Cheers & Jeers: A Mother of a Finale

Cheers to How I Met Your Mother for advancing the plot — but now how you'd think.

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CBS' long-running sitcom psyched out its fans by finally having Bob Saget's narrator utter its title again, but it turned out to be another fake-out. Well-played, HIMYM, well-played. Still, the sixth-season finale packed plenty of real twists. After a food-poisoning subplot that spewed nearly as many yuks — and yucks — as Bridesmaids' instant-classic bridal-shop scene, Lily (Alyson Hannigan) and Marshall (Jason Segel) found out they're expecting a baby. And viewers found out who's the groom at the wedding where we've seen Ted (Josh Radnor) in a flash-forward, and it's Barney (Neil Patrick Harris). But which ex is his bride: Robin (Cobie Smulders) or Nora (Nazanin Boniadi)? We'll have to... wait for it!

With HIMYM picked up for two more seasons — as a safety net for CBS' Monday-night lineup in case Two and a Half Men implodes without Charlie Sheen — the show will need new stories to tell. Let's hope they involve proven TV vets Chi McBride (Human Target) and Dave Foley (NewsRadio), who guested in the finale as the project manager on Ted and Barney's new building and Marshall's potential new boss, respectively. If HIMYM's writers can come up with episodes as solid as this one, maybe we won't mind waiting two more years to meet you-don't-know-who.

What did you think of HIMYM's finale?

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