How I Met Your Mother had more than its gala share of weak outings over the show’s run, but season nine’s seventeenth bout’ Sunrise’ is the show’s worst episode. Debuting in 2005, How I Met Your Mother immediately specified itself out as a hangout sitcom with a difference. Where Friends simply followed a group of twenty-somethings as they attempted to navigate their sloppy professional and desire lives, How I Met Your Mother’s ploy was that the line was narrated by the now-older protagonist as he explained to his teenagers how he first encountered the titular adoration interest.

This clever setup allowed the picture to pull off all sorts of grandiose storytelling tricks as the narrator’s memory failed him, some legends were told in real-time, and many more articles of narrative sleight of hand ensured that proceedings were maintained fresh for viewers. However, by How I Met Your Mother’s ninth season not all the show’s experimentations were useful. The streak weakest chapter’ Sunrise’ participated the writers try their customary bag of tricks but to no avail. Yes, it’s the one with the atrocious Balloon Robin, but that’s not all that’s wrong with this installment.

Related: How I Met Your Mother’s Alternate Ending Explained

Like any sequence that manages to reach nine seasons, How I Met Your Mother surely had a handful of weaker occurrences over the years. Some entire season-long subplots were hated by longtime supporters and some attributes were roundly abused as pointless or sometimes even actively irking additions to the cast( such as Jennifer Morrison’s Zoey ). But the series affected its nadir with’ Sunrise’, an escapade whose failing encapsulates all that is went wrong with How I Met Your Mother as a series throughout its last-minute seasons. The present became over-reliant on its once-fun gimmicky story structure, as well as guest wizards who outshone the primary shed and a refusal to stick with simple set-ups that terminated up fating its assaults at serious reputation exertion. A heap of season nine was critically disparaged due to its choppy, eerie design, and these issues are never more obvious than in specific actions of’ Sunrise’.

While the -Aplot of this escapade was always going to be sticky territory as it identify Ted reminiscing about the many girls he dated with Robin even though he was still enamored with her, the potentially promising B-story is a disappointment for totally different rationales. To lighten the elegiac attitude of Barney and Robin’s conversation, the episode’s subplot assures Barney teaching a duet of random twentysomethings( played by then-Youtube famed representation duo BriTANick) the artistry of wooing women and how to follow the Playbook. The set-up could have led to a lot of roars if the pair were frisked as over-the-top awkward morons in frantic the requirements of a beleaguered Barney’s advice, or if they frisked the self-serious straight man to the drunken Barney and he was the source of the scene’s laugh. The second approaching could have been a big comic success, as later seasons revealed him to be a more sensitive figure than his caddish personality and the streak could have sent up Barney’s over-the-top original persona in these scenes.

Instead, it’s a useless opportunity for a potentially funny subplot since the chapter can never decide whether the two lovelorn morons or Barney is supposed to be the straight man. The duo does need Barney’s advice, but neither they nor Barney are ever zany enough to warrant more than a move laughter. Meanwhile, the show’s infatuation with constant guest adepts reaches silly tiers when, before the pair of children that Barney is educating the ways of the world to have even been properly established, the chapter moves on to a superfluous cameo from Say Yes To The Dress’ Tim Gunn. The way adviser is as charming as ever, but he has no place in an incident that struggled to fit in one set of guest superstars, let alone two. With neither guest having the impact of Regis Philbin or Britney Spears, the show’s late-season quantity over excellence matters become absurd to ignore in a subplot that could have been great but instead purposes up overstuffed and unfunny.

If you’ve seen this episode, “youre supposed to” knew this was coming. The seeing of Robin floating away into the sunrise like a human bag is an all-time cringeworthy moment and one which was rightly scoffed as comical by the How I Met Your Mother fandom. But it’s not just the silly special effects that make this moment a omission( although they actually don’t help ). It’s also the fact that the evidence was once skilled at setting up clever call-backs long in advance, with How I Met Your Mother launching specific areas of its climax road back in season 2. So it’s egregious that the display attempted to briskly innovate Ted’s balloon friend in the same episode that the flashback pays off in. It’s an embarrassingly nostalgic place in a series abominable for schmaltz, but this one is particularly scandalous because of both the slipshod influences and the facts of the case that referencing Ted’s balloon friend legend in an early incident( or even an earlier season) is likely to be have made this moment feel little silly and out-of-nowhere.

Related: How I Met Your Mother Almost Ended After Season Eight. Here’s Why

For all its omissions, the closing times of’ Sunrise’ do eventually receive Ted grow up and move on from Robin and his regrets, even if it is in the form of the aforementioned corny visual allegory. After running the gauntlet of his exes in fated exploration of Robin’s lost locket, Ted is finally able to let go of Robin like his dearly-beloved unintentionally funny balloon, and he can accept that she loves someone else and they are simply not meant to end up together. Merely, Ted then terminates up with Robin just a few chapters last-minute at the much-maligned series finale of How I Met Your Mother.

It’s a particularly galling twist because the episode foreshadows this ending in the closing times of’ Sunrise’. Just after Ted says he can finally accept that he and Robin are over and he needs to move on, he makes proceed of his balloon to the tune of ‘Eternal Flame’ … And then he admits he misses not caressing her at the end of their first appointment and ponders what might have been. What should be a harmless punchline instead becomes proof that, even after nine seasons, the character is still unable to grow up and move on, a frustrating decision which settled numerous love off the show’s deep contentious finale.

Like many of the worst jaunts of How I Met Your Mother, Sunrise can’t be blamed for aspiration and the occurrence has the frustrating possible to be great. Many of the show’s lowest-rated episodes are ambitious experimentations with the model which came flat but can’t be blamed for their bravery, with the show’s refusal to provide a simple story arising in accident. This can be seen in the all-rhyming, all-unwatchable ‘Bedtime Stories‘ and the over-egged, unfunny ‘Slapsgiving 3: Slappapointment in Slapmarra'( whose deed clues the spectator into how overwritten it is ).

Like these ambitious-but-deeply-flawed episodes, ‘Sunrise’ has the germ of a good opinion behind it. The installment could have been an intimate two-hander where Robin and Ted have a bittersweet talk about repents before the marry and the part episode follows their gossip. Such a simple but effective set-up could have brought out the best in both people and eschewed the final season’s obsession with guest aces and grandiose experiments, but instead, it symbolized the worst of both. Much like the return of the Slutty Pumpkin in How I Met Your Mother’s last Halloween episode brought in a big name guest star when all followers missed was the original episode’s sweet Robin-Ted chemistry,’ Sunrise’ attempted to cram three disparate legends and a goofy romantic moment into what could have been a simple, bittersweet-but-funny bit of classic How I Met Your Mother.

More: HIMYM: Victoria Could Have Been The Mother( For Real )

Read more: screenrant.com