How I Met Your Mother (2005-2014)
How I met your mother has been on my watchlist for quite some time yet I never got around to watching it. The interest in the show peaked when my friend said they managed to mess up the ending in the final 10 mins of the show's finale. So, to see how they have messed up, the 10 mins of fuck up, I started watching the show about 200 days back.
After traveling for over 200 days with the show and the characters, I watched the finale knowing it's fumbled yet I am pissed off the way they ended the show. An example of how not to end the show.
How I met your mother is a brand US sitcom about 5 friends and their day to day lives with not so big problems. The protagonist narrates the show to his kids in 2030. The main cast is neat. There's a Playboy, a lover boy, a lovely couple and an outsider girl who enters the gang. While the characters are good enough, the show doesn't get you invested in.
Having watched friends and having shed tears over the ending many times, HIMYM felt like a cheap ripoff of friends without the emotional connection. Before jumping into the problems, let me list down the good things about the show.
Firstly, the show is decent to average albeit the fuck up. It's not always entertaining but it's not painfully bad to watch as well. While the core plot of "meeting the mother" is developed exhaustingly, I loved the characters of Barney and Robin Scherbatsky. Barney Stinson lit up the show with his spontaneity and the performance, the boy-like girl Robin Scherbatsky made the show lovable with her character.
The show does contain plenty of great and interesting episodes. It also contains several callbacks to the character's traits and customs and gestures they follow which are a bit unique to the show. Over the seasons, I started loving Lily Aldrin and her "Son of a beech" slang, the cuteness of her character is just so adorable.
Unfortunately, the remaining two characters, the main protagonists Ted Mosby and Marshall Eriksen came off mostly boring or unfunny characters that I just sat through for the sake of the others. The show is watchable for its simplistic portrayal of the lives without making any big deal or emotional over anything. I watched an episode a day and I shut it down. There wasn't an urge to watch one more.
This is both good and bad. It didn't get me emotionally invested as I had been with other sitcoms. The episodes were snoozer at times that I couldn't care less for the happenings. The development of the mother character is as tiring as it can get. Anyone with lesser patience would have stopped it days back.
Finally to the messed up finale, it was BAD. Why do they have to do that? Why can't they write anything better? In my opinion, the fumble is as big as the fumble of the GOT 8th season. It doesn't make any sense. So, bad.
I can think of at least 4-5 ways they could have navigated the show at least in the mid way. Just coz the makers thought of the title "How I Met Your Mother" and found it catchy, they didn't have to stick up to it. If they are going to stick up to it, they shouldn't have dropped the ball in the finale.
Anyhow, I'm definitely not rewatching this show as I watch others.
Overall, a decent to average sitcom. I don't hate it like BBT or find it completely unfunny like The office but it still an average show that only has Barney Stinson's character and Lily Aldrin's "Son of a beech" as the redeemable factor.
#HowIMetYourMother
#HIMYM
