How I Met Your Mother: Season 7 Finale

For seven seasons Future Ted Mosby (voiced by Bob Saget) has been telling his extremely long-winded story about how he met his children’s mother, and if the season finale, "The Magician's Code," is any indication, this season has been just another seemingly microscopic step toward what is turning out to be the most glacial love story ever told.

Picking up where "Good Crazy" left off, "The Magician's Code" finds Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) and Marshall (Jason Segal), here devolved to Beercules, stuck in Atlantic City while Lily (Alyson Hannigan) tries to prolong giving birth until her husband can arrive. To get her mind off the labor pains, Ted (Josh Radnor) and Robin, (Cobie Smulders) who, though avoiding each other have been forced together for the sake of something larger, are charged with the task of distracting her with stories of the friends' time together. 

After seven seasons of How I Met Your Mother, you should already know what this entails—absurd situational flashbacks that fit together in a charmingly non-linear way. The tension of "will he or won't he make it back in time?" is negligible (of course he will—it's a network sitcom) and there's nothing inherently wrong with that, unless after seven seasons you're getting tired of the show resting on its laurels. This particular iteration of "hey, remember that time we…" is just another excuse to pass 30 minutes with witty flashbacks. While the show does that well and has been doing that well for seven years, the fact that writers Carter Bays and Craig Thomas still assume that's enough speaks more to the show's consistently high viewership and subsequent renewals than it does to any exceptional creativity. 

The end of season six dangled a teaser signifying that Barney would one day be married and it was the question "to whom?" that hung heavy over this season. We were introduced to Quinn (Becki Newton), the stripper with the heart of gold, and for a while that was fun, but seeing as the show is supposed to belong to Ted Mosby, the issue remained that Ted was not in a relationship with anyone and the proverbial mother still had to be proverbially met.  This is where Bays's and Thomas's "business as usual" approach really started to become grating, as a major source of intrigue was supposed to be "hey, let's try to make Robin a thing again." Robin turned out not to be a thing again, but by that point, the dead horse had already been thoroughly beaten, and once again, the focal character of the show became its least interesting aspect. 

So our poor friend intrigue, having ricocheted hard off of Ted, looked for a new best friend and had two candidates: Marshall and Lily having a baby or Barney dating Quinn. There was no way things would go badly for Marshall and Lily (they had their cataclysm when Lily left for art school), so Barney and Quinn became the torch bearer for intrigue. This is where the title of "The Magician's Code" comes into play as Part 1 becomes one gigantic set up to get the couple arrested in an airport for Barney refusing to open a mysterious box because of the aforementioned code. It should've come as a surprise to absolutely nobody that the box was an elaborate wedding proposal and just minutes before the season wraps up, it's finally confirmed that the unseen bride in the Barney's wedding flash forward is Quinn.

Or at least, that's what we're supposed to think, but the show's "business as usual" approach makes what's supposed to be this season's finale teaser painfully predictable and frustrating. For those who haven't yet watched the finale, it's best to stop reading now as the following spoilers are going to be legen, wait for it….

….daray. By giving Barney that one brief moment alone in Marshall and Lily's apartment after the engagement announcement, it was obvious that the bride would actually turn out to be Robin. Bays and Thomas, similar to Barney's antics in the airport, have spent entire seasons on misdirection and Quinn turned out to be one giant misdirection. Some would say this is a good thing and I'll concede that I too am happy to get confirmation that Barney and Robin will ultimately end up together. While satisfying, that reveal is by no means a surprise. 

It's still more forgivable than the episode's final shot, which sees Ted and Victoria (Ashley Williams) ride off into the sunset hand in hand. After finally reconciling with Ted, Robin gives a speech about how Ted should stop waiting for destiny and take control of his life, specifically in the form of getting back the one who got away. Robin describes how all Ted's serious relationships—her, Stella (Sarah Chalke), Zoey (Jennifer Morrison)—have been with girls with whom he had no future and how Victoria was the exception to the rule. On paper, I suppose that's true, but the fact that she shows up at MacLaren's to catch up with Ted having just run out on her wedding day immediately fits her into that same category.

Think about it—if she's capable of running out on the man she chose over Ted, who's to say she's not capable of running out on him as well? Yes, the episode has the pair riding off into the sunset, but the fact that Victoria fits none of the criteria of being the titular "Mother"—the most damning evidence being that we have seen her face—combined with the fact that Bays and Thomas recently announced they intend to keep the show going for as long as possible guarantees that Victoria will not stick around. Instead, this is Bays and Thomas playing poker with their cards turned face up, broadcasting that this development will provide just enough intrigue to coast through another season until people stop tuning in and they have to quickly wrap things up. It's "business as usual" and while still good, it's no longer surprising and starting to wear very thin.