For nine years, How I Met Your Mother fans followed Ted Mosby’s search for love, narrated by his older self from 2030. As with any long-running sitcom, the show had many ups and downs, with some episodes standing as all-time greats and others eliciting nothing but groans from the audience. The characters were always lovable, but their stories occasionally left a lot to be desired.
While the seasons, on the whole, dipped in quality as time went on, there’s at least one gem in each of them. So, here is The Best Episode From Each Season Of How I Met Your Mother, Ranked.
Season 8: “The Time Travelers”
This trippy episode has a science fiction twinge to it, but it really hits close to home in its final moments. Ted sits in the bar, debating whether or not to go to Robots vs Wrestlers with Barney and future versions of themselves.
In the end, it turns out Barney isn’t even there and Ted’s been imagining the whole thing out of loneliness, with one Robots vs Wrestlers ticket in front of him. At the end, he tells his kids what he would’ve done if he could go back to that night: run to the Mother’s apartment to enjoy a few more moments with her. We learned that the Mother’s introduction was 45 days away, and there was also a hint at her death.
Season 6: “Blitzgiving”
This episode is the one that guest-starred Lost’s Jorge Garcia as “the Blitz,” a guy who misses amazing things every time he leaves the room. But it also has a heartbreaking emotional component. The plot sees Ted and the gang bouncing from apartment to apartment in a bid to find somewhere to have Thanksgiving dinner with the “tur-turkey-key” prepared by Ted.
They end up at Zoey’s apartment. Ted still sees her as his soulless enemy who’s holding up his career, but when he realizes how broken up she was that her stepdaughter didn’t want to spend Thanksgiving with her, they become friends.
Season 7: “The Symphony of Illumination”
This episode shook up the formula by having Robin talking to her future kids instead of Ted. She’s just found out she’s having a baby with Barney, but later discovers she’s not pregnant, because she can’t have kids. The whole thing turns out to be an exercise in catharsis as her “future kids” are revealed to be imaginary and we learn that Robin never becomes a mom.
It’s up there with How I Met Your Mother’s saddest moments, but the episode ends on a hopeful note: Robin decides to spend Christmas with Ted as he fills the apartment with lights to cheer her up.
Season 5: “Girls Versus Suits”
The 100th episode of How I Met Your Mother was a special one, with the clearest hint at the Mother yet, a cameo appearance by Tim Gunn as Barney’s suit paramedic, and a hilarious pastiche of Pulp Fiction’s heroin scene. In the episode, a hot new bartender at MacLaren’s has caught Barney’s eye, but she hates men who wear suits.
So, if he’s going to date her, he has to give up his suits. As he struggles to decide between the girl and his suits, he breaks into song and dance with a spectacular, Emmy-nominated musical number called “Nothing Suits Me Like a Suit.”
Season 1: “The Pineapple Incident”
Perhaps the first truly great episode of How I Met Your Mother, season 1’s “The Pineapple Incident” sees a hungover Ted desperately trying to remember the previous night’s events, a situation we’ve all been in at one time or another.
There’s a girl in his bed that he doesn’t remember meeting and an unexplained pineapple on his bedside table. The episode begins with Ted taking all of his friends’ shots for them, but later on, it deepens Ted and Robin’s relationship as it’s revealed that he left voicemail messages on her phone while he was drunk. It’s funny and insightful.
Season 9: “How Your Mother Met Me”
Most of the ninth season of How I Met Your Mother is an unbearably dragged-out affair, stretching out a weekend that could’ve fit into four and five episodes across an entire season.
However, “How Your Mother Met Me” is a delightfully poignant installment that answered most of the questions we’d been asking over the course of the show’s run. If we hadn’t fallen in love with the Mother at this point, then “How Your Mother Met Me” did it. We learned that she was in love with a different guy who died, then followed her on the emotional journey that led her in and out of Ted’s life until she was hired to play at Robin and Barney’s wedding.
Season 4: “Three Days of Snow”
Despite the title, we’re led to believe that the three storylines in season 4’s “Three Days of Snow” are taking place on the same day. Marshall and Lily have agreed to ignore their airport tradition, but then both worry that the other will still do it. Meanwhile, Ted and Barney take over the bar. Then, it’s revealed that they’re different days.
When Robin helped Marshall realize the importance of his traditions with Lily, Lily’s flight was delayed. The next night, Ted and Barney brought a marching band back to the apartment. And on the third day, Marshall brought the band to the airport to meet Lily in the most heartwarming way imaginable.
Season 3: “How I Met Everyone Else”
The premise of this episode is simplistic: Ted brings his new girlfriend to the bar to introduce her to his friends, and she asks him to tell the stories of how he met each of them. The stories themselves are all hilarious, and also reveal interesting backstory to each of the characters’ relationships with one another.
The episode’s award-winning script by Gloria Calderon Kellett has a ton of extra layers, too, from characterizing Ted’s new girlfriend as insanely jealous of an unsuspecting Robin (and also just plain insane) and having conflicting stories of how Ted and Lily met each other.
Season 2: “Slap Bet”
The season 2 episode “Slap Bet” is famous for introducing How I Met Your Mother fans to not one, but two recurring gags that would go on to define the series: Robin’s former career as the pop star “Robin Sparkles,” and Marshall and Barney’s long-running “slap bet.”
While episodes of How I Met Your Mother often build on an ongoing storyline, “Slap Bet” offered a refreshing break from that kind of serialization and instead gave viewers an unforgettable standalone installment of the series. From the “Let’s Go to the Mall” video to Marshall’s first of many slaps, the episode is filled with classic moments.
