How I Met Your Mother: Season Six

The Season That Tried To Get Mature
How I Met Your Mother is a great show. Let's get that out of the way first. It has excellent character development, clever humor and an original way of telling its story. With that in mind, I thought Season 6 was the first of the show in which maybe the writers were a little misguided and a little short on ideas. I'll start with the positives:

(Will contain spoilers if you haven't seen all of Season 6)

If you're considering purchasing this season, I'll give you five episodes that absolutely make it worth it:
"Big Days" (episode 6.01)
"Subway Wars" (episode 6.04)
"Blitzgiving" (episode 6.10)
"Legendaddy" (episode 6.19)
"Hopeless" (episode 6.21)

It's no coincidence that two of my favorite episodes of the season are the only two episodes John Lithgow played in. His portrayal of Barney Stinson's awkward long lost father is absolute dynamite. I can't rave enough about how well his character was drawn up. It made sense from a real...

A Season of Development
Season 6 is, to me, fundamentally different from all other seasons of HIMYM thus far. As with all seasons, Ted has his lady interest, in this case Zoey, who is a polar opposite of Ted yet ingratiates herself briefly into the gang's social group. Zoey is a radical protestor who, it turns out, has set her sights on protesting the destruction of the Arcadian, a building which is being destroyed to allow for the construction of a new Goliath National Bank HQ, which, ironically, Ted has been chosen to design. Nonetheless, Ted is his usual self, falling in love without heeding the potential consequences. Clearly, this provides for interesting tension over the course of the season as the two battle their feelings for each other. Oh. Did I forget to mention? Zoey's married.

This season contains heartbreak and fundamental events in the lives of some of the characters. Marshall is plagued by a loss even as he attempts to conceive with Lilly. Robin attempts to get over a brutal...

Mostly disappointing
Even though I still love HIMYM, the cleverness has taken a beating in recent years and the notion of an endgame is increasingly distant. Even though season 8 promises that Ted will meet the mother by the end (and they mean it this time), season 6 has an incredibly loose relationship with the show's mythology. In service of the mother plot, there's a scene at the beginning and the end of the season concerning where Ted met the mother; however, the rest of the season meanders about without too much concern for that conclusion.

Still, that conclusion shouldn't matter. The show has always been 15% mother storyline and 85% solid sitcom. Sadly, without the mother anchoring the show, the goofier moments have gotten less funny and the feeling of dragging along just becomes more profound. How many stories does this show have to tell about Ted growing up or Barney learning that he can't be a player all of his life? Does the show have to dangle plots in our faces that have already...

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