The Time Travelers

I really don't understand what has happened to this programme. I have watched all precious seasons numerous times and can always find things to laugh at. I love all the characters, well maybe not Ted, and have loved following the story lines. This whole season has just been dreadful! Can anyone shed any light on why this is so bad????? The writing seems so very different, the characters have changed drastically, the stories are really bad. So sad, was a good thing, now not so much. I keep watching with the hope that there will be one nice episode with some of the old humour in it. Fingers crossed. Why do they make us write so much in a review? I've pretty much said all I want to about the programme, I really only wanted to say it was bad but had to parp on more in order to fulfil all the required lines. Hey no, life is one huge disappointment all round.

As the show goes, I seriously do not know what's going on in the writers head, but they are obviously running out of ideas. I haven't had this kind of disappointment since the middle of the 6th series, but this episode was a disaster. The main line is this x time from now. I'm from the future, 22 minutes from now, and I highly recommend myself not to watch this episode because it will ruin my day. There is no fun in it. Boring. I miss the usual HIMYM jokes, we have just this anemic part of Robin and Marshall, but nothing else. I never wanted to say this, but this episode was the last step on a long road, from now I am really only watching the show to get to know who the hell this mother can be. Sorry guys, you had something great and you wanted more but did'n have the imagination or the courage to do it: now you suffer because you're losing hundreds or maybe thousands of viewers.

Despite not being as good as the last episode, the ending to this episode features one of the most touching moments in "How I Met Your Mother" history.

Plot In A Paragraph: Barney tries to convince Ted (who has an early lecture the next day) to go to Robots V's Wrestlers. Meanwhile Marshall and Robin argue over who invented a drink in Maclarens.

20 years, 20 hours and 20 minutes versions of the characters are all fun. And we now know Ted meets the mother in 45 days. The ending where Barney tells Ted he us all alone, and the resulting realisation is very sad and touching, not as touching as Marshall's Dad dying, or the look on Barney's face when he realised Robin hadn't dumped Kevin. But it's up there.

A slight and I mean slight annoyance, was in a previous episode Old Ted said they all went to see Robots V's Wrestlers every year!!

This episode is one of the deepest, if not the deepest, episode of himym, it is a slap in the face of Ted who refuses to grow up and try to cling to the usual adventures of the gang instead of accepting that everyone is now living their own life, except him.

The highlight of the episode is the unhinged feeling after barney says to ted "you are all alone" and the writers leave us alone with ted to think about how it is impossible to live the same things over and over again, and sometimes you have to let go and deal with your own problems alone.

It really stands out amongst all of sitcoms because they make you feel comfortable since every character will always meet at that usual place (a bar, a coffe shop, etc) and always hang out independently of the things going on in their lifes. But not with himym, the characters outgrow their own series and may not ever be able to meet regularly as they used to.

A real masterpiece amongst other great episodes, but this one instead of making you laugh makes you think...

Extremely creative, to put together three versions of Ted and Barney, two of them from future points in time, and have them debate whether to go to Robots versus Wrestlers. Even better to have them sing "For The Longest Time" together in the end. Genius, in a sitcom no less.

And speaking of Time Travel, I watched an episode of Nanny and the Professor, made 35 years earlier than this, and I swear it's the same set as the exterior of Maclaren's when the Professor and his date go into a Chinese restaurant. Slightly altered but not completely.