2013 - HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER SEASON 9, the final season

The last season of HIMYM, is sort of a last hurrah for the cast and guest stars.  Almost everyone who appeared in the series takes a sort of bow. All of Ted's old girlfriends appear and almost every goofball, (The Captain, Robin Scherbatsky, Sr.,The Bartender etc.). among others make a final appearance.

The writers tried something different in this season.  The episodes were set over the 3 day period of Barney and Robin's wedding.  In theory this was sort of clever, in reality kind of unwieldy.  

 

The plan was to finally bring Ted and Robin together after her divorce from Barney.  But a funny thing happened on the way to the last episode. The actress they hired to play Ted's unseen wife, Cristin Milioti was so likable that fans of the series resented killing her off to make way for Robin.

 

The DVD release offered 2 versions of the final show, one where the mother is alive and married to Ted and one where the mother is dead and Ted finally ends up with Robin. My vote is he should have stuck with girlfriend Victoria from season 1

Well that's showbiz.

24 episodes, 516 minutes.

2012 - HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER SEASON 8

They probably should have called it a day after season 7 but incredibly CBS squeezed two more seasons out of this series.

The cast and the writers seem completely on autopilot by this time. Frankly the relationship and engagement of Robin and Barney always seemed very contrived to me.  Clearly the plan was to pair Robin up with Ted.  But as we shall see in season 9, a funny thing happened on the way to the end of the last episode.

 

The  cast really has to carry the load because the producers/writers sure couldn't seem to get the season jelling.

517 minutes, 23 episodes.

2008 - HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER, season 4

Season 4 on the long running series starts to have some issues with a number of it's early episodes. Our main protagonist  Ted Mosley gets engaged and is left at the altar.  So we have a number of episodes where we put up with the romance of Ted and his fiancee Stella Zinman which really slows down the action  

Once the series is done with this tiresome plot line, the episodes actually start getting funny again.

 

The show's actors in this season are now very comfortable with their characters.  Worth viewing after you get through the first five episodes.

 

The main writers are the series producers, Carter Bays & Craig Thomas.

513 minutes