Ink of Blood

(This review may contain spoilers).

Season 9 of How I Met Your Mother is probably the only season I haven’t seen each episode of at least several times.

I thought it was good to see later on, when Ted and the Mother were already established in their relationship. While it was cool to see them have such similar personalities from the start, I did think it was a bit much to have her have connections with every single one of the friends… especially when her connection with Barney was so long ago, but not so much as hinted at much earlier.

I did like that Barney and Robin wound up getting married, though the last two episodes made it really disappointing.

There were some really good elements of humour throughout the series and I really did enjoy seeing Marshall and Daphne interacting.

I particularly liked the episode where Marshall told Marvin stories in rhymes. I can imagine a lot of work went into that particular episode. I also particularly liked the episode that focused on the Mother and her side of things. It was good to see her friendships with other people (though said friends didn’t appear after that episode) and I did like the way that episode fit in with the past connections Ted mentioned in his narration.

It was also really good to have the opportunity to see how some of the other characters ended up at the end. It was particularly good to be able to see Barney with his mother and brother… and I liked the fact that, although there were some more serious moments, there were still elements of the previous series – such as Barney’s ‘fake history lessons’.

I really didn’t like Daryl. I definitely agreed with how the Mother felt about him. I did really like seeing Billy Zapka, though I did feel a lot of sympathy for him; even though I felt sorry for Ted when he took his place as best man, however temporarily.

I did feel that the wedding took a ridiculously long time, even though it was good and amusing to see the interactions between the characters and in particular Robin with her mother. It was also nice to see the link-ins with various pop culture (like Indiana Jones).

While it was good to see Barney have the tables turned on him later on, I didn’t think much of the finale and I did feel it was a bit of a cop-out. I felt it could have been handled a lot better.