How Ted blew it

Since I'm still watching "24" and "Prison Break," "How I Met Your Mother" (or, as I'm increasingly calling it, "HIMYM") gets to fly solo this morning -- just as Ted wound up last night.

Sooner or later, the writers were going to have to fill in the hole they'd dug themselves into with Ted and Robin. On the one hand, Future Ted had definitively said that she wasn't his Future Wife. On the other hand, there was undeniable chemistry between the actors, and Ted himself was always much more interesting with Robin than without her.

So after building up a case of Permanently Unresolved Sexual Tension, the writers had to come up with a plausible reason why these two kooky lovebirds couldn't make it work. And I think they did as good a job as they possibly could -- sure as hell better than, say, that dumbass list that scotched the first Ross 'n Rachel get-together on "Friends." By lying to Robin about being broken up with Victoria, Ted fucked up, and he fucked up in a way that would take a long time, if ever, to recover from in the real world.

And now, hopefully, we're done with this. Again, I like the two characters together, but it's manifestly not meant to be, and any more time spent dicking around with a will-they-or-won't-they scenario would just be stupid. Just move on. It's already obvious to everyone that the show is funniest when it's focused on some combination of Barney, Marshall and Lily (with or without Korean Elvis), and Robin and Ted can be funny to varying degrees so long as they're not pining for each other. So now that we've 100% established that this Love That Cannot Die did, in fact, die, it's time to move on.

And there's a very good show there, even without it. Because Bays and Thomas don't come from sitcom backgrounds, these episodes don't feel like standard sitcom stuff, even with the laughtrack. I like all the time cuts and use of music and other structural tweaks, and I obviously like all the people. So let's see what the show becomes now that, hopefully, we can put the error at the end of the pilot behind us.