How I Met Your Mother: What went wrong with it?

[TMC]

Was it just the ending? Was it the whole season? Should the creators have maybe been a little less fixated with their Ted and Robin ending?

And do you agree that the title How I Met Your Mother was really a mistake? It made you think that the most important thing about the show was meeting the mother, when it was actually Ted's supposed growth as a character.

[TMC]

Originally Posted by Alan Brady's Hair

The show had several problems to me. They were very seldom able to put together funny plots and subplots in the same episode. They weren't able to extend the cast beyond the core group to family, neighbors, and co-workers. Robin's actually a pretty sad character, destined to end up alone, and Ted comes and goes as a sympathetic character. I did a top ten episodes a while back, and too much of it revolved around Barney's silliness. There were a lot of silly, funny things that they did that recurred, and I guess that kept enough people interested to keep the show going.

Edit: I don't think the title had much to do with things - the scripts obviously used Ted's storytelling as a hook.

In order to circle around to the preplanned ending (which they wrote and shot a chunk of the core of in the first season), they had to toss any sort of character growth (such as Ted and Robin coming to understand that they weren't right for each other and Barney becoming genuinely ready for long-term romantic happiness). Therefore, all of the growth that Ted and Robin's friend-relationship went through was rendered moot. Robin and Barney, who the show had grown to places where people wanted to see them happy with each other, had to be split up. Tracy, who had been given nearly a decade of anticipatory build-up and a season of development, had to be killed off.

Also, having Ted chase Robin so quickly after that "development" and the mother's death was just a slap in the face and an idea that might have worked but was just so, so, so poorly executed (especially since they had to circle around to the preplanned ending, as I previously mentioned).