Poll: Friends or How I Met Your Mother

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

He did.
They all did really, w. the exception of Robin taking a huge step back in divorcing Barney, and Ted who proved himself to be just what he was when the series started, a self centered a-hole only interested in how his story plays out and ends.

Barney is a great example of how bad that finale just killed the show for certain characters. Rather then just be okay with the development they had..... they over the course of years that took place in that episode undid all of it and brought him bank to where he was.... only to have him go through it all again so he can end exactly where they already had him only now his final development that mattered was rushed and unearned because they wiped away what years of the show gave us.

It’s like they had a perfectly fine set up for a good finale and then blew it to go too big. And when you have a show that runs for years you really don’t want to see a bunch of development and major plot points forced into the last episode when you just had a long running show where you could have just done that if it was your end game.

[basbash99]

Friends, by far. HIMYM feels like a pale imitation of friends to begin with. I always disliked Ted, altho the other characters were fine with Barney being the standout. Didn't help that the series set up a mystery and then boxed themselves into a corner.

[Agent Z]

I voted Friends but I like both shows despite their many flaws.

Some flack? The worst finally in TV history.

I wouldn't go that far.

[Rod G]

The only problem I personally had with the finale was that the kids seemed to miss the point of their father’s story, which was all the stuff Ted had to go through before he met his future wife.

[SpiderClops]

HIMYM loses so many points because of that crappy ending. If it weren't for that, it eclipses Friends in almost everything.

Unpopular opinions:

-Ted is a flawed but ultimately a good person(by sitcom standards, that is).

-Barney and Robin are actually terrible people.

-Ross is the second most decent Friend after Chandler.

-Rachel is a bitch.

[Riv86672]

I counter your unpopular opinions w. my own...:

-Ted is a flawed but ultimately a good person(by sitcom standards, that is).

Ted is an a-hole and quite likely pathologically obsessed w. having it all when it comes to his perfect family unit.
He likely used his wife as a brood mare to get the kids he wanted/wouldn’t get, or have too much trouble getting w. Robin, then poisoned his wife and made it look like an illness. If Robin and Barney hadn’t gotten divorced on their own, Barney would likely have met w. an unfortunate end of his own.

-Barney and Robin are actually terrible people.

Barney was a great guy. He hid it well but he’d been hurt a lot and became a womanizer and man child in response to it. Once he fell for Robin he started letting his “superhero” identity go, as he realized he could just be himself.

Robin though, was flawed. She found happiness and turned her back on it. She gets back w. Ted, a guy she knows she was never meant to be with because she’ll never be fully happy w. him and that suits her better.

-Ross is the second most decent Friend after Chandler.

Agreed, but he didn’t deserve Rachel. His own insecurities blew that for him a dozen times over. The only reason he got her was because of their shared child, which gave him an in, and a way to work on Rachel’s sympathies. Without the baby Rachel would have moved on. She might have lamented what could have been, but she def. would have found happiness elsewhere.

-Rachel is a bitch.

She’s hot though.

But seriously, she was ok. She tried repeatedly to make it work w. Ross. Anybody would be frustrated at dating him though, it was a perpetual comedy of errors. Like I said above, without the baby, she would have moved on and, imo, lived a good life.

[MyriVerse]

Not just the finale, but I'll go further to say the last season or more of HIMYM is infuriating.

Plus, at least the characters of Friends are somewhat likeable (yeah, even Rachel). Eventually, every single character on HIMYM suffocated under a mountain of hypocrisy to the point I could not stand to look at them. Each and every one became absolutely disgusting. And just when you think there might be hope for Barney, the rug gets pulled.

I haven't even been able to sit through a minute of syndication for HIMYM since the series ended. I can still watch Friends and laugh. I'm pretty miffed that they're adding HIMYM to Laff TV next week.

[Rachel]’s hot though.

At best, I've only ever found her cute. The other women on the show were better looking. She has aged the best though. Her looks could never compensate for her shrill nature.

[Valentis]

My preference again is Friends.

[Comic-Reader Lad]

Not just the finale, but I'll go further to say the last season or more of HIMYM is infuriating.

Plus, at least the characters of Friends are somewhat likeable (yeah, even Rachel). Eventually, every single character on HIMYM suffocated under a mountain of hypocrisy to the point I could not stand to look at them. Each and every one became absolutely disgusting. And just when you think there might be hope for Barney, the rug gets pulled.

I haven't even been able to sit through a minute of syndication for HIMYM since the series ended. I can still watch Friends and laugh. I'm pretty miffed that they're adding HIMYM to Laff TV next week.



At best, I've only ever found her cute. The other women on the show were better looking. She has aged the best though. Her looks could never compensate for her shrill nature.

For me, I'll have to pick Friends as I only watched 2 full episodes of HIMYM in my life: the pilot and the finale.

The pilot of How... killed the show for me because it was so self-consciously trying to be hip that I couldn't stomach it ("de--wait for it--nied" and **** like that). Unfortunately, in Hollywood, when something is successful, everyone tries to copy it, but often learn all the wrong lessons. We've gotten a lot of bad Seinfeld and Joss Whedon dialogue because of this -- the knockoffs never fully understood why the originals worked.

Thankfully, Friends, which also started as very hipsterish (Ross has a pet monkey! Why? Because it's quirky!!!) jettisoned all of that with Season 2 and let the characters get deeper and show more layers.

With HIMYM, I didn't hate the finale as most did, but that's because I didn't waste 8 years of my life watching this drivel. It did seem to me that the writers were trying to have their cake and eat it, too. In the pilot, Ted says "and that's how I met your Aunt Robin," which upends audience expectations, but in the finale, he still ends up with Robin, which allows Ted-Robin shippers, which I suspect the writers were teasing all along, to feel satisfied.

[MyriVerse]

Ross' monkey thing never bothered me because several of my friends at the time had exotic animals... and they weren't remotely hipsterish. I don't really think any of the Friends were hipster. If anything, they were the opposite.

[Riv86672]

Ross' monkey thing never bothered me because several of my friends at the time had exotic animals... and they weren't remotely hipsterish. I don't really think any of the Friends were hipster. If anything, they were the opposite.

Yeah, hipster is not applicable to them.
Also, I liked Joey and Chandler’s chick and duck.

[Comic-Reader Lad]

Ross' monkey thing never bothered me because several of my friends at the time had exotic animals... and they weren't remotely hipsterish. I don't really think any of the Friends were hipster. If anything, they were the opposite.

Friends was definitely going for a hipster, bantery, beer commercial thing in the early episodes like referring to the guy across the street only as "Ugly Naked Guy," spontaneously breaking out into humming the theme from The Odd Couple TV show, just the whole idea of sitting around the coffee shop having vacuous conversations trying to be clever, etc.

In fact, in the pilot, director James Burrows wanted Lisa Kudrow to sit under the table the entire time even when saying her lines. Why? Because he thought it would be quirky -- because that's what hipster, quirky, twenty-somethings in the big city do. Luckily, Marta Kaufmann, one of the Friends creators, put the kibosh on that and Phoebe became lovable instead of a one-dimensional gimmick.

There is a definite difference in the show in the first season as opposed to the subsequent seasons. Beginning in the second season, the characters became more than just Gen-X archetypes.

[BeastieRunner]

I think HIMYM will get some shine and forgiveness after several more years about the finale much like Friends got some shine and forgiveness after several years when it turned into EVERYONE BANGS EVERYONE towards the end.

[Comic-Reader Lad]

I think HIMYM will get some shine and forgiveness after several more years about the finale much like Friends got some shine and forgiveness after several years when it turned into EVERYONE BANGS EVERYONE towards the end.

Other than Joey-Rachel, the storylines on Friends were pretty popular and non-divisive even as they aired. We didn't need distance from the material to appreciate it.

It's a shame that so many HIMYM fans felt let down when it was all said and done. I felt the same way after the Lost finale, but luckily I saw that on Blu-Ray in about a month, so I didn't spend 6 years of real time with it.

Maybe people watching HIMYM for the first time in syndication will already have advance knowledge of how it turns out, so in that case, maybe they'll just appreciate it for what it is.

[AndrewCrossett]

I would fix HIMYM by ending it at the end of season 8. I'd have the final scene be Ted and Tracy coming face-to-face in the train station on the way to the wedding... freeze frame on them staring at each other... and then have Old Ted VO "And that, kids, is how I met your mother."

Then cut to the now-adult kids on the sofa, have them make some crack about how long it takes Ted to tell a story, and wrap.

The show wasn't titled "What Happened After I Met Your Mother," after all.