The Darkest Episode of How I Met Your Mother

kids I'm going to tell you an incredible story the story of the darkest episode of How I Met Your Mother are we being punished for something it might feel like it yeah is this going to take a while maybe 12 minutes plus ads not only is this definitely the darkest episode of How I Met Your Mother but it's possibly the darkest episode of any sitcom I've ever seen you turn on a show like How I Met Your Mother usually because you want to chill out and get a couple of laughs but this episode will leave

you curled up in a ball in the corner of the room needless to say it's not the most heartwarming episode but it is executed beautifully and that's why I want to talk about it here we have a lot to cover and unlike Ted I'm going to try to get straight to the point so hit like if you're enjoying the video and let's start with a quick summary of what actually happens in the episode in question season 8 episode 20 called the time travelers the episode starts just like any old episode would with the gang hanging

out out in McLaren's bar Marshall and Robin are in some trivial Feud over the fact that a drink that Marshall claims to have created has been put on the menu at mcclaren's but was named after Robin and not him meanwhile Ted and Barney are having a conversation that we've seen them have countless times over the course of the show to the point of sounding like a broken record eight seasons in Barney trying to convince Ted to go out and live life to the fullest but this time he's not trying to convince Ted to go with

him to just any event this is robot vers wrestlers now I hate to pull an old man's head on you guys here but to understand what robots vers wrestlers is and what it means to Barney and the Gang we have to go back to season 5 episode 22 fittingly named robots vers wrestlers in the episode Barney finds out about a Grands scale fighting event which pits you guessed it robots vers wrestlers Barney as usual is psyched out of his mind and can't wait to get the whole gang together for some mindless immature fun but there

are a few things reigning on his parade Robin has just decided to move in with her boyfriend of the moment Dawn and this means she'll definitely be spending less time with the gang at the bar Lily and Marshall are starting to have their first real discussion about having their first baby which also means they'd be spending less time with the gang at the bar and when the night of robots vers wrestlers finally comes Ted decides that he'd rather be at some snoody more mature party and Bales on the group with all of his friends seemingly

moving on from their little group Barney is thrown into crisis he feels like his world is ending and things are changing too quickly while it's more or less played as a joke here this is a very real and relatable thing to go through that feeling of not only being left behind but also having to deal with the inevitability of change eventually we're all going to move on it's called growing up but luckily this episode does have a happy ending Robin realizes she still wants to have fun with the gang and returns to the bar at

the last second Ted realizes that his pretentious party just doesn't suit him as well as he thought and Marshall and Lily have so much fun at Robots versus wrestlers that they realize they're just not ready to have a baby yet they'd rather continue with their young and free lifestyle just a little bit longer so that they can keep doing this kind of dumb stuff the gang collectively decides that every year no matter how far apart they might drift that they'll get together and go watch Robots versus wrestlers everything goes back to normal just in time

for the end credits to roll and the next episode picks back up in that same familiar place with the gang hanging out at McLaren's bar and at the end of the day this ending isn't a surprise to anyone the golden rule of any sitcom is to make sure that the status quo never actually changes okay I just made that up but here's what I mean a sitcom is usually based around a fixed set of characters in a fixed environment and the comedy is usually built on top of those two things the gang from How I

Met Your Mother hangs out at mcclaren's and talks about dating in New York the friends from Friends drink coffee at Central Perk while they talk about dating in New York the study group from Community hangs out in their study room as they go to classes at Greendale Community College co-workers from the office work together at the okay you get the point and I think this is a huge part of what draws people towards these shows that comfortable feeling of watching characters you know hang out in an environment that you're familiar with I mean there's a

reason why sitcoms are always the most rewatched TV shows not just because of the comedy but because of how comforting they are to watch the status quo can't be changed because if it did then that warm comfortable feeling would most likely go away for example when Michael Scott leaves Dunder Mifflin you kind of lose that comfortable feeling with the show it's almost the same feeling you would get if one of your best friends in real life moved away and you could tell that the showrunners were aware of the hole that this would leave in the

show as instead of trying to create a new character with a new gimmick they took Andy and tried their hardest to make him fit the got mold all in order to restore that comfortable familiarity I think it's completely natural for us all to not like change I mean we're only human and again that's why we find comfort in a show like How I Met Your Mother it gives us that unrealistic environment of Perpetual hanging out for lack of a better term where things don't really change and characters and the viewer are never really forced to

confront the fact that things won't always be the way that they are but How I Met Your Mother is different from most sitcoms and that from time to time it actually does attempt to tackle a deeper theme like this one so now that you're all caught up we can finally go back to season 8 where things are unfortunately going to get dark so we're back at the bar where Barney is trying to convince Ted to go to robots versus wrestlers the tradition that the gang established years ago in the first robots vers wrestlers episode we

were left with the comforting idea that no matter what happens to the gang in the future they would continue to go every year in real life you and your friends might inevitably drift apart but here in our lovely sitcom world we know that that won't be the case for Ted and the Gang or at least that's what we would assume we see Barney giving Ted the usual speech about how every Knight needs to be legendary and he tells Ted that the way he decides whether or not something is worth doing is by asking his future

self if he's happy he did it he has Ted close his eyes and when he opens them a version of Barney from 20 years in the future is sitting next to him now you may or may not be familiar with How I Met Your Mother and how this show usually works but just in case you're not time travel is usually not featured in How I Met Your Mother and this is an early indicator that something is definitely not right here a future version of Ted also eventually joins the group and they all continue to argue

about whether or not Ted should go to robots versus wrestlers meanwhile like I mentioned earlier Robin and Marshall are in the middle of some pointless argument about a drink this b-plot feels more like a parody of something you might see in a sitcom rather than something that would actually happen in How I Met Your Mother Marshall gets stuck in the woman's bathroom they end up having a dance off between the two of them and the whole thing is just so melodramatic eventually Ted sees a familiar face walk into the bar a girl that he met

all the way back in season 1 they hit it off when they first met but Ted never got her number so maybe he's caught a break here eight seasons later he finally has the chance to ask her out but when he approaches her he's snatched away by two future versions of that same girl girl one who eventually grew sick of Ted and one who eventually became obsessed with him in either case their relationship didn't work out and this is the moment of the episode where things really start to unravel after all this Ted decides that

he's just going to go home but when he asks Barney why he's not trying to stop him Barney reveals that he's not actually there that feud between Marshall and Robin actually happened 5 years ago Marshall and Lily are actually at home putting their baby to sleep sleep and Robin and Barney are at home planning their wedding leaving Ted at mcclaren's bar completely alone in the same booth where he used to share all those good times with his friends staring at a single ticket to robots vers wrestlers this entire episode was nothing more than a hallucination

of teds so why is this the darkest episode of How I Met Your Mother well hopefully you can see at least the obvious reasons why this is such a hard moment to swallow the show has been eight seasons of Ted trying to find someone to spend his life with and he hasn't had any luck thus far his friends who are the only constants in his life seem to have finally outgrown him even Barney whose shtick is the fact that he'll never change and Never Grow Up has moved on to a more important part of his

life when the robots vers wrestlers tradition was first established it was Barney who was afraid of being left behind because he was so reluctant to change and it was Ted who was unsure about going to something so childish but here they are with their roles reversed this episode flies in the face of that comfortable feeling you get when watching a sitcom Ted is being forced to reckon with the fact that his life is changing his friends are moving on Lily and Marshall decided years ago that they wanted to have some more immature fun before having

their first baby well now they've had their fun and decided it's time to move on but Ted still has his ticket to robots vers wrestlers this hallucination that we just saw shows just how desperately Ted is Clinging On To The Past he reimagines the storyline of Marshall and Robin fighting over the name of the drink just to bring him some peace of mind not unlike the way that one of us might return to our favorite episode of The Office that warm comfortable feeling the familiar characters in a familiar environment I also don't think it's a

coincidence that he conjures up a girl that he first met in season 1 back when Ted and his gang were kind of in their Prime Marshall and Lily weren't married and didn't have kids neither Robin nor Barney was in a serious relationship and the group was still hanging out every night and going to clubs together Ted can't accept his current reality so he looks to the past and pretends it's his present and it hurts you for the same reason that it hurts Ted Like I said before these are very real and relatable things that he's

going through here and I think it's bold for a show like How I Met Your Mother to make an episode like this one I feel like everyone watching this video can relate relate at least a little bit to what Ted's going through here whether a friend or family member was moving away or you were graduating high school or college or maybe you were moving into a new city moving on can be hard the irony is that a show like How I Met Your Mother is where you would go to escape this feeling yet here it

is in season 8 episode 20 now it is worth noting at this point that in the final episodes of most sitcoms you'll usually see hints of what we've talked about here in this video Jim and Pam move out of Scranton Monica and Chandler move out of New York AED goes to film School Etc but seeing this happen at the very end of a series is different from seeing it happened in the middle of one it's still bitter for sure but it's more Bittersweet by the time a show ends they usually have some convenient happy ending

in mind but what's unique about this episode is that it's not the end of the series there's still more than a whole season left in the show at this point but moving on is a theme that How I Met Your Mother doesn't take lightly and I think that's why they wanted to first introduce the idea here and at the end of season 9 we do end up getting the more conventional moving on type story lines for each of the characters like I just mentioned but it actually builds off of this shockingly dark episode and I

personally loved the way that the show ended I guess everyone has different tastes when it comes to how they'd like their favorite show to end but for me I like to see at least some definitive stopping point because otherwise it just feels like Ted sitting alone at the bar looking at a single ticket to robots vers wrestlers replaying the greatest hits from the old gang in his mind I love that this episode illustrates just how dark that reality would be where Ted or any other member of the group was unable to move on a while

back I did a video on why I didn't like the way that Community ended and this is part of the reason why Community ends with our main character Jeff sticking around at Greendale Community College most of his friends have moved on to bigger and better things but he just wants to kick it at Greendale and hang out with whoever shows up on campus next you might even call this Arrested Development again I know that some people like this type of ending where they can feel like the show continues on even after the last episodes are

done but imagine an ending like this one for one of how I met your mother's characters let's take Barney for example in the last episode Barney finds out that a girl he hooked up with is pregnant with his child and when his daughter is born we finally see some real change in Barney all throughout the series he's bragged about never changing and about how he plans to stay quote unquote awesome until his dying day but here we finally get to see him take on some responsibility and we can find closure in the fact that he

won't be hanging around McLaren's bar using cheap tricks to hook up with unsuspecting girls until the day that he's dead I mean just imagine the depressing reality of seeing Barney still hitting on 20-year-olds at McLaren's in his 50s or 60s moving on can be hard but it's an inevitability of Life To Me How I Met Your Mother is ultimately a show about life and the lessons you learn as you live it this episode is hard to watch but that's the point and I think the show executes it beautifully from years prior when the gang first

established the robots vers wrestlers tradition to years later when Ted found himself all alone at the bar to one year after that when he finally meets Tracy so sorry I warned you that this would be kind of a depressing video but hey if you enjoyed it you can hit like and if you need a little something to cleanse your palet you can subscribe to the channel for more videos they're usually a little more a beat than this one thank you so much for watching and everybody Stay [Music] Gold for the longest for the longest time

if you said goodbye