How I Met Your Mother starts up on E4 again tonight and while we can’t wait to get back into the lives of Ted, Barney, Robin, Marshall and Lily, quite a big part of us really hopes that the rumours are true and that the curtain could soon descend on this incredibly popular sitcom.
Now, before you light up the torches and grab your pitchforks, we’ve been on board with the show since the beginning. This writer almost didn’t submit university work on time because he got so caught up bulk-watching the third series of the show and we gave Series 7 a great review. So while it may initially sound as if we want rid of the show, it’s for its own good.
American TV is an absolute marathon, especially in the world of the network sitcom. You’re under constant pressure to get ratings, and have a huge amount of episodes to fill. Unsurprisingly, the shows that run the longest also tend to have the most bum notes.
Look at the longest running shows on American TV. Two And A Half Men has had a massive cast change and yet still feels old, Friends was absolutely grabbing at straws for its last couple of years and Frasier was treading water for quite some time.
Even now you can occasionally see How I Met Your Mother doing the same thing. There’s only so long that you can keep extending the central premise of the show out for and so many failed relationships for Ted to have. Why not have the writers and the stars leave the show for different pastures whilst their hearts are still in it.
Jason Segal, Cobie Smulders and Neil Patrick Harris all have growing presences on the big screen. Josh Radnor wrote and directed his second movie last year in the form of the brilliant Liberal Arts and seems to want to break away into that alley more and more.
The best shows are the ones that know when to call it a day, and How I Met Your Mother is venturing closer and closer to passing that magic date and out-staying it’s welcome. Another two dozen episodes of the funny show that we know now, moving the overarching plot on and giving us an inventive finale will absolute sate our taste buds.
We think that How I Met Your Mother is routinely one of the most enjoyable network comedies around and we don’t want a series of tired, uninterested faces and plotlines that feel half-baked or hideously convoluted to ruin that for us.
We will always be grateful to the show that brought us a dose of Jason Segal each week, made Neil Patrick Harris’ comeback a thing of reality and gave us Cobie Smulders, it’s better to go out on a high than to fall down into the depths of mediocrity.