I think there is a difference between taking a 15 minute break from the Godfather to miss scenes that are critically important to the plot, and saving hours of your time on episodes that are mostly not all that funny and contribute absolutely nothing to the plot. There are way too many throwaway episodes in the last 2 seasons. Sure, watch them if you want. But I know lots of people who skipped most of the last 2 seasons and seemed to enjoy the show's final run more than those of us who were so fatigued by the show completely jumping the shark.

Really, I wasn't an emotionally connected fanatic, but throughout the show, the only things that really bothered me COMEDICALLY was when they made Lily some non-Lily caricature. What was the one where she was smoking cigars and talking like the baby on Roger Rabbit, or that White Whale costume from the finale. The rest of them, when they came up short, I shrugged and said eh, they tried, and when they excelled I revelled.

Like I said, maybe it's because I watched it, not like like a real life me, or real life my friends thing, but a talented performers performing snappy scripts thing.

Having Harvey Whatshisname do the voiceover fit with Ted's unreliability as a narrator as well as his penchant for exaggeration.. And the white whale costume was consistent with their other costumes through the years.

Yeah, but I think when you rewatch some of the earlier episodes, you're reminded of how clever the show was. I mean, the pineapple episode, the Super Bowl episode, the hot/crazy scale. The show used to be brilliant at weaving together multiple plot lines, constant but relevant cutaways. Creative approaches to storytelling. Toward the end of the run, I can barely remember more than a handful of episodes where they did that successfully.

I've been periodically watching from season 1 for a little while. Just watch a couple episodes here & there when I don't have something else to watch. I just got to the Super Bowl episode and man, there were like 6-7 episodes in a row (including the Super Bowl one) that were just awesome. Season 2 was great.

Finally caught up with this on my DVR. My wife is furious.

I think we are well beyond spoilers.

NSFW text in the preview and in the video.

Ah, didn't pay attention to that and haven't had a chance to watch it yet.

That's actually pretty much how I feel about it. I hadn't even considered the watchability factor. It really did sour me on the entire series.

I haven't been able to just rewatch an old episode just to pass the time like I did before the finale.

Which is a shame because the fifth season was some great television.

It just seems so pointless when you consider how it all ends.

For me it was the exact opposite. The entire final season sucked so bad that I had stopped watching reruns from earlier seasons. The twist ending (where they revealed that Ted's entire story was NOT about how he met their mother after all) saved the series for me. Now when I watch old episodes with that in mind, everything makes perfect sense. The entire series really was about the standard plot of boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl. The girl was just Robin all along. Those two belonged together from the pilot all the way through the finale.

In fact, I can't help but think that the producers had this in mind when they cast such a plain Jane as the mother. They didn't want her to be as hot as Cobie Smulders, and she wasn't. And it wasn't even close.

you had me until this....



whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?



Had they not spend the last 4 seasons, bashing us over the head with "Robin is not the one;" the ending would have been much easier for me to swallow. I have to wonder if the series ended the same way 2 seasons ago like they planned, would there have been as much backlash? Probably not.