'How I Met Your Mother' mystery?

Jon Caramanica tries to get at the truth on "How I Met Your Mother."

Does it still count as a cliffhanger if the cliff is miles away? "How I Met Your Mother" has perhaps the least-honest title on network television, a show premised upon the reveal of information that, let's be honest, won't arrive until the threat of cancellation is looming.

The show's fourth season concludes this week (8:30 p.m. Monday on CBS) with an additional kernel of data about the mysterious mother, one that, in typical "HIMYM" fashion, has not a lot to do with the episode in which it's deployed. But arriving at the end of the episode, it's a reminder of the disingenuousness of the show's conceit. They answered "Who shot J.R.?" They solved "Who killed Laura Palmer?" Why must the discovery of the identity of a future upper-middle-class suburban mom be so agonizing?

Perhaps "HIMYM" is really a commentary on how mundane romance truly is, nothing more than an agglomeration of fitful starts, near-misses and half-vivid memories. You can almost hear Ted (Josh Radnor, voice-overs by Bob Saget) tell his son and daughter: "The truth, kids, is that you have no mother, only my pieced-together recollections of the failures that, in total, led to the moments of your creation. Be sure to send thank-you cards to Robin (Cobie Smulders), Stella (Sarah Chalke), Victoria (Ashley Williams) and the rest of them."

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(Photo courtesy CBS)