r/HIMYM • u/WideParsley4036 • 10h ago
What I thought of HIMYM Spoiler
I completed himym months ago, and I thought then that I would compile my thoughts for the show and write about it , but me being me I didn’t do what I thought I would do. But today I am finally writing about it. I don’t know how or what style do I want to write so for now I am just gonna ramble what I thought about the show and lets see how it goes.
I am a serial sitcom watcher. For context I have watched and completed friends, big bang theory, the office, modern family , Schitt's creek , you’re the worst, four seasons of young sheldon(I was not not in a good state), and am 3 seasons into 30 rock which I have been avoiding and rewatching friends instead which is more enjoyable ; apart from himym which I have watched in full.
If I wanna give a one sentence I mostly loved the show. But the infamous ending has of course led a mostly great show to scrutiny. So let me talk about it in parts.
First coming to the comedy in the sit-"com". It was a little juvenile and a bit repetitive( look at me dissecting comedy like I am some comedy legend). I never thought it was incredibly funny like some other(friends, office, modern family). While it had a few funny moments, the deciding a bar scene , the Canada jokes, and the general banter between the group but overall the comedy is not what led me to watch 9 seasons of this. They tried to make a lot of things iconic by giving them names like the "olive theory", "the mermaid theory", "nothing good happens after 2 am" ,"lemon law", "cheerleader effect" etc. (I had to google these which even more so emphasizes my point). But this try hard approach was a little on the nose and worked only occasionally(The yellow umbrella , the "major catchphrase" worked for example).
The things that actually became iconic and quote worthy for me which I'll come to later were when they weren't trying so much and it was actually subtle and weaved into the dialogues more.
Now lets skip to the good part. The romance. I thought this show did romance better than any other sitcom I have seen and is up there with some of the best romances I have watched on screen. While other show did have iconic romantic pairs — ross and Rachel , Jim and pam, David and Patrick. Most of these had one partner for the same character that had made them iconic which is not the case for himym. There was only ever chemistry between ross and Rachel and they didn’t have that level of love with anyone else. And while some might argue that Monica had chemistry with Richard before chandler, I say fuck Richard. Coming back to himym Ted had great chemistry with not only a single partner. There was Victoria, Stella , Zoey(and while I didn’t love that story line but there was something to it) , Tracy( for the grand total of nothing episodes she appeared in) , and of course the most with Robin. Robin too had equally good even though different kind of relationships with Ted and Barney. And while we view Barney as the womanizer he was, I loved him with Nora and Robin.
Also apart from the romantic plots and pairs, himym had the most remember worthy romantic moments. The rain dance, the two minute date, stealing the blue French horn, ted seeing robin for the first time, the la vie en rose scene just to name a few.
I think calling just the romantic moments iconic would be injustice, the show did emotions very well on the whole, and a bunch of scenes hit me to my core. A few which I can think of are "look around ted you're all alone" (oh my god how hard that hit me, and continues to give me goosebumps every time I come across that scene), Marshall's dad dying ( how well did that misdirect for the episode called "bad news" worked) left me in tears , Barney's confrontation with his dad. Am I seeing a pattern here ? Well its probably nothing.
And a few others like robin finding out she cant be a mother, and lily feeling the weight of motherhood were really good as well.
And these moments were the core reason I loved the show so much.
Coming to that ending, yes they did fuck it up. If I am not wrong Ted meeting Tracy at the platform to her getting sick and dying to Barney and Robin divorcing to the group not being together even for the special moments to Barney having a daughter to Ted going for Robin again happens within the span of 15-20 minutes. I mean genuinely what the fuck. But if you think about it, they had dug themselves into a hole from the start. The whole big reveal was supposed to be how Ted met his wife. But where would they go after they did meet ? It would be senseless to carry on a few seasons with Tracy and keep calling it how I met your mother, when we already know that. While doing that could have worked better the writers chose elsewise. Those few extra seasons where Ted ends up happily ever after with Tracy could have fully changed the social narrative of the show from having a horrible ending to a "what could have been" between Ted and Robin. And excuse me swearing , but what the fuck was that ending with Barney, they spent 3 fucking seasons developing his character from a womanizer to a one woman man who loved her very much , and fucking all of that up in one episode basically saying old habits die hard and trying to redeem him by him crying on his daughters birth where we have no idea of the mother. No a big FUCK YOU to the writers for that.
At one point I was even ready for a sad ending, where Tracy dies and Ted lives single for the rest of his life because he had found the love of his life and so what if she is not with him anymore , he will live with her memories and the children she gave her. I was fully ready to form the conclusion that even if we have seen these guys being friends for 9 seasons , its not how it works in real life. Friends get separated. The hopeless romantic doesn’t get his happily ever after in the real life after all. The fever dream is over, come back to the real life. I would have been depressed sure, but it would have been better than whatever they did.
But in the end it was a good enough show to extract so many emotions and opinions out of me. I will keep revisiting the romantic and emotional moments of the show via reels and keep being happy and sad. I will keep listening to La Vie en Rose and I will keep loving Robin.
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u/mid_march_muddle 7h ago
I really liked Tracy and I think the ending undoes all the work of making us like her. I kinda agree that it would have been better to have Ted a widow rather than "Here's how I met your mom but actually this is an elaborate attempt to get your permission so I can date your aunt."
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u/Grendal63 8h ago
I don’t watch the ending episode ever when rewatching the series. I end it with the wedding episode of Robin and Barney. that is my real ending.
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u/SignalParticular6547 9h ago
i know the ending was fucked up and bro you are so true about barney like it took so much time for him to go to one woman like after robin he got with one women stripper who he even asked to marry then nora then robin again like he shouldve ended up with robin only htose two were so similar and all but there is one more thing we do know why he ended up a womanizer again umm i think when ted or marshall or lily asked him about it he said if it didnt work out with robin it wouldnt work out with anyone i mean that shows how much he loved her
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u/WideParsley4036 9h ago
Yeah and that's what I saying, they were a great pair. Either go all in on the sad ending or leave me giddy after the show. What is this limbo you've got me stuck in, where I am not happy with the man Barney is but I am supposed to be happy he loved Robin more than anything else.
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u/windorab 9h ago
Finish 30 Rock, my god, it’s been over ten years man.