Interesting story of the day-my last weekend before I moved away from New York, I decided to walk the entire length of Central Park from 110th to 59th. It took several hours because I stopped at almost every spot I could, but when I finally reached the end, invigorated from doing something I had dreamt of doing my whole New York-loving life, I didn't know quite how to finish it. So I kept walking, and eventually came across a pub called McGee's. Little did I know that it was in fact the real-life inspiration for McLaren's on How I Met Your Mother, and so I went in and had a beer at one of the inspirations of one of my favorite New York shows. A perfect ending to a perfect day...for a show that hardly had a perfect ending (sorry, probably last one).
Since I still love the show, it finds our way into unlucky Number thirteen in my list of favorite shows (our first series with a significant number of episodes-208, meaning less than 5% of the episodes will make the cut as opposed to our last two installments where nearly half did). It's worth noting for this (and all of the top fifteen, with one exception) that I've seen every one of these episodes, so if you're upset, please head to the comments and let me know what I missed.
The ninth season of the show was and always is going to be considered an experiment that likely failed on the surface (similar to some people's opinions of Lost, but I'm not with them there). However, that doesn't mean there weren't some beautiful moments that it contained. The best of those moments happened here, with both Marshall and Ted having their come-to-reality moments. Marshall realized that it was time for him to grow up in his relationship (and Lily, by extension), stopping the constant competition with his wife and trying to one-up her. Even better was Ted finally admitting that he tried to find the locket for Robin, and that he gave up his relationship with Victoria to stay friends with her. At the end, with Ted finally letting go of Robin (at least until the finale...let's pretend that one doesn't exist in terms of this episode), we found solace in a story that had stretched the duration of the series.
9. "The Leap" (#4.24)
If a show runs long enough, there's usually a major game-changer in the series right around the end of season four-it's a weird phenomenon, but that seems to be the way it happens. With How I Met Your Mother, it was Ted finally giving up on his career as a professional architect (though he would of course rejoin that field later in the series), and decide to pull a Ross and become a professor. This was the perfect choice for Ted, who was always a bit of a professor to begin with, and gave us one of the best cliffhangers of the series-the shot of the classroom where the mother was in attendance. I also love the literal leap each cast member made to jump across the roof to the oasis across the ledge (a hot tub) as it showed them all jumping into a different path on the show.
The weird thing about How I Met Your Mother has always been the way that it was almost better as a drama. In fact, it quite frankly became a drama in many of the later episodes. I mentioned this in my finale recap (I already linked it once at the top of the article if you haven't clicked it-please do!), but the show's many comparisons to Friends discounted the fact that more was at stake on this show. Ted's persistent struggles with loneliness, Robin's work/life balance, and this episode, with Marshall losing his beloved father before he ever got to tell him he'd be a grandpa showed that life doesn't always get a happy ending or the one you want, and that realism grounded the show from being just your average CBS sitcom (one of my buddies recently announced proudly that he watches no shows on CBS, proving the stigma around that phrase has hit epic points from the critically-aware crowd). The gut punch of that tactic for this episode was that with all of the signs to a countdown to something apparently wonderful, we thought we'd find out that Marshall and Lily were pregnant at the end of the episode-instead we got, well, bad news.
7. "The Bracket" (#3.14)
Each of these lists I find that at least one episode that doesn't scream "pantheon" manages to make it into my Top 10 list, and that's probably "The Bracket" for me. There's no real significance to this popping up (though it did eventually lead to Britney Spears returning), but I love the way that it shows a group of friends reminiscing and chatting about their past exploits, because that is essentially what great friends do. Plus, the episode, which featured a cavalcade of Barney's ex-girlfriends, is flat-out hilarious. You have to love Alyson Hannigan's glee at Barney getting pummeled by the women he screwed over. This episode also featured a series of the friends' Robert Altman-esque debates (I love all of the shouting over each other) and one of the best moments of social media awareness, with the introduction of Ted Mosby is a Jerk.
My brother reads this blog, and is probably thinking "this just made the list because it has Josh Radnor naked," and while I do appreciate me some Ted Mosby (the fact that Ted was a massive slut almost on-par with Barney throughout the show is never commented on, but Ted was a pretty awesome catch so I don't fault him for it), but instead because it is both hilarious and a sign of how the show incorporated in-jokes at a great clip. The "naked man" would be brought back in countless throwbacks, as would a number of other moments-other sitcoms do this as well, but How I Met Your Mother seemed to do it in a way that was subtle enough that the devoted fans would always catch them and feel like they just stumbled across an easter egg on a DVD. Also great in this episode is Robin's shame on her second date with Mitch (...who's practically her boyfriend), and Barney's conviction that he can make the title strategy work (and is of course the only one that cannot). Plus...Josh Radnor naked.
5. "Sandcastles in the Sand" (#3.16)
I just realized that two of these episodes are nearly back to back (poor, forgettable "Chain of Screaming" in between), but you can never discount an appearance of Robin Sparkles (the Sideshow Bob of this series-always a welcome return), and in particular the moment when we get another of her music videos. This episode features James van der Beek playing a washed-up ex-boyfriend of Robin's, who has that hold over Robin that no one can quite explain. However, the episode is not about Dawson, but more about what happens in the last five minutes, when Robin shares the hilarious "tampon commercial-like" music video of her singing the title song, and then they kiss. I never bought into the Barney-Robin romance (it always felt a bit contrived to pair everyone off), but I do remember thinking this was just about right when it happened in Season 3.
Pilots of sitcoms rarely have a lot to do with the rest of the series, and there are huge shifts in the personas of everyone involved. Look at a show like The Big Bang Theory, where Howard's defining trait is his fluency in multiple-languages (rarely brought out anymore) and Sheldon is sexually aware (clearly something that disappears soon enough). Here, though, the creators clearly had a distinct vision for the series, as things like the blue French Horn, Ted's complicated relationship with Robin, and Barney's blog amongst other icons of the show would stay with it. We also got introduced to a group of friends quite confident with each other, and of course we got Ted saying "I love you" way too soon to his dream girl, but not the love of his life.
3. "Something Blue" (#2.22)
Ted-and-Robin are an odd experiment throughout the show, since we know that they don't end up together (except they do...damn it, I really want to cheer for them to get together because the kids were right, that ultimately this was what the story was about, except it makes a lot of the more poignant moments in the series less meaningful). Anyway, let's assume that they don't spend the "best years of their lives" together in a romantic sense and go from there. The writers know that they cannot end with Robin-and-Ted getting married, so every time they get together it comes with impending heartbreak. The series occasionally relied on their reunion too frequently, but here is one of the few times it clearly made an impact-Barney spends most of Lily-and-Marshall's wedding reception trying to figure out what Robin-and-Ted's secret is, going from them getting married to her being pregnant and finally realizing that they broke up. It's the perfect illustration of what the show was when it was at it's best-a complicated look at how the future never looks exactly how you pictured it to begin with and the story keeps going.
2. "Symphony of Illumination" (#7.12)
I have cried multiple times throughout the run of this series (including, it should be stated, the finale), but never have I felt so wonderfully sucker-punched as in this episode. I frequently cite this episode with my brother as the defining moment of the series, not because it changed the course of the show but because it bravely gave the audience something it didn't want. Network television sitcoms rely so heavily on spoon-feeding exactly what you expect-a show like Friends will break-up Ross-and-Rachel, but you know they'll get back together before long. Here, we get the punch of finding out that Robin will never have children (she keeps coding it as if she'll "never be a pole vaulter"). It comes over voiceover from grown-up Ted, and I'm just going to give you the whole quote as it's a perfect illustration of how daring the show could be when it wanted to go there, "Kids, your aunt Robin never did become a pole-vaulter. But she did become a famous journalist, a successful businesswoman, a world traveler, she was even briefly a bullfighter - that's a funny story, I'll get to that one later. But there was one thing your aunt Robin never was; she was never alone." Beautiful and poetic, and Cobie Smulders' (best in show of the actors) crowning achievement on the series.
When you get this many episodes of a favorite show, it's occasionally hard to pick the top episode, though definitely not in this case. While "Symphony of Illumination" and "Something Blue" were the best dramatic and poignant moments of the series, you could never quite beat the comic moments of "Slap Bet," which featured not one but two of the best long-running gags on the series. The first was the title, where Barney and Marshall engage in a slap bet that would last all the way to the finale over what Robin's terrible secret is. As we soon learn, however, it's that she was a Canadian pop star named Robin Sparkles (genius) and we get treated to "Let's Go to the Mall" a hilariously bad parody of the horrible pop ballads of the 80's. It shows the group hilariously but gently mocking one of their own, and gave us yet another reason to feel their comradery.
Those are my favorite moments of the series, but what about you? There's 198 other episodes to choose from, so certainly other people have different rankings and different number ones-which do you prefer? Share in the comments!
For more of my favorites: Girls, Pushing Daisies
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