How I Met Your Mother: Season 8

The end is in sight! The ninth and current season of How I Met Your Mother will be the show's last. And although it hasn't always been my favorite show, it's been a decent one for a long time. Like, a shockingly long time. Nine years? I guess I should table any discussion about the show's longevity and legacy until I'm back here posting about Season 9 a year from now. So, in the mean time, how was Season 8? Pretty good. It started slow, with three of the five main characters treading water in uninteresting relationships that we already knew wouldn't last. But it ended with a lot of forward character-based momentum, clearly setting up its own end game with some purpose in mind. And perhaps most importantly, in case you haven't heard or don't really care, the season ends with us - wait for it - meeting the mother! I mean, Ted still hasn't met her, and we only see her face for like five seconds, but hey, here we finally are; after eight years, the show has finally delivered on its own title's premise. Granted, meeting the mother was never really the point of this series, and what matter more are the emotional beats and clever episode structures. Part of the reason I disliked the early part of the season was its overall blandness. Thirty-somethings in dead-end relationships? That's been done to death before, on this show and elsewhere, and it's rarely even funny in an interesting way. For what it's worth, the best episode of the season, and the one that really corrected the show's course, came right at the halfway point, as a particularly unbelievable story arc that had existed for a few episodes in a row ended with a surprise twist, and a heart-warming one at that. When it happened, I met it not with eye-rolling and groaning, but with a big old shit-eating grin. It was nice to see that even after all these years, How I Met Your Mother could still muster up enough creativity to pull a fast one on me. What little I've heard so far about the ninth season suggests that it hasn't been stellar so far, but as long as this show sticks the landing after nine years and what must be more than 200 episodes, I'm all in.