How I Met Your Mother - a review

*caution, spoilers below*



So, after 9 years How I Met Your Mother (HIMYM) has come to an end. Unfortunately for the shows many fans that end came not with a bang, not with tear jerking romance, but a 9 year old rehash that has divided opinion, albeit with slightly more negative reviews than positive ones.

Let me start from the begining. Nine years ago we met Ted, a doe eyed romantic telling his children the long story of how he met their mother. In a twist that provides the basic premise for the rest of the shows run the woman he spots across a crowded bar is not their mother, it is in fact their aunt Robin.
Over the next 9 years we get to see the characters develop, Teds best friends, Lily and Marshall get engaged, break up, make up, get married (3 times in technicality) get their own apartment, have a child of their own (they end up with three) and grow into an old couple with their own lives (Marshall a judge and latterly a state senator, and Lily, arguably with the saddest story of only being a mother, her greatest fear).
We also see Robins career slowly take off, and her rocky relationships with first Ted, then Barney. However her story would seem to have a happy ending with the last season revolving around her wedding to none other then the womanising, lying, cheating, drinking, gambling Barney. This is a man whom quite possibly travels the furthest of any character during the show, with a series of long term relationships ending in his, the most unlikely wedding ever.
Finally Ted, he spends 9 years looking for his perfect, bass playing star wars, romantic, woman. This involves a lot of stories of drinking, some recrational drug use, being left at the altar, and a parade of different women, with various hints about the mother being dropped throughout his search.
For some perspective in those 9 years we saw the rise and fall of Myspace, the rise of Facebook, barely a year old when the first episode aired, Twitter, Smartphones, the first Black president of the US, the first peacetime coalition government in the UK, high profile deaths of Michael Jackson, Steve Jobs, Margeret Thatcher and Osama Bin Laden to name a few, two Olympics, a global recession and the rise of 'structured reality' television.
So a lot happened in those 9 years, and the world HIMYM died in was mych different to the world it was born into, so it should come as no suprise that the finalle, scripted for 8 years was no longer relevant.
To surmise the finalle, Robin and Barney get divorced, ruining a season and a half of build up, Ted meets the mother, after she meets all his friends first (starting with Barney, then Lily, Marshall next, Robin and then finally Ted) however his happyness is short lived as she does indeed die, however in difference to the character meant we don't know how she died, what from, or even see what in theory could have been one of the most emotional moments of television. Instead the whole purpose of this story was laid bare from its start, Ted wanted Robin.

That however doesn't make sense, when you consider that Ted had made clear that she wasn't the one for him when, instead of saving the day he passed the torch to Barney.

I think that the show suffered for its writers vision, because it had to be set in stone from an early point (child actors growing up, how incosiderate) so the end was always going to be a fixed point in time. But I also think the suffering might have been less if season 8 had been the last season. We wouldn't have had 6 months of the mythos of the mother, and the wedding, with the investing in characters emotionally that came with it. It's clear that the mother was always meant to be disposable, a plot point to get us to the end. However the skill of the writers resulted in a heavy emotional investment in the character, thanks to fairly sporadic appearences and one episode dedicated to the mother.
Had season 9 not happened then I think there wouldn't have been this backlash. We wouldn't have felt cheated by the wedding and divorce, a sense of loss and betrayal at the death, however it happened, and I think to an extent, anger at a year we lost to end up back in 2005. Would the characters have developed differently? Possibly. Would there have been a different reaction? Part of me thinks so.
I will say this though, the moment Barney meets his daughter for the first time was legend-wait-for-it because of its raw tender emotion, a side we all dared to hope for for Barney I think. However with the annoucement of a spin off (How I Met Your Father) and the assertion that it will not involve any of the current cast the sceptic in me wonders if that scene is merely a plot point, a bookend for this sister show?
All in all I was left underwhelmed, I had my own idea how the show would end, I had guessed what was coming, just not how. All in all I was left with a bit of a bad taste, much like expired dairy. (Legendary)