SPOILER ALERT! This article will have spoilers from How I Met Your Mother. If you haven’t seen the show but need an opinion on it, feel free to read my spoiler-free review. Seriously, the show could be ruined if you read this! If you click the Read More Tag, then you’ll be transported to my spoiler thoughts, so go ahead if you’ve seen the show or really just don’t care.

Okay, hello all of you people who have seen the show or don’t care! If you recall, my major concern was that the show goes on too long. Like I said, the creators and executive producers did say they were only intending there to 8 seasons, but I think they could have gone even shorter than that, just for logical purposes. Here’s how I would have shortened it down to just six seasons.

My thought is this: after Season 4 Barney and Robin aren’t together yet. I think that Barney is just Barney through Season 4. This wouldn’t be that hard to adjust. Then he continues this through as himself for the first half of Season 5, before he rekindles the feelings for Robin. The he “accepts the challenge” that he did at the end of Season 6, and finally succeeds in getting with her. Meanwhile, Ted is kind of dating, but not really. He has the lull that I mentioned in Season 7 and isn’t dating for a while, though there is the occasional girl. At the end of Season 5, Barney and Robin have this huge fight and in the Season 5 finale, Barney pulls the proposal. Yeah the Christmas setting would kind of throw off the spring finale timeframe, but it doesn’t really matter. And in that episode is when Victoria returns. I gotta say, Victoria is also my favorite girlfriend of Ted’s in the show, probably because she was originally going to be the Mother, and well, the Mother has to be likable. But going back to my storyline, the first half of Season 6, the final season, is where Ted and Victoria are happily together, Lily is pregnant and Barney and Robin are planning the wedding, that way there’s plenty going on to not make any of the final season feel like filler. Then let’s say Ted and Victoria split up for some reason that, you know what, I couldn’t come up with! But then that final half of Season 6 shows Ted is in the position he was at the end of Season 8: ready to settle down. And then Lily gives birth in, say, Episode 18. That can also be the episode where we’re introduced to the Mother, who’s heading upstate for the wedding the following weekend. Then Episodes 20 and 21 could be the actual wedding. But then Ted needs to leave the wedding early because he has a big interview the next day, and THAT’S why he’s at the tracks. No move to Chicago, no Lily and Marshall go to Rome, no other stupid subplots of feelings for Robin. Then the final two episodes are the actual finale we got. With the cut-aheads, the Barney/Robin divorce, the story of Robin leaving the group. Then at the end, Ted says, “and that kids, is how I met your mother”. Then the kids could have said their exact same lines, where the Mother did die and Ted wants Robin. Only in this case, he never went back for her after Season 2, the feelings resurfaced after the Mother died. The kids just kind of guess that he wants to ask her out, and he does. In this version, he never told the audience his Blue French Horn win-her-back plan either, making the final shot so much more romantic and emotional both for Robin and the audience at large.

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Alright guys, those are my spoiler thoughts on How I Met Your Mother. Like I said, it’s a great show but it did feel like it dragged on a bit. But maybe my re-write just negates the whole “it’s a journey, not a destination” point… In either case, remember to leave me your thoughts on it down below, and let me know what you think of my re-write. I’m not challenging the writers, that’s just how I would have made it with a little less filler. So as always, leave those comments and thanks for reading guys.