When it comes to sitcom endings, they don’t come much bigger thanHow I Met Your Mother. Given the show’s innovative premise, its entire nine seasons necessarily culminate in a single, climactic moment. As the series title alludes to, the whole story ofHow I Met Your Motherleads to a finale in which Ted Mosby meets the future mother of his children. Nevertheless, the show does plenty more than just set up this scene, as it takes us on the roller-coaster journey of Ted’s dating life before meeting the titular character, with plenty of laughs along the way.
Ted Mosby isn’t the only main character inHow I Met Your Mother, though, and his four closest friends arguably develop in more interesting directions during the course of the show. In fact, Ted himself becomes an even better character once he’s open to the possibility that Robin Scherbatsky (Cobie Smulders) might not be “the one” after all. AlthoughTed and Robin’s relationship inHow I Met Your Mother’s initial seasons helps define the show, it’s ultimately so much more. To understand what makes the sitcom truly great, it’s important to look past itsHIMYM’s divisive finaleepisode.
How I Met Your Mother Is One Of The Greatest Sitcoms To Come Out In The Last 20 Years
The Show Built On Friends & Other New York Sitcoms Brilliantly
Just over a year after theFriendsseries finaleseemed to signal the end of an era for comedy shows about young groups of friends finding themselves in New York, a new sitcom arrived in town. Suited up and sipping a single-malt scotch at the side of the bar,How I Met Your Motherissomehow both cooler and more provocative than its wildly successful 10-season forerunner. Yet at the same time, the sitcom catalogs a hopeless romantic’s search for his true love in more endearing terms than Ross Geller ever embodied during his pursuit of Rachel Green.
Alongside Ted Mosby’s often turbulent love life,How I Met Your Mothergives us a healthy handful of other main characters to fall for. There’sLily Aldrin and Marshall Eriksen asHIMYM’s best couple, and shameless womanizer Barney Stinson, as well as Ted’s unsentimental counterpoint in romance, Robin Scherbatsky. Between them, they makeone of the funniest and most well-balanced sets of main characters in any sitcomsince the turn of the millennium.
The 9-Season Sitcom Still Holds Up Pretty Well, Even With Its Flaws
Despite Its Occasionally Problematic Treatment Of Female Characters, The Show Is Mostly Hilarious
How I Met Your Motherisbrilliantly underpinned by the core friendship dynamicbetween its five main characters. The show still has its flaws, however, including a tendency to portray the objectification of its female characters in a sympathetic light. Whether it’s Barney pulling out his favorite pick-up line, “Daddy’s home,” or Ted placing myriad prospective love matches on a pedestal,How I Met Your Motheris not without its problematic elements.
But it feels as thoughthe sitcom’s heart is in the right place most of the time, especially when Barney gets served his just deserts for his behavior towards women. As with most sitcoms from a previous generation, some ofHow I Met Your Mother’s recurring jokeswouldn’t make it into a script today. Overall, though, the show’s bawdy humor is as funny as it ever was, and Ted and his friends do more than enough to earn our emotional investment.
You Need To Ignore How I Met Your Mother’s Ending To Fully Enjoy It Years Later
The Show Works Better Without Its Finale
Yet, as well as the sitcom develops its characters, it completely undermines their development withHow I Met Your Mother’s controversial ending. In fact, the rest of the show is more enjoyable if you simply avoid the final episode altogether. The story of Ted, Robin, Lily, Marshall, and Barney works just as well without its conclusion, whereasa fixation onHow I Met Your Mother’s original premise will leave you disappointed in the end.
The show’s writers themselves appear to have developed this fixation to an unhealthy degree during its final two seasons, given the number of unlikely plot twists they throw into the mix.How I Met Your Mother’s characters work best when they aren’t directly acting in service of the show’s titular conceit. Thankfully, for most of the sitcom’s nine seasons, its ending is a long way off, and episodes are plotted according to characterizations, rather than the other way around. This approach successfully serves up over 100 of the funniest and warmest sitcom episodes of recent decades.
