How I Met Your Mother, season by season

I was watching How I Met Your Mother all the way through, switching it up from my usual constant-rotation sitcom of Friends. And then somebody tweeted me to ask what order I would rank the seasons in. So, from best to worst, I did.

Oh yeah, there's spoilers, I guess. Were you concerned about that at all?

2 > 1 > 9 > 4 > 6 > 3 > 8 > 5 > 7

Season 2: There are so many episodes I love in this season. It starts with Marshall and Lily broken up and ends with their wedding, in the process managing to make us root for the romance in a way that would have been trickier if they had never split, as we were introduced to them as a couple. So many things that define HIMYM’s unique qualities really get their birth in this season, too, which perhaps adds to its strength in my eyes: its unreliable narrator trickery (the Rashomon-y ‘Ted Mosby, Architect’), a long-running joke (the eponymous ‘Slap Bet’), Robin Sparkles (also ‘Slap Bet’) and Ted censoring things in the story (‘How Lily Stole Christmas’, because there’s no other network sitcom that could have a plot about calling somebody a cunt). Barney also goes on The Price Is Right, though I always thought the Bob Barker joke was a bit too fantastical. And the episode I used to convince my parents the show was worth watching is in here, too, with ‘Arriederci, Fiero’, and who doesn’t love The Proclaimers? Well, that song, anyway. Plus, Ted’s main relationship this season is with Robin, and it really, really works. It works so well that everybody kept wondering over the next seasons why they didn’t just end up together. But then, of course, what else is a finale for?

Season 1: The earliest HIMYM is very different from what it became, but no less enjoyable. Ted’s grand romantic gestures are sweet and still within the realms of plausibility (the blue French horn, the “drumroll” and everything else associated with Victoria, the rain dance, breaking into the matchmaking website’s office...), and it’s just a lovely way to meet these characters and this world. Plus, ‘Okay Awesome’ has one of the most accurate representations of going to a nightclub I’ve ever seen on TV.

Well, maybe not this bit.

Season 9: I’m a bit of a sucker for structural gimmicks. Steven Moffat’s sitcom Coupling has a few episodes with tricks (the third series’ first episode is a break-up is shown throughout the whole half-hour in split screen, showing how they both cope, for example), and it’s not unheard of for a show to limit its range of events – 24 was always told in real time, and in the same year as HIMYM’s final season the lower-key British sitcom Him & Her devoted its last series to a rather catastrophic wedding. But HIMYM’s love of whip-pan flashbacks, flashforwards and generally giddy timeskipping allows it to both wallow in this three-day wedding, while also providing extra glimpses of what led up to it and – crucially – showing us what happens after Ted and the Mother meet. Seeing bits of their relationship before we see them meet is adorable, affecting and helps sell their love even as you’re hoping Cristin Milioti gets more screentime. And while the finale, ‘How Your Mother Met Me’, the end montage of ‘Gary Blauman’, the devastating hint at the mother’s fate at the end of ‘Vesuvius’ and the spectacle of ‘The Rehearsal Dinner’ are all very worthwhile, there is a lot of padding in this season. ‘Slapsgiving 3: Slappointment in Slapmarra’ is dreadful even if you don’t take offence at some kinda-sorta version of yellowface, and while I enjoy Marshall’s brief roadtrip subplot it’s not great.  But in addition to those high points I mentioned, the audacity of this season’s structure is commendable in helping to really sell the theme of the show’s last year: to enjoy life, right now, as it’s happening. To seize those moments and maybe you’ll have a great story to tell later – but don’t pin your life on old stories, either.

By the way, the alternate ending on the DVD is total garbage. It’s a cheap concession to what some parts of the audience wanted (or thought they wanted), and it’s achieved by editing and Bob Saget’s never-credited Future Ted voice. In other words, it’s all done in post-production to work as a DVD extra, with – I woud wager – zero input from writers Carter Bays and Craig Thomas, given how badly it works against the whole damn story the show has been telling. Yuck.

Season 4: I don’t especially enjoy Barney’s yearning after Robin (it brings to mind so many dull stretches of Ross pining after Rachel in Friends), or in fact most of things Barney does in this season. Remember in the first season, when his wacky plays failed more often than they succeeded? I preferred that. But there are so many individual episodes here that are a joy, from Marshall’s obsessive (and relatable) quest for the best burger in New York, Ted forcing Stella to watch Star Wars, ‘Three Days of Snow’ and the deservedly legendary ‘The Naked Man’ (which I have yet to try myself).

Season 6: Here we enter some of HIMYM’s most distinct plot-stretching efforts, although John Lithgow and Kyle MacLachlan are always welcome in anything, even as Zoey begins to grate. I really like the season-long plot about the Arcadian, and in retrospect it brings up this fertile thematic ground about letting going of history and forging something spectacular and new out of it. This will prove to be important when the finale rolls around and Ted – having lost the love of his life – needs to move past his history and move on. Elsewhere we have an episode that makes me cry (‘Last Words’, and its predecessor ‘Bad News’ comes close), an exploration of different booze effects in the charming ‘The Perfect Cocktail’ and... erm... that episode where Barney’s heart literally skips a beat? Ugh. Please. Not that.

Season 3: Lots to enjoy here, as repeated efforts are taken to shake the show’s default beliefs: see Marshall descend into corporate law, Barney being unable to have sex (‘The Yips’), the nature of the flashback structure (‘How I Met Everyone Else’, ‘The Goat’, ‘No Tomorrow’). And the show comes out unscathed, with a well-developed relationship between Ted and Stella, plus some great guest work from Britney Spears (her greatest cultural contribution ever? I think so).

Season 8: A step up from 7 as we head towards the endgame, although I don’t know if it felt like that at the time. But once Barney and Robin get going that’s easy to buy into, Lily’s new job with the Captain allows for plenty of fun, and the end of the season packs in some great stuff with Barney’s bachelor party and ‘The Time Travelers’ – an episode that takes HIMYM’s heightened reality to stupid new heights but rescues itself with one of the most affecting, emotional episode endings. I love it.

Season 5: Robin and Barney are together, which hits about as often as it misses – I think they work best as a couple in seasons 8 and 9, not here, especially in their exaggerated fatsuit break-up. In fact, a lot of season 5 is heightened and rarely improving things, though I can still quote you almost the entirety of Barney’s episode 100 musical number. I’ll never turn down incongruous musical numbers in TV (yeah, I’m thinking of you, Mad Men). I do think that ‘Last Cigarette Ever’ is a marvellous use of Ted as an unreliable narrator, and that ‘Bagpipes’ is not.

Season 7: Kevin, Nora, Quinn, Victoria... they have their moments, bless them, but ultimately this is the show’s biggest wheel-spinning season and shoves a load of gimmicks into a sub-par season for a bit of spice. The Slutty Pumpkin is back... and not that interesting. ‘The Burning Beekeeper’ is formally inventive but not that funny. The ducky tie running gag is noble but not that worthwhile, and I’d give the same assessment to the finale, ‘The Magician’s Code’. ‘Trilogy Time’, however, is an absolute joy.