Black Sheep does TV: HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER Season 7

I think it was somewhere around the fourth or fifth season of HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER, that I started truly disliking Ted Mosby, the ensemble show's pseudo protagonist. In fact, I may have even tweeted that he was a douche. It wasn't his constant punning or need to educate the world about architecture that bothered me. No, it was more that he purported to be the champion of chivalry and romantic love in a modern society that seems to scoff at these very notions any chance it gets, when in reality, Ted was barreling through woman after woman with very little care for their well-being on his grand quest to find the one.

Ted (Josh Radnor) needed a serious reality check and I am happy to see that, in the show's seventh season, now available on DVD from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, Ted finally gets what he deserves. In fact, it has been some time since I've seen one show take all of its characters to the next level of their development so seamlessly. HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER has shown in the past that it knows very well how to balance big laughs with life's more painful moments, from the passing of Marshall's (Jason Segel) father to Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) finally finding his. This latest season foregoes some of these larger monumental life events for some of the necessary changes that come naturally with time. This group of friends (rounded out of course by Alyson Hannigan's Lily and Cobie Smulders's Robin) couldn't bumble along blissfully forever without changing in one way or another and this season faces that head on.

In their seventh season, HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER grows up. Even that douche, Ted Mosby, realizes that he's spent all this time looking for the woman of his dreams, but that he perhaps still isn't even ready to have her in his life. As Ted turns 34, being single and not having the family life he's always dreamed of, takes its toll on him. It becomes harder to find the faith that everything is going to work out in the end, that his dreams will really come true. The impetus is to give up and perhaps accept that life has other plans in mind but this is actually the time to hold true to what he most wants. After all,  Ted knows better now than he ever did what exactly that is.

Review copy provided by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.