I agree. The episode was so real to anyone in their mid 30s. In stark and sometimes dark ways. The ending was the same way. It was an almost restrained joy. Not as happy as if he ended up with the mother in the end. But happy in a somewhat uncomfortably satisfactory way.

Even though I know the ending, I'm thinking of watching the season from the beginning.

My problem is that I lose interest in sitcom's no matter how good they are usually. Do the episodes throughout the seasons, keep drawing you in??

nailed it!! don't know why there was damned dust in my house.

Are you talking about Season 9 or the entire series?

You should watch seasons 1-7. Maybe even season 8. But SKIP all of season 9, except for the last 3 episodes or so.

Boom! Nailed it right there

yeah, it was well known that the last season was purely a money grab by the network, but the priducers couldn't pass up the dough.

The reason Marshall spent so much time in the car was because he was filiming it on a soundstage around his Muppet filming, so he wasn't available with the rest of the cast. He really wanted to end it at 8 seasons, but he couldn't bail on the character.

I think a lot of people have an issue with it because it's TOO realistic, and they don't want that from a sitcom. They want non-stop laughs.

That's why I was surprised a couple of seasons ago when marhsall's dad died....that show was so real and not at all sitcom.

Watch the series from scratch

1. I'll defend to the death the Seinfeld finale. I get why people don't get it, but it was a show about them being awful people to so many others with absolutely no consequences [a meta joke on episodic sitcoms], and the finale was everyone they ever wronged having their day in court to finally enact a small sense of retribution. As a single episode, there is no way it competed with their funniest plots, but as a summation of what Seinfeld WAS? 3-D Chess. For how many years, we laughed at how shallow and self-absorbed they were, then in the finale, all the people we laughed getting shit on [blameworthy or not] through the years got to say shame on you.

2. I don't know what it is, but I thoroughly enjoyed HIMYM without being invested in it. For me it met a sweet spot between Big Bang Theory's snappy one-liners, and Community's playing around with continuity and format for comedic purpose [actually, they had almost a more Tarantino feel to their use of time and framing]. The simply put, I liked the bits, but I always looked at Robin more as hot Cobie Smulders and Barney as badass Doogie Howser than Robin as either Barney or Ted's love of their life. And when Marshall's dad died, my thought was 'Dauber's not dead, he's hanging with Coach and Dick Van Dyke's little brother.' Basically attractive and talented actors performing snappy and winning scripts more than characters I am invested in.

3. And the reason, despite the tome above, that I started this post. I still don't think a finale ever got it as right as Six Feet Under. Really, only the finale of the finale, but so indelible. So in keeping with the theme of the show. So pitch perfect for every single character [and the more more you know about the characters, the better the clip]. It's close to the best final six minutes of a show in the history of television. However many years later and I can't hear so much as 2 seconds of the ending song starting up with a flood of emotions recalling all to occur over the course of it. I remember watching it live, pre-twitter, pre-spoilers and I felt like I had been pummeled by Mike Tyson without Bruce Lee around to save me.

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Agreed. But once you get to season 7, get advice on episodes to skip. There are a ton of them. That includes most of the last season and most of the stupid Zooey plot line.

Just a waste of time? Or something else?

Aggravating.. Zoey brought a lot of overly contrived drama.

The writing gets a lot worse. And way too many episodes in that stretch do absolutely nothing to advance the plot. And most of us would probably agree that a lot of the characters start to become unlikeable.

Season 9 apart from maybe 5 episodes (and those episodes are well worth watching) is an unbelievable waste of time. And painfully bad. Though almost every moment involving the mother is worth watching. Granted, most episodes she doesn't even show up at all.

WTF, either you enjoy the show's sense of humor or not.

Hey, should I watch 220 episodes of this intertwined serialized show, or just 200, just 195?

Just order the seasons and watch at leisure, if the stories don't strike you, it's not like Buffy or Babylon 5 where it builds to a crescendo that blows your mind out of the blue.

Hey, is it OK if I take a bathroom break from 1:45 to 2:00 of The Godfather?

Sure, but if you love the the movie, you'll miss a lot of important stuff, and if you don't love it by 1:45, you might as well turn it off.

FWIW I think you can only skip a few episodes in the 8th and 9th seasons. S6-7 has its moments and there are some funny bits that come along with the Zoey plotline.

Doesn't excuse the fact that she was trying to undermine his life mission in building a skyscraper.