How I Met Your Mother

This show is really well structured, for the most part the jokes are funny, and the performances of Neil Patrick Harris and Jason Segel are legendary. (reference intended). But of course what everybody talks about is the ending of the series. It seems like it was one of those things that was workshopped with test audiences is before being released, and I think it is a disappointment. The worst part of it is that the writers intended to end it something like that from the very beginning. I mean the show was on for 9 seasons and the bits where the older Ted character is talking to his children were filmed in the first season because obviously the children couldn't age over 9 years during filming. So that's the frustrating thing, the ending was always going to be bad. They destroyed the character development they had achieved with Barney and with Ted. Barney represents the too cynical view of the world and he learns to accept romance into his life, and Ted represents an idealistic obsession with romance and he learns to accept reality into his life. I think maybe the writers got tricked by the ending of Seinfeld. The ending of Seinfeld makes sense because those characters never grow and learn things, that's why they're funny. But in this sitcom the whole premise is all about learning and growing. One can only hope there's a director cut ending out there somewhere of this series that's much better. 

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