I love this cover a lot
There are only a handful of TV shows I can say I’ve never had ups & downs with. Mad Men, Friends, Happy Endings, to name a few. Those rare, almost perfect shows that others may find faults in, but for you, you were okay with Rachel & Joey happening (to be clear: it shouldn’t have happened, but it did & I understand why). How I Met Your Mother is not one of those. We’ve have had our ups and downs. I walked out on it for a couple of months. I subtweeted it. But thanks to the glorious season 8 finale, we’ve since reunited and I couldn’t be more ecstatic about what’s to come.
When I tell people I watch How I Met Your Mother, they’re surprised. I guess for some people it just automatically gets lumped in with all the other CBS shitcoms. I see that. And it’s not that I have a super high standard for the type of television I watch; I’m not a snob, Big Brother is one of my favourite shows, but, I guess, sitcom-wise, it’s something you kind of have to explain to people. Not the show itself, but your love for it. “Ya but aren’t you annoyed you haven’t found out who the mother is yet?” No, not really. This was always the intention of the show right? A love-story in reverse. Would I have preferred for the reveal of the mother to have happened, oh, I don’t know, 3 seasons ago? Sure. But – and I have to give a lot of credit to the writers, they were smart enough to make this show an ensemble-piece, much like Friends.
Friends could have been JUST about Rachel, or Ross and Rachel, but while we waited for them to finally get back together, we were given solid storylines (and arguably better ones) from the other characters. How I Met Your Mother works inspite of Ted and his quest. To know Ted is to know that Ted is insufferable; the show would have never worked if entirely focused on him. In the last few seasons, we’ve seen Lily & Marshall grow in an expected but not always totally obvious way. I’d argue that Robin (and Cobie Smulders) have been the saving grace of the last few seasons (seriously, Cobie became my favourite as the show progressed). And Barney is still Barney but, remarkably, I’ve yet to grow tired of his shtick.
The entire final season will bet set on the weekend of Robin & Barney’s wedding and will eventually lead into the wedding itself. Flashbacks will, of course, be included, to help tie up some lose ends. I think this is a really inventive way of storytelling and something extremely fresh & welcomed for this show, especially for it’s last season. I wish more shows, especially sitcoms, would take such a risky move. This could ultimately turn out to be a gigantic failure, which I doubt will be the case, but they can at least say they tried something different. I’m particularly excited for the final two slapbets to be released. I’m excited that Cristin Milioti (The Mother) is a season regular for the final season. Overall, I’m really excited. Maybe it’s all of the feelings because in 8 months the gang will be gone, but you guys, it’s all happening!
Tagged: Barney, Barney Stinson, CBS, cobie smulders, Cristin Milioti, how i met your mother, ted, Ted Mosby
