How They End the Season

The April 30 episode of CBS's "How I Met Your Mother" was not the last episode of the season - that's actually on tonight - but it left enough cliffhangers to make you think otherwise.  In that episode, Ted, after trying to emotionally and psychologically separate himself from Robin, encounters her outside McLaren's Pub.  Meanwhile, Barney, increasingly upset over the fact that his girlfriend Quinn strips for a living, takes Marshall to Atlantic City to loosen him up in anticipation of Marshall and Lily's expected child, and they turn off their cell phones for an hour while Marshall gets too drunk to speak.  That hour, it turns out, is the very hour Lily calls both of them and leaves several desperate messages announcing that she's in labor.  And, as you all know by now,  "How I Met Your Mother" did not air the Monday after - the 8 PM Eastern hour on CBS on May 7 was taken up by the hour-long season finale of "2 Broke Girls," heightening the suspense over what happens next.  This has all left us with numerous questions.  Is Quinn the woman Barney ends up marrying? Will we finally get to meet Ted's future wife, whom he's supposed to meet at Barney's wedding? Will he at least repair his friendship with Robin? Is Robin the woman Barney actually ends up marrying? And, why did CBS go along with an hour-long season finale of "2 Broke Girls" - especially one revolving around Martha Stewart? 

"How I Met Your Mother" creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas obviously can't answer that last question.  But while they can answer the first four questions, I have a feeling they won't.  "How I Met Your Mother" will be back for at least one more season this fall, its eighth.  A ninth season is still possible.  It's not likely, but it's still possible.  Bays, Thomas, and their writers are probably going to keep us guessing just a little while longer on those burning questions, despite the fact that the 2011-12 season finale of "How I Met Your Mother" is also an hour long.  All we know for certain, based on the previews, is that Marshall makes it back to New York in time to help Lily bear their child.  And knowing Bays and Thomas, we'll probably have to wait until September to find out if it's a boy or a girl. 

The recent revelation that Ted is a father and a husband three years from now (2012) suggests an arc in the series' storyline that Bays and Thomas have been following, but I doubt that such an arc was ever intended from the start.  Had "How I Met Your Mother" not been a huge hit, it would have been off the air by now - it might have been canceled after one or two seasons - so I think the show's creative staffers have been making things up as they go.  Broadcast TV shows don't necessarily follow arcs like cable shows such as "Mad Men."   An arc also suggests a definitive end to a series.  I don't know how much time "How I Met Your Mother" has remaining on network television.

Nor do I know how much time "Two And a Half Men" has left.  I'm hoping that tonight's season finale is the series finale, as Chuck Lorre has probably done more than any other television producer to degrade the sitcom genre and create television fare cringe-worthy enough to make you wish the Moral Majority would be re-formed.  Alas, I think we can look forward - or rather, look with dread - to a tenth season.