It is pretty well established that the writers of HIMYM have no skill to do serious drama and this episode is another proof of that. Whenever they want to do "serious" we get "pathetic" instead. Everything must be overemotional and tragic. So, of course, someone has to die again in order to get a "serious" story, and this time it is the mother's boyfriend. And now she is scarred for life and we should be so touched.
I am sorry, though not surprised, that every time the writers pull the same cheap pathetic trick people seem to eat it up and we get all of the all too similar rave reviews. In reality, this episode has nothing of note. We get some retconning, but, of course, not enough to account for all of the "this is the crucial moment for meeting your mother" scenes over the seasons that amounted to nothing, because they were never part of the writers' planning, but were just thrown in at random so that they could stretch the whole mother plotline beyond any reasonable amount. (Remember, for instance, season 4 episode 22 that supposedly had all those moments crucial to Ted meeting his future wife? Yeah, none of that matters.) And we get loads and loads of pathetics in the mother's backstory that really have no meaning and could have comfortably been left out.
I am sorry, though not surprised, that every time the writers pull the same cheap pathetic trick people seem to eat it up and we get all of the all too similar rave reviews. In reality, this episode has nothing of note. We get some retconning, but, of course, not enough to account for all of the "this is the crucial moment for meeting your mother" scenes over the seasons that amounted to nothing, because they were never part of the writers' planning, but were just thrown in at random so that they could stretch the whole mother plotline beyond any reasonable amount. (Remember, for instance, season 4 episode 22 that supposedly had all those moments crucial to Ted meeting his future wife? Yeah, none of that matters.) And we get loads and loads of pathetics in the mother's backstory that really have no meaning and could have comfortably been left out.