The 5 Worst Episodes Of How I Met Your Mom, Ranked

There are 208 episodes of the thriller box-lite CBS sitcom “How I Met Your Mom,” so from a sheer mathematical standpoint, they cannot all be winners. The lengthy, meandering story of Ted Mosby’s (Josh Radnor) quest for love — throughout which he is flanked by greatest pals Lily Aldrin (Alison Hannigan), Marshall Eriksen (Jason Segel), Barney Stinson (Neil Patrick Harris), and Robin Scherbatsky (Cobie Smulders) — spans 9 seasons and plenty of, a few years in Ted’s life, all of which is narrated looking back by an older Ted (the voice of Bob Saget), and never each second is especially nice. (The ninth and closing season is especially and egregiously dangerous, however I am going to circle again to that earlier than lengthy.)

Alongside all-star episodes of “How I Met Your Mom” like “Slap Wager” (the place we discover about Robin’s previous as a Canadian teen pop star), “How I Met Everybody Else” (which presents more and more foolish origin tales of Ted’s friendships), “Swarley” (the place Barney will get an entire new title), and “Spoiler Alert” (the place the gang comes nose to nose with their most irritating quirks and qualities), there are some episodes that firmly belong on this present’s corridor of disgrace. From merely silly entries to a really horrible collection finale, listed here are the 5 worst episodes of “How I Met Your Mom” ranked.

“Zoo or False” is not fairly as horrible as a few of the different entries on this checklist, however it’s actually, actually, extremely silly. This season 5 episode of the sitcom does not have an entire lot to do with the present’s general plot, selecting to make use of the present’s framework — that’s, the older Ted’s narration as he tells his kids how he met their mom in a very roundabout means — to indicate how tales can bend and alter over time. Some episodes, just like the beforehand talked about “How I Met Everybody Else,” make this right into a enjoyable, partaking train. “Zoo or False” merely doesn’t.

The entire cope with “Zoo or False” is that Marshall tells the entire gang that he was mugged at gunpoint earlier that day, sending Lily into an absolute panic the place she needs to purchase a gun of her personal. Upset by this concept, Marshall pivots and says that whereas he is embarrassed to confess it, there was no human mugger and no gun; he was truly mugged by a monkey and not using a gun. As he tells Ted, he wasn’t mugged by a zoo monkey when he received too near a cage on the zoo, however he was mugged by a man with a gun and does not need to freak Lily out. When Robin asks Marshall to return on her morning present and inform the story of the monkey-mugging, he does not need to lie on digital camera, and in the long run, Ted says no person ever came upon the reality about Marshall’s mugging. This episode simply sucks! It is not very humorous, your complete premise depends on poor Jason Segel performing a ton of lackluster slapstick, and it does not even get decision. Skip this in your rewatch.

This season 9 episode of “How I Met Your Mom” is informed completely in rhyme, so that ought to instantly clarify why it ended up on this checklist; not even the presence of Tony-winning actor and author Lin-Manuel Miranda might probably enhance the clunker that’s “Bedtime Tales.” Rumors have swirled for a very long time that the rationale Jason Segel spent the primary a part of season 9 separated from the remainder of the forged needed to do with a scheduling battle, however regardless of the motive, leaving Marshall on his personal for such a very long time stunk — and regardless that “Bedtime Tales” places Marshall and his toddler son Marvin nearer to Lily, Barney, Ted, and Robin, we’ve to endure it first.

Here is the gist: Marshall tells Marvin tales concerning the gang to calm them down aided by Gus (Miranda), a man additionally aboard Marshall’s bus to the fictional city of Farhampton (who occurs to be a rapper). This was means earlier than Miranda’s opus “Hamilton” premiered on the Public Theater in New York, so whereas hardcore musical theater lovers would have acknowledged him from “Within the Heights,” lots of viewers have been in all probability left scratching their heads — and extra to the purpose, “Bedtime Tales” is a whole filler that accomplishes nothing narratively. Plus, the rhyming is painfully annoying.

I am sorry to say this, however any episode of “How I Met Your Mom” that facilities round Chris Elliott — as Lily’s estranged dad Mickey Aldrin — is kind of a dud, and that is very true for “The Burning Beekeeper,” a season 7 clunker that additionally incorporates a visitor flip from Martin Quick. (Not even Quick, sport as he’s to do actually something, can flip this entire ordeal round.) “How I Met Your Mom” did take a formidable variety of huge swings for a sitcom that aired on CBS, and utilizing “The Burning Beekeeper” to chronicle varied disasters that occur room by room at Lily and Marshall’s housewarming occasion is, on the very least, a intelligent thought. It does not work, although. (The episode is not helped, by the way in which, by the truth that it takes place throughout a storyline the place Marshall and Lily transfer to the suburbs for a short while; you understand how I really feel about splitting up the gang.) 

The total episode takes place over a span of 5 chaotic and disastrous minutes, and whereas this gambit is not fairly as silly as the truth that “How I Met Your Mom’s” ninth and closing season takes place over a single weekend, it is nonetheless fairly dangerous! Principally, Lily and Marshall are attempting to throw a celebration with out incident, impress Marshall’s new eco-conscious boss Garrison Cootes (Quick), and likewise, there is a man in a beekeeper go well with who’s on hearth, therefore the title. (The man is Mickey.) I couldn’t stand the self-esteem or the execution of “The Burning Beekeeper” after I watched the episode reside, and in a rewatch, I can verify it is nonetheless unbelievably grating.

This episode of “How I Met Your Mom” is actually racist. That is why it earns the second-place spot on this checklist — to say nothing of the truth that it takes one of many present’s greatest working gags, the “slap wager,” and ruins its total legacy with the season 9 stinker “Slapsgiving 3: Slappapointment in Slapmarra.”

The slap wager originates within the season 2 episode “Slap Wager,” the place Barney and Marshall make a wager over Robin’s previous — Barney is sure that she carried out in grownup movies as a result of he is a whole pervert, and Marshall thinks she’s secretly nonetheless married to somebody who’s not Ted — and when it seems that she was a teenage pop star in Canada, Marshall mainly wins the wager by default. This enables Marshall to dole out a collection of slaps unto Barney in perpetuity, leaving Barney clueless as to when these slaps will arrive. This concept is unimaginable and results in some unbelievably humorous moments earlier within the collection, however in “Slapsgiving 3,” we’re compelled to look at as Marshall goes by lots of actually offensive “kung-fu coaching” with a purpose to full his mission of slapping. Robin and Lily play characters named Pink Chook and White Lily, respectively, which feels gross, however the worst side is unquestionably Ted’s Fu-Manchu mustache (which actually appears like “yellowface”). 

Throughout a Reddit AMA in 2013, Carter Bays, one of many present’s creators, was requested if he had any regrets concerning the collection, and he was fairly blunt: “I remorse the unlucky moments of cultural appropriation in ‘Slapsgiving 3.’ There are issues about that episode I actually beloved — the storytelling construction, Boyz 2 Males, the opening gradual movement shot, all of the slapping — however I believe all of us remorse Ted’s Fu Manchu mustache very, very a lot.” Not less than he will get it.

A lot has been written about why the collection finale of “How I Met Your Mom,” the two-part episode titled “Final Eternally,” completely stinks … and if I received into each single element about this entire and utter letdown of a finale, I would ramble for simply so long as the Bob Saget model of Ted talked at his poor children. The underside line is that as a result of Carter Bays and Craig Thomas decided again within the present’s second season — particularly, that Ted would find yourself with Robin regardless that she is pointedly not the mom — the finale took your complete premise of the present and threw it within the trash simply so Ted might present up at Robin’s door once more with that silly blue French horn (the identical one he introduced her within the pilot as a romantic gesture).

Barney and Robin’s marriage ceremony took up everything of season 9, and early within the finale, we discover out that they are already divorced — making your complete season’s arc a whole waste of time. Lily and Marshall barely even get a storyline within the finale besides that Lily is pregnant once more. Then there’s the Mom, Tracy McCormick, performed winningly by Cristin Milioti — who does at the least get a standout episode in season 9 titled “How Your Mom Met Me” — who unceremoniously dies in a montage sequence simply so Ted can get again collectively along with his ex-girlfriend. The entire endeavor stinks to excessive heaven, and years later, followers nonetheless undoubtedly want that Bays and Thomas had modified course; there’s even an alternate ending on the market that merely ends when Ted and the mom meet, so we are able to all fake that is the actual one.

“How I Met Your Mom” is out there to stream on Hulu now.