After a couple of season the writers seem to have gotten back on track with it for the first few episodes of the season they seem to have decided not to go with it again.
While personally I think the show does alright sans the mother and "who is she arc: as long as a few hints are dropped, it does become “Friends in a bar” or “Friends in the 2000’s” or Friends sans Rachel.
I would say this show is really just a very funny standard sitcom that happens to also have one storyline that is always present somewhere, even when it is not really there. It turned out that while Ted and his issues are funny, the other characters and their issues are often far more hilarious, so the mother issue is now more weaved in and out, but still sort of always in the background, at least for me as an avid watcher.
Most shows tend to go downhill after the “Will they or won’t they?” question is resolved. This show, by its very premise, has already answered that question. Its equivalent is “Who is she?”, so the writers are delaying that answer as long as they can.
The “mother” thing really seems more like a running gag than a premise at this point. I doubt it will ever be resolved in any serious sense. Even if they get to do some sort of final episode they’ll most likely just make a joke out of it.
The question of who the kids’ mother is doesn’t matter. It’s a loose premise to have a show… which then survives on its own merit. I’ve only recently “discovered” HIMYM, plowed through the reruns thanks to cable TV, and really, the best thing about this show is its continuity. Something in the first season or second season pops up in the third or fourth season, then is mentioned in the fifth season again, with a different spin… Awesome writing, pure and simple. That’s what makes the idea of who the mother is less important than the title implies.
Comparisons are inevitable but not necessary relevant. After all, one could argue that Friends was Cheers in a coffeehouse.
And the arc is slowly being addressed. Right now we have Ted’s love/hate relationship with Zoey, a member of the class where future Tedsays he met the mother. As long as female class members show up in the storylines somewhere, the plot will march on.
She wasn’t in Ted’s architect class, she was in the class he accidentally lectured in when he got lost on the first day. I can’t recall what subject it was for.
She is also the roommate of a girl he dated briefly, played by Rachel Bilson.
I love the show and I think they’ve made reasonable progress with the Mother clues. We get one or two big clues each season. The writers have said that this season starts the third and last act in the overall story. So I’m guessing there’s only two or three seasons left. His kids are teens in the year 2030 so we’ll eventually run into that wall.
I’m not encouraged by things the writers have said, but I’m really hoping they decide to have him actually meet the mother fairly early, and still give us a season or two of him dating and eventually marrying the mother.
It was an econ class, if memory serves. But wasn’t the roommate revealed to be a fakeout a few episodes back…the girl who turns out to be lesbian after Ted pines for her for a whole episode? Or wasn’t that really the roommate?
The fakeout was that he thought it was her roommate, but it was actually her new girlfriend.
What do we know of the mother yet
-Yellow Umbrella
-Lived with lesbian room mate who disliked her
-Plays in a band
-Student at Columbia; could be significantly younger then Ted
-Attended a St Patrick Day Party
-Met Ted at a wedding
-Was married to Ted by at least 2020 (one of the flashforwards).
Yeah I think we can go through the show without meeting her.
OK, I am not fan of the show, but I’ve seen like two episodes and I thought I had it all figured out…please let me know why I’m wrong about this:
The pilot: at the end, the dad reveals that this was how he met their aunt Robin.
The other episode I watched: Lucy Hale (I really like her, I watch everything she is in, which is why I saw this episode) appears as Robin’s sister…ummm, obvious?
Aunt Robin, as in Uncle Barney, Uncle Marshall, and Aunt Lily.
In other words, Ted’s kids call their parents’ close friends “aunt” and “uncle” even though there’s no actual family relationship. It’s actually fairly common in certain circles to do so.
Oh, I get this…but is there any reason why THIS aunt isn’t the real kind, and Robin’s sister is not his wife?
She was a grad student in economics - so probably somewhat, but not significantly younger than Ted.
I think the mother needs to show up soon - at first it didn’t matter, now they’ve run out of ideas of stories to tell while we wait to meet the mother.
Because the other clues (e.g., roommate of one-time girlfriend played by Rachel Bilson) indicate that the future mother is a stranger in 2010.
A great example: in last weeks episode where Marshall was lamenting his extinct youth, lily I
Imagined him back them, eating a giant sandwich. Most shows would explain the joke there. Not HIMYM. A couple seasons ago, Ted was telling his kids a story that involved smoking a lot of pot, but he didn’t want to admit that. So instead he substituted eating sandwiches. Great callback.
Also why this is wrong:
Dad: And then Aunt Robin’s sister came in…
Kids: You mean Mom?
Dad: Uh…yeah. Good story, huh?
Kids: Whatever. We’re going to go have some sandwiches.
I just started watching this since it pushed Seinfeld back 30 minutes at night on Fox. The story about the kids and their mom is the only thing I don’t like about the show so far.