Jordan's Review: How I Met Your Mother, Season 6, Episode 24: Challenge Accepted

GOD DAMN IT. Let's summarize, in a few sentences, everything that we learned this season. In the premiere, TWENTY FOUR MOTHER FUCKING EPISODES AGO, we knew Marshall and Lily were trying to get pregnant, and TWIST: Lily's pregnant. Fucking TWO SEASONS AGO, we knew that there was something between Barney and Robin (honestly, we've known since season one, but it's been an explicit plot point for two years now) and TWIST: There's still something there. AND IN THE VERY FIRST EPISODE OF THIS UNEVEN, APPARENTLY COMPLETE WASTE OF TIME SEASON, in the VERY FIRST SCENE no less, we knew that Ted met the mother at a wedding. We all guessed way back when that it was Barney's wedding, and TWIST: it's Barney's wedding. This season opened with a quote on a church sign reading "For every change there is a season." Apparently, it wasn't this one.

If you haven't guessed this from the expletive laden, caps-filled screed above, I am a little angry. I feel used, I feel tricked, I feel cheated. The writers promised this season of How I Met Your Mother would be different, would be arc focused, would include BIG changes and twists and everything we loved about the show back in the day. This season was certainly more focused (and better) than season five. There was a definitive Barney arc with his father, and even a second Barney arc in his interest in Nora and rekindled interest in Robin (though come now people, we all know he's marrying Robin, right?). Marshall dealt with his father's death and with his fears about becoming a father himself. But the most important plotline in this show wasn't addressed at all after the cold open of the season premiere.

There was a lot of good in this season, but there was also a lot of bad. And ultimately, at a time when the show needs to be bold it is instead choosing timidity, punting again when it should have run for the goal. At this point, I think the only way this show can stay good for the next two years is to introduce the mother IMMEDIATELY. We have been patient, us fans of HIMYM. We have waited six seasons and over 130 episodes. I have said often this year that it is time to move to the endgame; discussing this finale earlier tonight, I mentioned to my friends that I didn't think I'd be satisfied unless the cliffhanger tonight lead us to the mother at the beginning of next season. Instead, the writers have clearly decided to delay the reveal indefinitely, possibly all the way to the finale. I think this is a big mistake, and I think it will hurt the show and it's legacy.

I care about Barney and Robin, and I hope that they get together. I even look forward to watching them stumble back together and into marriage. I care about Marshall and Lily, and while I dread the idea of a baby being on this show, I hope there will be some great moments along the way to the potential shark jump that is a "Lily's having a baby!" episode. But none of these plotlines moves me the way the masterplot does, and I am tired of it being ignored because there's nowhere left for the show to go but into the endgame. Give us the mother. Let it percolate. Let us meet her, let Ted court and date her, convince us she's better than all of his past love interests. Make us care about Ted again. He's the center of the show, and without the masterplot, How I Met Your Mother has felt rudderless for seasons now. I want the show I love back. I want it's heart back. I want to care again. And all this finale left me with was a vague, naive, mostly hopeless, "maybe next year."

Grade: C-

Notes:

-Strange for this show to jump to the fall and then not do anything with that time jump at all except mock Nora's fashion sense...

-"But new is always better is my oldest rule, which makes it the best!"

-"Can...I...Borrow...An adult diaper."

-"Ted really can go on about a bitch." Cute. Because the show has been on for SIX FUCKING YEARS and we still haven't finished the story.

-"Marshall told us you're exploding from both ends like a busted fire hydrant."

-Ranjit!...was wasted.

-Ever since Trader Joe's opened up, Brooklyn is so...whatever."

-Terrible CGI on the implosion. That seems like a good place to leave things. On something the show did TERRIBLY.