How I Met Your Mother: Season 2

Hurrah! Another season of this old school comedy has been completed. About halfway through this season, I wasn't as big a fan of the show as I was last season. It had fallen into patterns and routines and several episodes were neither very funny nor relevant to the story of how Ted met his kids' mother. In fact, all season long, Ted dated Robin, who as I pointed out in the Season 1 recap, was confirmed to have not been his kids' mother. Their breakup was inevitable from the get-go. Perhaps that's part of why the second season felt like a step backward to me; the story wasn't progressing as much as it was standing still. But something great was happening throughout Season 2 that I was unaware of at the time. Seeds were being planted. And when those seeds finally sprouted in the final few episodes of the season, I was caught delightedly off guard. Allow me to explain. If you've seen Lost, for example, you know what it's like to see something seemingly irrelevant in one episode and then have it be explained several episodes later. Likewise, Arrested Development was notable for many reasons, but one of them was its commitment to "down the line" jokes. A seed is planted one episode, in a very subtle way, and later on in a completely different episode, it'll get brought back in a delayed joke. I love it. I guess its the comedy equivalent of foreshadowing. Anyway, toward the end of this season of How I Met Your Mother, the writers definitely started to dabble with these delayed pay-off jokes. And a big one even played a huge role in the season finale. The show is evolving, and I'm enjoying watching it do so. The characters, too, are showing some growth, and that's always important for an old school two-camera sitcom with a laugh track. At any rate, I'm impressed (even if not blown away) by this CBS sitcom so far, and I look forward to the next few seasons - spoiler alert! - especially now that Ted and Robin mutually and cleanly called their chemistry-less relationship off. Now, Ted can continue his quest to meet his eventual wife, using Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) as his wingman. There were some bumps in the road in Season 2, but all in all, it was at least as good as Season 1. Now, onward, to Season 3!