13: Bass Player Wanted

Well, at least the show went into its winter break on a strong note, finally bringing Marshall into the fold at the Farhampton Inn and revealing Ted's upcoming secret Chicago move to Barney while featuring a big helping of the Mother and perhaps the season's best use of a guest star. Best of all, it avoided most of the pitfalls of the season's worst episodes: no schlockly pre-wedding hijinks and the characters acted like real people: for the most part, the Lily/Robin and Ted/Barney interactions were grounded and realistic, with the broadest bit being Ted stealing the scotch, but that happened mostly off camera and, as broad whacky hijinks go this season, was relatively mild. This wasn't the funniest episode or an all-time HIMYM classic or anything, but it at least avoided sending what has thus far been a wildly uneven season into the holiday break on a down note.

How I Met Your Mother 9x12: Rehearsal Dinner

So I get that we're supposed to view Barney's surprise rehearsal dinner as a grand romantic gesture (or at least that the writers think it is one), and heaven knows I'm well aware that Marshall and Lily's "we keep no secrets from each other" business is a bunch of claptrap - at the very least, Christmas kind of sucks if you don't keep secrets from your spouse, and I threw my wife a surprise party for her 30th birthday, the details of which I kept secret from her for a long time. But you know what I didn't do in the time leading up to the reveal of her party? Lead her to believe I was actually ruining an event that was very important to her, just to make the eventual surprise that much more surprising.

Granted, doing so is very much consistent with Barney's character, and is the kind of thing you'd expect from a guy who proposed to Robin in the most overly-elaborate, manipulative way possible. The problem is that the show keeps trying to sell, both in this episode and via "The Robin", this trait of Barney's as something that is admirable and deeply romantic, and frankly, it's not (it is, in fact, borderline creepy and highly troubling). Keeping secrets from a loved one to surprise them is fine; putting them through hell first just to sell the inevitable surprise is just a dick move. And like most of the Robin/Barney-centric episodes this season, it once again makes you wonder why these two are even getting married.

How I Met Your Mother 9x11: Bedtime Stories

More clever and amusing than outright funny, this was, nevertheless, a pretty enjoyable episode. There wasn't much more to it beyond the central gimmick (well, I suppose James Van Der Beek returned), but it was another episode set away from the inn, it didn't involve sitcom-y wedding hijinks, and the gimmick did generate a few laughs all on its own (mainly from seeing how certain words got rhymed and/or fit into the meter - Barney in particular had some impressive ones).

Maybe it's just the English major in me, but I thought this was tons of fun. As far as stunt episodes for long-in-the-tooth sitcoms go, this could have been much, much worse. What it ultimately boils down to is whether or not you enjoyed the gimmick. I did.

How I Met Your Mother 9x10: Mom and Dad

Aaaand we're back to broad, wacky wedding hijinks.

The whole "Barney wants his parents to get back together" plot was patently ridiculous, on multiple levels (even if the show did acknowledge it via Robin's insertion into Barney's musical dream), so the saving grace of this episode was Ted's feud with Billy Zabka. I'm a sucker for Ted-as-incompetent detective (he can't even detect sarcasm) and the feud played out much better than I'd feared when it was first introduced. Plus, the trials and tribulations of Billy Zabka were pretty funny (I especially loved that his mom booed him over the phone); it was a fairly unrealistic, broad bit (I also liked that everyone always had popcorn to throw, wherever he went), but it's less problematic when a peripheral character playing a caricature of himself goes broad than when the main cast does it.

How I Met Your Mother 9x09: Platonish

Nine episodes into the season and we finally get a legitimate "the wedding weekend is just a framing device for a flashback" episode promised by the creators before the start of the season. I was expecting (and hoping for) more of them, frankly, but hopefully this wasn't the last. Needless to say, this episode was a marked improvement on the previous one, and while I'm not as down on the overall setting of the season as some (there are good stories that can be told set at Farhampton, the show just hasn't told very many of them yet), there's no denying that this episode benefited from a trip back to familiar places and a story built around something other than the usual Robin/Barney pre-wedding plots.

It also benefited from the presence of the Mother, echoing her role in the season's premiere episode to do something other than pop up in the last five minutes to hang out with Ted in a flashforward. The idea that Barney met the Mother, before Ted, before Farhampton, and that she played a significant role in his life by making him realize he wanted to be with Robin, is the kind of coincidence that you almost only ever see in Hollywood, but gets something of a pass on a show like this, one built around the idea that coincidences and unseen connections can play a significant role in a person's life in general, and that has specifically established previously that the Mother, unbeknownst to Ted, has been hovering within his sphere of influence for several years now.

How I Met Your Mother 9X08: The Lighthouse

Other than the last five minutes, this was a pretty terrible episode. Centered around the asinine feud between Robin and Barney's mom (a plot line for which the best thing going for it is that it ended in this episode) and featuring far too many "whacky hijinks" in the Daphne/Marshall subplot (can Marshall get to Farhampton already?), the best part of this episode was the final five minutes, in which, for the first time since the premiere, we finally got to spend more time with Ted and the Mother.

And look, I'm glad we got those five minutes, but when I said I wanted the Mother back, I meant in a more substantial role (imagine, if you will, a version of this episode in which the Robin and Marshall storylines are reduced or jettisoned and the spine of the plot was a parallel narrative featuring Ted visiting the lighthouse with Cassie in the present and the Mother in the future, leading up to that proposal). If all we're going get out of the Mother this season is little five minute snippets like this, set in the future in order to fill out a punch list of significant events between her and Ted, while the rest of the season is devoted to an endless litany of cliche and asinine Robin/Barney pre-wedding A-plots, then it's going to be a long (and disappointing) season.

How I Met Your Mother 9x07: No Questions Asked

This was a pretty broad, hijinks-y episode, though fortunately, most of those hijinks worked for me (in particular, all the largely-unexplained stuff surrounding Robin in a body suit, carrying a golden gun, despite my better judgement). It also addressed two important character beats: Marshall realizing he can't lie to Lily, and Robin and Barney realizing they need to work on being a couple and not a pair of lone wolfs in a relationship together.

Both realizations are long overdue, though the former is perhaps excused by Marshall's displacement from the other characters (which remains a problem in and of itself). The latter's delay is patently ridiculous: the conversation between Robin and Barney was fine, and necessary, but it should have happened before they got engaged, let alone two days before their wedding. It's good the writers addressed it (better late than never) and it remains to be seen if anything actually changes between them, but the fact that it took this long for the show to address it is pretty sad.

How I Met Your Mother 9x06: Knight Vision

Well, at least that was a funnier episode. And the stock pre-wedding conflict involving Robin and Barney was relegated to the B-plot. And the whole Robin/Barney's mother conflict was nowhere to be found (yet). At this point, we've got to take upside where we can find it. So even though it may just be caused my abiding affection for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, but I was amused by the ethereal knight passing judgement on Ted's choices. And even though the Robin/Barney subplot reminded us again of how they have a tendency to be horrible, horrible people, seeing them together instead of arguing at least reminds us of why they are getting married (and seeing the cast play each others characters in the altered flashbacks was genuinely a hoot). We didn't get any more of the Mother, and this episode did very little to advance Ted's overall plot, but at least it did something different than the previous two episodes.

How I Met Your Mother 9x05: The Poker Game

Blech. I am so sick of manufactured Barney/Robin drama. Look, I get that the creators need to come up with A-plots for twenty-odd episodes this season, but if the best they can do is to run Barney and Robin through all the usual pre-wedding stories exaggerated to ever-more-cartoonish levels, they probably should have just ended the series last season. Even beyond the fact the show is doing little to elevate this material beyond the standard story beats, it's all rendered as false conflict even more than on a regular sitcom (where there still exists a small chance the engaged couple could call off the wedding), since we know for a fact that Barney and Robin ultimately end up together. On a macro level, that's not a problem for telling stories about their relationship, but when it gets down to this level of nitty-gritty, it just makes the plots seem all the more pointless. Basically, I wouldn't mind these kinds of bog-standard pre-wedding stories if they were telling them in either a really funny or original way. Unfortunately, so far, they are doing neither.

How I Met Your Mother 9x04: The Broken Code

Hopefully this is the end of any "tension between Ted and Barney" plotlines for the series. I've accepted the fact that this whole Ted/Robin business is going to carry on through the end of the series (accepted, but still not liking), largely because the creators have said as much, and any lingering issues between Ted and Barney as a result of Robin are certainly something that needed to be addressed. But there's only so much "Ted's going to ruin the wedding" tension this season can sustain, and with so much else this season being atypical, the last thing it needs is tons of intergroup tension running throughout. The issues addressed in this episode needed to be addressed before the series ended, but now that they have, hopefully they won't be brought up again.