How I Met Your Mother: 10 Episodes Proving It's Past Its Best

5. The Time Travelers

With the wedding weekend in full force HIMYM has relied heavily on the use of its usual flashbacks to keep the story entertaining, but the show still feels much different as compared to previous years. These flashback-heavy episodes, especially in this final season, serve as primary evidence that the show is past its best because it brings us back to the show's prime €“ a time when it was just five friends in a bar and their lives outside the Farhampton Inn. This episode, "The Time Travelers," is about 97% flashback and the other 3% Ted's fantasy, but we aren't aware of this until the very end when a hallucinating Barney tells Ted that the events of tonight's episode happened five years ago, that everything around him is just his imagination, and that bit we could assume with the whole 20 years from now Ted and Barney and the two versions of coat check girl. The episode €“ where Marshall and Robin competed in a dance off for naming rights to a cocktail and Ted and Barney debate whether or not to go to Robots vs. Wrestlers for a second time €“ brought us back before Barney and Robin ever happened, Ted and Robin were fresh off their breakup and Stella hadn't broken his heart yet. Ted was a much different person back then and it was one of the best episodes in recent years. The other 3% that takes place in Ted's mind is so moving and beautiful that it was obviously written in case the show was not renewed for season 9 to lead up to the fateful meeting. Ted imagines running to his future wife's apartment €“ an apartment that he had no idea existed yet €“ to profess his love and that 45 days from now they will meet. Why he imagines her current boyfriend Lou Ferrigno Jr. punching him square in the face? God only knows.