Poll: Friends or How I Met Your Mother

[Celgress]

I voted for Friends because, frankly, I hated How I Met Your Mother. I found the show to be pretentious and boring.

[Riv86672]

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.

How’d it turn into everyone bangs everyone?
Ross and Rachel was always the main romance. Monica and Chandler was very organic and imo an even better romance than R&R. Joey and Rachel thought about it but it never happened, and Phoebe never had a relationship w. any of the guys. Or the girls.

[BeastieRunner]

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.

I quite enjoyed the ending but I tend to like things like that. I didn't like the divorce but it had to happen with the finale in place. The death I knew was coming since season 5. I also think it was a mistake to have Robin and Ted have a rebound and fling if the end game was ultimately them together. Same issue I had with Ross and Rachel and others rebounds.

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.

Well the ending was filmed during season 5 or at the end of? Somewhere around there. And the death of the mom was in the cards since season 1. The foreshadowing began shortly after they ditched the first and only back-up Mom when the show got a full season order and season 2. The dating app episode details the Mom's favorite book as, "Love in the Time of Cholera," among other nods since season 1 of her fate. One of the recurring themes was fate in the show, so the Mom's death was needed.

They ultimately decided on keeping just the mom as the death but apparently talked about having Barney go, too. So we got the divorce. Personally, I would've gone with the double death to bring Robin and Ted back together. Gives them common ground. Keeps fate and "The Universe" front and center as the theme, too. The writers really wanted the ending we got.

The ending was also shot and filmed in a way, showing everyone from the first episode, to loop and have you go back and find all the clues. I.e. Ted names the Mom when talking about meeting a stripper named Tracy, in one of his many "And that's how I met ..." jokes. The Erikson baby names are littered throughout the show since season 1, Penny and Luke are shown named in the background in season 2, Barney running plays in the background of other events, etc. I think they just misjudged the delivery due to how popular Robin and Barney were together.

Although ...

An alternative ending was cut together and released on the Season 9 DVD, in which future Ted narrates over the scene in which Ted and Tracy meet at the train station, recapping all major events from the series. He delivers the final line "and that kids is how I met your mother", and the episode ends, completely cutting the final scene with Penny and Luke. That sounds a bit more like what people wanted.

How’d it turn into everyone bangs everyone?
Ross and Rachel was always the main romance. Monica and Chandler was very organic and imo an even better romance than R&R. Joey and Rachel thought about it but it never happened, and Phoebe never had a relationship w. any of the guys. Or the girls.

The more common critique of the final few seasons was Friends with Benefits and the Ross & Rachel show. Season 8, their baby bonanza, was pretty good, IMHO. It got back to the core of the show, the ensemble.

Everyone bangs everyone is probably on my mind because I just read several and wrote a critique on Big Bang Theory.

And for the record, both shows are streamed at crazy amounts. It doesn't mean they aren't still loved. I'm more surprised with all the gay panic in Friends and super sexism in HIMYM that either are considered relevant right now with how hyper-contextualized everything is, regardless of spectrum.

[Riv86672]

Sooooo....everyone wasn't banging everyone. Got it.

[AndrewCrossett]

An alternative ending was cut together and released on the Season 9 DVD, in which future Ted narrates over the scene in which Ted and Tracy meet at the train station, recapping all major events from the series. He delivers the final line "and that kids is how I met your mother", and the episode ends, completely cutting the final scene with Penny and Luke. That sounds a bit more like what people wanted.

Yep. I like a good dramedy as much as the next person, but that's not what this show was for 8 seasons. It had dramatic moments, sure, but it was always first and foremost a comedy.

What happened with Tracy is far from my only beef with season 9, though. The beaten-to-death joke of Lily being handed constant drinks wore thin after about the second time. And the whole theme of Robin being treated like some kind of Holy Grail that Ted and Barney just couldn't let go... she's not freakin' Helen of Troy. I just found the whole season-long weekend theme tiresome as hell.

I knew we were in big trouble when they brought back William Zabka in season 9. His appearance in season 8 was a great one-off joke. Having him still hanging around the next season was like explaining a joke that everyone just got done laughing at.

So, while HIMYM is still in my top 10 sitcoms of all time because of the great first 8 seasons, I will never again watch any episodes from season 9.

[Ilan Preskovsky]

New Girl!

But OK, when it was on, probably HIMYM but it's ending was so atrocious that I retroactively like it a lot less. I'm not huge on Friends, though. It's fine but it's nowhere near as funny as the two real stars of '90s American sitcoms, Seinfeld and Frasier, and I find most of the characters fairly boring. It's fine and I've seen much worse but I don't get the Friends love. And, yes, I was around when it originally aired.