How I Met Your Mother was a really great show for many reasons, but most impressive is the nearly 100% continuity on even relatively uninteresting plot devices. Regular viewers and fans of the show are rewarded by being able to play along with in-jokes of the characters, in addition to sharing a knowing glance with someone else who remembers that episode with the goat.
The only show that is able to do it better was Arrested Development, and those writers were essentially the Jedi Knights of television comedy who were hunted into near extinction by executives from Fox, so it’s really unfair, honestly, to even bring them up. The finale of Arrested Development’s third season was like watching Alderan be destroyed by the Death Star. Surely those writers heard the cries of a mournful nation and millions of pirates living under oppressive regimes watching illicitly.
Where How I Met Your Mother really lost me was that we should have met their mother a season ago. They have dragged it out four seven seasons now, and instead this show makes the rookie mistake over and over again by putting Chris Elliot in front of a camera instead.
At this point I believe the only way this show can redeem itself is if Chris Elliot is struck by a flaming meteor and Future Mrs. Ted Mosby is the doctor who pronounces him dead.