10 TV Shows Ruined By One Dumb Decision

4. How I Met Your Mother - Killing The Mother Off So Quickly (After A Full Season At A Wedding)

How I Met Your Mother was already in decline for the couple of seasons prior to its last: both 7 & 8 were already stretching things out, although it was more tolerable because there was still a sense of progression, and we knew it was in service of building towards Ted meeting the Mother.

Less excusable, though, was deciding that the final season - all 24 episodes of it - would be set over the course of one weekend. Even that, however, would've been tolerable if they'd then nailed the momentous occasion with the Mother - and in fairness, the signs were that they would. We saw her come into each of the gang's lives, all of which worked quite nicely, before the meet-cute with Ted.

And then it kept on going, quickly showing us the big events of their life - marriage, kids - before the Mother gets sick, dies, and Ted goes off to get back together with Robin. It's not so much a problem with that idea - Ted and Robin as the endgame of this series actually works in theory - but the execution. After wasting an entire season at a wedding, we then get what feels like five minutes of Ted and Tracy together, then she's killed off in a death that's skipped over in about two seconds, and then it movies on to that big romantic ending with Robin. The show was mostly running on good graces by this point, and that completely soured things.