How I Met Your Mother was a fantastic show with great long-running jokes, fun characters to hang with, and a love story that became more muddled as the seasons went along. We loved spending time with Ted (Josh Radnor), Marshall (Jason Segel), Lily (Alyson Hannigan), Barney (Neil Patrick Harris), and Robin (Cobie Smulders). The last three minutes of the finale and what they did to the mother were quite controversial, but we’ll try to look past it. Let’s sit in a booth at McClaren’s and rank every season of the show:
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9 Season 8
20th Television
There are not many memorable episodes in season eight, and many of the funnier ones use ideas (robots vs wrestlers, the captain, Robin Sparkles) that were funnier the first time around. This is also the season where Barney proposes to Robin in a convoluted and manipulative plan that makes him look bad, and has aged poorly (How I Met Your Father has learned not to do them). Victoria (Ashley Williams) comes back as Ted’s girlfriend, but it seems like it’s more of an idea of the writers to win some time, as she’s not the same woman we fell for in season one; becoming a different, more vindictive character. Not a great season of television.
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8 Season 9
The idea of spending the whole season on the wedding weekend might’ve been a little too much, but at least it was imaginative and gave a new spark to the show; giving us flashbacks, flash-forwards, and a rhyming episode. Although the greatest thing this season did, was finally present the mother and make us fall in love with her (even before Ted meets her at the train station). If it wasn’t for the last five minutes of the show’s finale, and breaking up Barney and Robin in the same episode after a full year of her wedding, this season might even be higher, as it has some great episodes, especially “How Your Mother Met Me”.
7 Season 7
This season made Robin and Barney the center of most of their interesting stories. Together, as in the episode where after sleeping together and understanding they still have feelings for each other, Barney breaks up with Nora, and Robin chooses to stay with Kevin. That soul-crashing ending marks the rest of Barney’s arc for the season and ends with his romance with Queen. Meanwhile, Robin has one of the most heartbreaking episodes of the whole show, when she discovers she can’t have children. She never wanted to, but that’s one thing, and not being able to have them is something completely different. The rest of the cast is used more as supporting characters, although they still have great episodes together, especially “Trilogy Time”.
6 Season 3
Following the break-up between Ted and Robin, the show changed gears while adding many new ideas that would stick during several seasons: the yellow umbrella, Slapsgiving, Ted’s red cowboy boots, “eating sandwiches”, Ted’s butterfly tattoo, and Barney and Robin’s hook up. If we had to recommend some episodes, they would be: “How I Met Everyone Else”, where we see how Ted met the whole gang; “Ten Sessions”, where Ted has a two-minute date that is pure romanticism; and “Slapsgiving”, where Marshall and Lily organize their first Thanksgiving as a married couple - Barney gets a slap, and Ted and Robin start bonding again after their breakup.
Writer Matt Kuhn told Entertainment Weekly about the episode: “You start short-handing stuff. “Oh, you guys are working on that slap Thanksgiving episode.” It doesn’t take too long before it simply becomes Slapsgiving … Anyone who works with me knows I love a good pun, and it’s amazing how many things almost rhyme with a slap. Then it’s a matter of squeezing in as many as we possibly can know that in terms of the story, Marshall would be judicious in how many he throws out there.”
5 Season 6
This is a very irregular season, with very high highs, and very low lows. The same could be said of Ted’s romantic partner of the season, Zooey (Jennifer Morrison), and her obsession with The Arcadian, the building that, if destroyed, will give space for Ted’s first mark as an architect in the New York City skyline. This is also a season about fathers and sons; as Barney gets to know his real father, as Marshall loses his. Jason Segel gives a chill-inducing, incredible performance in “Last Words”, where he talks about the last words he told his father before he died, which showed how the series could be emotional, honest, and could make you cry.
4 Season 4
This is the season where Stella leaves Ted at the altar, Robin moves to Japan for work, and Ted hangs out with his first girlfriend Karen (Laura Prepon), and there are also some other good episodes. In this season, Ted gets into his first fight, Barney falls in love with Robin and doesn’t know how to tell her, the Intervention running gag starts, we’re presented with the Naked Man theory, and Barney and Ted get in a competition to see if they’re too old for doing some stuff. A fun season with a few home runs to make us remember that when HIMYM was firing on all cylinders, and that it was one of the funniest, most romantic sit-coms ever.
3 Season 5
The first part of the season is kind of weak, as it looks like the writers never thought about what they would do once Barney and Robin were together, and the results are not great. Once they break up, the season gets going. Ted loves his new job as a professor, Marshall and Lily start trying to have a kid, and Robin gets a new boyfriend in Don and, for the first time, chooses love over her job. It also has an incredible five-episode tour-the-force run with the best episodes in the season: “The Window”, where Ted realizes he’s ready for a new epic romance; “Last Cigarette Ever”, where there are great jokes and an incredible Lily voice, “Girls vs Suits” with a great musical ending for the show one hundred episodes, “Jenkins” where Amanda Peet has a funny guest star roll, we see Big Fudge in action and learn the “but… um,” Robin drinking game, and “Perfect Week”, where baseball metaphors and Barney’s antics help the whole gang forget about their bad week.
2 Season 1
This is where everything started. Where we fell in love with this group of characters that we would follow for nine years. It has one of the best first episodes ever, with many running gags that would keep appearing during the whole series, like “Legen-wait for it - dary”, “Suit up” or the “Have you met Ted?” game. It also has one of the best couples on TV, with Marshall and Lilly, where they compliment each other, and there’s no drama for the sake of drama (the couple is partially based on one of the creator’s relationships with his wife).
Every episode had something unique and special that showed why this was one of the best new shows on TV, taking full advantage of the flashback, and flash-forward idea, one of the more revolutionary ideas for a sitcom the show brought to TV. There’s not one bad episode in this first batch, but if we had to choose, for us, the best are “Pilot”, “Slutty Pumpkin”, “The Pineapple Incident”, “Game Night”, and “Come on”.
1 Season 2
CBS
This is the best season of the show. It took everything good about the first season and made it even more awesome. It has love, heartbreak, jokes, Barney crying while marrying his best friends, and a Friends parody, showing there are as many similarities with that show as differences. It also has “Slap Bet”, which might be the best episode of the whole show; bringing to our lives both Robin Sparkles (and her visit to the mall) and the slap bet that gives the episode its name. Only for that episode, this season would already be pretty up on our list, but it showed us so much more: the whole relationship between Marshall and Lily, both broken up, reconciled, and getting married; and also how good Ted and Robin are together. Season two is the perfect example to show anyone who doesn’t understand why we’re such fans of How I Met Your Mother and why we’re still bitter with that ending.
