A kind of ruse we can use

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.”

Or maybe the whole show’s foundation is just a red herring to let its creators get away with something else: putting together the most modern and consistently fresh traditional sitcom of the last few years. Surrounded on CBS by any number of low-ambition family sitcoms and grim procedurals, “HIMYM” is an oasis of 1990s-style urban humor, alone in its commitment to the rhythms of youngish lives in the city: the mismatched friend circles, the offhand jokes that become recurring, the belief that nothing happening elsewhere is more important than what’s visible through your own periscope.

As for Ted, he’s an emo sap and, seen through his eyes, “HIMYM” is merely a chronicle of letdown and pain. In last week’s episode, he poured his heart out to Stella, who’d left him at the altar several months prior, in a scene that was meant to showcase the plain, warm pleadings of a romantic but induced only groans of recognition: another example of Ted picking the wrong moment to unload and the wrong target.

That Ted is something of a simpleton, an emotional naif of undistinguished career and moderate attractiveness, is perhaps essential to this show’s success. It’s just enough to give the series propulsion and structure but not enough to overwhelm it. Without his fundamental blankness, his supporting cast would actually be forced to play supporting roles. Instead, they’re free to be robust. Marshall (Jason Segel) and Lily (Alyson Hannigan) are an endearing couple whose mutual affection is overpowering and relatable. Neil Patrick Harris’ Barney is among the most physically present characters on television; Harris is a large actor working on a very small stage.

The show is also cleverly constructed, with oodles of Easter eggs(media) and accompanying bogus websites and viral videos and blogs that take the experience of watching it beyond the half-hour of viewing. It’s not the only show to experiment with form, of course, but it’s one of the sharpest in execution. (No amount of cleverness, though, can mask the increasingly absurd methods producers have used to obscure the real-world pregnancies of Hannigan and Smulders, one of this season’s only real blemishes.)

Optimistically, maybe the show’s premise is itself a fraud, with the big reveal making way for an even bigger twist. Any of a number of them would do: “How I Met Your Mother . . . and Boy Do I Hate Her.” Or “How I Met Your Mother . . . and Was Happy to Adopt You, Her Children, as My Own.” Or “How I Met Your Mother . . . Who Got Tired of My Flashbacks and Has Therefore Left Me for Barney, a Man Who Truly Knows How to Live.”

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