How I Met Your Disappointing Season Finale
Kids, sometimes life brings disappointments, like last night's season finale of the still totally great show How I Met Your Mother, which was predictable and lovey dovey and, ironically for its title and theme ("The Leap"), not very risk-takey. (We judge harshest what we lovest most, or whatever.) You can watch it here. But sometimes in life the shows you love disappoint you, and you just have to look back at the rest of the season and think of the good times, like the episode where Barney hired actors to play his fake family for years to please his mother. That was gold. Or, you can do what I did and go on YouTube with nothing but a hunch and find that a foot fetishist has already uploaded a scene from last night's episode featuring Ted's (Josh Radnor's) feet, just in time for impromptu Videogum foot fetish day, which started an hour ago and ends now:
Seriously. It's just feet:
This same person also presents clips of the feet of Matthews Lillard and Fox, and Denzel, and a bunch of other random actors. As for How I Met Your Mother, at least we found out the deal with that goat.
Posted by Lindsay at 4:35 PM in Sitcoms
Tags: Alyson Hannigan | Cobie Smulders | Feet | Goats | How I Met Your Mother | Jason Segel | Josh Radnor | Neil Patrick Harris
Overall it was a good season though.
Score = 6
Score = 7
Oh come on Kenny.
Score = 6
Agreed -- I'm gonna say good finale too.
Score = 3
I really do like this show except for Ted. I don't know if it's the actor or the writers but his character drags down the whole show. I wish he missed that leap.
Screw it! I'm posting this bit about my problem with Ted from another site:
The thing that pisses me off about Ted the most isn’t the fact that his story results in the loss of funny (he is unfunny enough on his own). It’s that it serves no point. As soon as Robin was detailed as not the mother of his children then it didn’t matter who was because it would just be some character written into the last few episodes (somebody who the audience wouldn’t have enough time to care about).
Not only that but certain episodes don’t even make sense as something his kids (who never look interested and realistically would have told him to fuck off after the first 5 minutes) would have asked. Remember that one where Lily moves in with Barney but by the end of the episode she scares him into kicking her out but with her getting a bunch of furniture as a prize? How the fuck does that relate to Ted’s kids learning about their Mother?
Ted’s entire story is pointless (and by association the title of the fucking show is also pointless) and worse than that limits the comic scope of the show. I pray that the writers decide to drop this idea they have going on right now that Barney should chase after Robyn lest we lose the funniest character on the show to likely another pointless, unfunny storyline.
P.S. Damn it! I can't believe they are actually going through with Barney and Robin. Way to repeat the crap of Ted and Robin HIMYM writers.
Is there two different groups writing this show? One group who are funny and craft enjoyable situations for the characters and have them react based on their personalities and another who watched too many Zack Braff movies (read: Any).
GRRRRRR!
Score = -3
FistfulOAwesome? More like FistfulOTyping. Find that enter key, dude.
Score = 10
I press Enter on the comment box but it doesn't show up on the post. I guess I'm supposed to press it twice.
Score = 0
If it helps, and it won't, because it only sort of "solves" one little problem (the bored kids), I think the mother is dead and they asked to hear about her so grown up Ted is telling them. Yay, upper!
Score = 8
I disagree. Ted's storyline sometimes results in funny, and I watch the show because it's funny, not because I desperately want to know who Ted marries.
So you BOTH complain about funny side stories that have nothing to do with the Mother (Lily/Barney) AND complain that the Ted storyline limits the comic scope of the show?
The 5 characters are great together. Ted may not be my favorite of them, but the show wouldn't be the same without him. Who cares that the show is called "How I Met Your Mother"? Having a central plot point is good, so at least the story goes somewhere. They can't call it "Friends".
Score = 8
I'm not a fan of Ted and I thought for the most part when Robin was dating him she was less funny than when she is single. For the most part I think that Lily/Marshall and Barney have better mostly self-contained stories as well.
As for Ted's story, I find the whole thing pointless. Seriously, take out all the narration and cuts to future Ted and it doesn't affect the story at all. I think the show would have been better off without those bits. I don't think that Ted's story is good for the show. As Lindsay said the Barney focused story "Meet The Stinsons" was a self-contained episode and one of the show's best. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if a Top-Ten list of the show's best didn't contain a single Ted's Quest centered story. It isn't interesting.
A central story is good but only if it doesn't affect the shows quality. Remember in the X-Files how they had that long-running story about Mulder trying to find out what happened to his Sister? Remember how episodes revolving around that mystery were far less interesting than the monster-of-the-week stories the majority of the episodes were? That's how I feel about Ted's Quest.
On the side stories: I like side-stories. I was pointing out that in terms of context it doesn't make sense why Ted is telling these side stories to his kids (doubly so if you take Lindsay's explanation into account).
P.S. There were two shows that handled running stories in ways I liked. Star Trek TNG and the Q stories and Borg stories being one. Futurama and it's Fry's Past/The Mighty One/Fry and Leela's Romance being the other.
Score = 1
tldnr
^Oh gawd, have I become that person? Too "busy" to read what someone carefully and articulately put together in the company of friends????....yeah, I guess.
Score = 8
You give me far too much credit. I'm more of a blowhard.
Score = 0
The writers have stated many a time that the last shot of the whole show will be the introduction to the mother. The mother isn't the point. The point is that before you are a parent, you have a life, an identity and experiences. Parents are always thought of as one dimensional and the show is a lesson in how complex and multifaceted life is, even for people we assume we know everything about, like parents.
please help me off this soapbox now.
Score = 8
I can't. Mine is higher than yours. You should be helping me down.
I think the writers have done a pretty bad job at what you stated, Whit. The lesson delivery (the future bits) feel tacked on. You could have Ted Danson right now record nine seasons of dialogue about how he learned to shit standing up and put that in Cheers and it would make about as much sense as Ted's Future bits (dirty?).
By the way, even if they did to a good job with the story it's kinda strange that they would make the Father a 3-D character and leave the Mother 1-D.
P.S. If I seem insufferable I apologize. I write down what's on my mind and I make no concessions to be polite.
Score = -2
I've given this show a try twice now, based almost solely on Lindsay's say-so (an unwillingness to turn off the TV also played a role), and maybe I just picked exactly the wrong episodes, but I have question marks, so many question marks. Is the mystery of the babymother's identity really a big draw for the audience? If so, do I have to approach this like the Wire and watch from the first episode? Because honestly, the jokes I saw were just barely above the average laugh-track fare, and the cast is pretty mediocre, with the obvious exception of NPH. If you hit the How I met Your Mother tag, it seems like half the time Lindsay posts about it, it's to essentially apologize for how underwhelming it is.
Score = 1
I was the same way (except it was one of my real-life friends harassing me to watch it). I finally started watching the show in order, as a procrastination tool, and I got it. It's all about the development of the characters and their relationships. Once you get to know them, the show is so much more rewarding. It can almost fill that Scrubs-shaped TV friends hole in my heart now.
Score = 2
Which makes Ted even more of a douche.
"Dad, tell us about mom."
"Well, this one time, years before I met her, I was trying to get a threeway going ..."
Score = 7
This show is great for a laugh-tracked sitcom. Which means it's still bad, just not Two and a Half Men abysmal. My tolerance for this kind of stuff went out the window as soon as the American Office got good.
Score = 0
You liked the show where Barney hired actors to be his family? Really? I thought that one was kind of a yawn. And I thought the finale was great! The washcloth obsessed goat, Ted doing his presentation with the hoof mark on his forehead, the rapport between Robin and Barney... I thought it was all pretty brilliant. But I agree that there is a lot you could nitpick with this show, yet I still love it.
Score = 0
Here is what struck me about last night's finale: at the end, when they are all jumping from one rooftop to the next, they are ALL wearing IDENTICAL shoes. Some kind of special jumping shoe? Very odd. Also, I don't have DVR or anything, I noticed this on my first viewing.
Score = 0
I don't think anyone who watches this show is only waiting to find out who the mother is. you might as well be saying, "Isn't this show called The Office? Seems like they're focusing more on the people who work in the office than the office itself".
The mother story is how they make the show work the way it does, jumping around and flashing back to flashbacks within flashbacks. The future Ted narration is just this show's shaky hand-held camerawork.
And, yeah, if you're going to watch it, you should start at the beginning. Long-running inside jokes are HIMYM's glancing at the camera.
Score = 2
(BORED AT WORK)
I like HIMYM because generally the laffs are not totally forced (most of the time) and it's self-reflexive in a way that is actually funny (as opposed to Family Guy....). Marshall cracks me up, and NPH is obviously the King Midas of excellent programming. But, okay. Lily is such an annoying meddler, and Robin has very few redeeming qualities other than Robin Sparkles (seriously the part in the finale where she "decides" she "has feelings" for Barney was super annoying and unconvincing), and Ted is SO BORING. Seriously, you guys, he is the Zach Braff of three-camera TV! It's like they threw in the Sarah Chalke storyline just to emphasize that point. In real life all those beautiful girls would never date a boring-looking guy like him with a boring personality and a boring profession. And really? What kind of self-respecting architect idolizes Frank Gehry? A boring one. So anyway, in conclusion, I don't watch it because I give a crap about who Ted ends up with. And surely any fan of the show recognizes that it's just going to be one red herring after another until the studio decides that they aren't going to renew it for another season, which accounts for all the fluff episodes (although it makes sense to me that a reminiscing father as verbose as Future Ted would digress often). I basically watch it for Marshall's chart scenes and the weirdly satisfying inside jokes, like zitch dog and interventions and the goat.
(sorry to make this Tiradegum...going back to work now)
Score = -1
It was a so-so finale, but I was rolling on the floor when Ted fought that goat. That shit was hysterical.
Score = 0
I've been a loyal follower of videogum for a while now. Your guys' judgement regarding comedy is usually spot on. But enough is enough. This show is simply crap. I don't understand how you people can continue to pretend otherwise. Seriously. How can a group of people who appreciate Patton Oswalt or Norm McDonald or H. Jon Benjamin also enjoy How I Met Your Mother? It's a mind boggling. You should all be ashamed of yourselves.
Score = -5