This Is The Exact Moment How I Met Your Mother Jumped The Shark

On network television, it is a truth universally acknowledged that making over 20 episodes per season is tough — and when your show stretches on for nine entire seasons, you're presented with an obvious challenge. 

Looking back, it seems pretty obvious that there was a certain amount of exhaustion going into the ninth and final season of CBS' wildly popular sitcom "How I Met Your Mother," a meandering story within a story where the disembodied voice of Ted Mosby (the late Bob Saget) tells his kids how he met their mom as a younger man (Josh Radnor). Flanked by his best friends Marshall Eriksen (Jason Segel), Lily Aldrin (Alyson Hannigan), Barney Stinson (Neil Patrick Harris), and Robin Scherbatsky (Cobie Smulders), Ted spends nine seasons looking for the love of his life, and honestly? It's kind of amazing that it even takes nine seasons for the show to pull a Fonzie and leap over that proverbial shark. But it happens, and it happens right before the show can pull of a home run. 

That's right: "How I Met Your Mother" jumps the shark right in the premiere of Season 9, titled "The Locket," when it's revealed that the entire season will take place over just one weekend at Barney and Robin's wedding. Not only is this a terrible narrative idea, but unfortunately, it all builds up to one of the worst series finales of all time.

It shouldn't require any explanation as to why it's an awful idea to devote an entire season to a three-day span, no matter how eventful, but we'll break down that decision in detail.

The whole deal throughout "How I Met Your Mother," up until Season 9, is that it spans years, and straddles various timelines. So, to stick one timeline into a single weekend is absurd. The problem with the single weekend gambit showrunner Carter Bays and Craig Thomas try to pull is that there's just not enough stuff that could happen within one weekend — even considering the shenanigans these characters get up to all the time — that would keep things that interesting.

The result is a poorly paced, boring, and incredibly frustrating season stuffed with filler that ranges from uninteresting to downright offensive (the less said about the final "slap bet" episode involving crude racial stereotypes, the better). Robin's mom (Tracy Ullman) shows up and they fight, and then everything's fine. Barney's mom (Frances Conroy) shows up and fights with various people, and then everything's fine. Tim Gunn and William Zabka play themselves, and one of the very last episodes is devoted not to the main gang, but instead, to where every single supporting character from the series ended up.

The season even starts with a title screen that reads "Friday, 11am — 55 hours until the wedding." That title screen, right there, is the moment "How I Met Your Mother" jumps the shark. It's like the absolute worst imitation of "24." And once the ball starts rolling, it keeps going downhill. 

By the time Season 9 finally reaches its end, though? Yikes. Did you think Season 9 of "How I Met Your Mother" was rough? Well, buckle up, buddy. The title of the show might lead you to believe that, in the end, Ted settles down with the titular mother Tracy (Cristin Milioti, still a newcomer at the time), has a family, and lives happily ever after ... and you'd be half-right! As it turns out, the mother dies during a montage that lasts approximately fifteen seconds, at which point Ted's kids encourage him to go after Robin, his real love. 

Beyond that, after spending the other 23 episodes of Season 9 chronicling the love and eventual marriage of Robin and Barney, the two simply split up during the finale, and viewers watch as the group's friendships fracture as the years pass by. Yeah, that's right! After squandering the final season on three days, the series finale sees fit to span actual decades, giving viewers narrative whiplash instead of boring them stupid. 

If Season 9 initiated the lift of the waterskies, the series finale of "How I Met Your Mother" was Fonzie sticking the landing. The shark was well and truly jumped when the credits rolled, leaving fans unfulfilled and infuriated after one of their favorite shows ended in such a frustrating way. The writers claim they planned the ending for years, even filming a scene with Ted's kids during the second season that ran during the finale, but sometimes the best plans are still, well, bad plans.

Throughout Season 9, one key member is missing from the main gang for most of it: Marshall, loving husband to Lily and longtime best friend to Ted. This is, as rumor has it, due to scheduling conflicts between this season and one of Segel's self-written film projects, "Sex Tape" — and that rumor is only encouraged by the fact that Segel almost didn't return for the final season of "How I Met Your Mother," changing his mind at the "11 hour," as reported by Nikki Finke at Deadline.

Rumors aside, the fact remains that, for the majority of Season 9, Marshall is physically separated from his friends and wife, which definitely seems fishy knowing that Segel wasn't happy during the show's final seasons and was the last person to agree to one last ride. No matter the reason — even though Segel's scenes being filmed separately feels off — Marshall's chemistry with newcomer Daphne (Sherri Shepherd) is so-so compared to when he's with Ted, Lily, Barney, and Robin, and keeping the core group separated didn't help the overall dreary final season.

The worst part of all of this? There's an alternate ending that could have at least fixed the finale, even if there's no fixing the final season. Arguably, the best part of the final season is Tracy — its standout episode, "How Your Mother Met Me," is one of its only truly charming installments that feels like a total return to form — and the idea to have her meet each member of the gang individually and charm them in the process certainly isn't a bad one. 

Killing her off, though, was a crappy idea. And in the alternate ending, that's not even discussed at all.

Only released on the full series' DVD box set, the ending where Ted and Tracy meet on a train platform, leaving Barney and Robin's wedding is — to be fair — a scene included in the real finale. The issue is that the real finale, well ... keeps going, leading to the quick disposal of the mother and Ted returning to a girl with whom he's fundamentally incompatible. If the series had instead ended with the train platform scene, aided by Milioti's boundless charm, it wouldn't have prevented a shark jump (again, it had already happened) but at least it would have eased fans' pain after the travesty that is Season 9. Clearly, that just didn't happen.

So after all that, what legacy did "How I Met Your Mother" leave behind? It can be tough to watch the early seasons, enjoyable as they might be, knowing what's coming — an interminable slog to a rage-inducing series finale that seems to betray the show's entire concept. Still, "How I Met Your Mother" remains as popular as ever in the world f streaming, and after one do-over failed in its early stages — we barely knew ye, "How I Met Your Dad" — a real spin-off was born.

"How I Met Your Father" follows the same conceit as the original, except the past timeline is set in 2022 and the protagonist is Sophie (Hilary Duff), with her older counterpart played by Kim Cattrall. The Hulu original makes the truly baffling choice to include a laugh track, just like the original (but it's now the 2020s!) and is clearly trying to recapture the charm of the original, though even halfway through its second season, the results remain mixed. It's a clear sign, though, that both executives and audiences aren't willing to give up on the "How I Met Your ______" Cinematic Universe just yet... despite the fact that the oiginal show absolutely jumped the shark in the first outing's final season.