How I Met Your Mother: The Magician's Code

     The Season 7 finale of HIMYM was a microcosm of the season, it had brief flashes of brilliance and funny moments, but they were far out weighed by bad jokes, trite emotional events and annoying plot twists.  I mean really, after everything the writers have pulled the last few seasons, was there really anyone who didn't think that Barney was getting married to Robin?  Unlike Barney's magician code that the episode was named after, there is no need for the writers to hide how their tricks are done; we already have it figured out.  I wasn't going to let Lucy pull the football away from me this time.  The amount of love I had for the Barney/Quinn relationship was really all the proof I needed that they were going to take it away.  That seems to be the HIMYM writers big trick, build something up until you like it so they can pull it away and elicit cheap emotion.  The truly creative and ballsy move would have been to keep Barney and Quinn together, but this group of writers has proven long ago that whatever spark of creativity the show started on is long gone.
     At least I know not to get invested in the Ted/Victoria relationship.  The writers have to understand how cheap a stunt it is to act like these two have any type of future when we've already been told Victoria isn't the mom.  I love the Victoria character and her moments with Ted are some of my favorites, but it feels like a ride I've already taken, a road I've already driven down and don't feel like revisiting six years later knowing there is no pay off.  There was a moment of wonderful character development in the first half hour when Robin points out to Ted that he has always chosen women that would have made the family life he has said he always wanted practically impossible.  It was one of the first times in many seasons that I became interested in Ted and intrigued by his motives, either conscious or subconscious.  And then the writers ripped it away by digging up a relationship that was better off dead.  Not to mention that it made me think considerably less of Victoria.  Again, we've seemed to reach a point in this shows history where we are taking one step forward and three steps back.
     I have no idea where this show is headed in the next year, nor do I really care.  They have lost my faith that there is any direction to the show at all.  All the things that made it great seem to be gone.  I'm too pot committed at this point to stop watching, but my expectations of what this show can do couldn't be lower.  If the writing was better there would be a lot of interesting questions for next year, how is the group going to handle a kid in the mix, what exactly is going to happen with Ted and Victoria, what is going to happen between Barney and Quinn that leads to the Barney/Robin wedding, but I have no faith that any of these questions can be handled in a satisfactory manner.  I expect more rug pulling and football moving that is more groan worthy then laugh inducing.