I gave you a week to release all your frustration and anger about the series finale of HIMYM via social media outlets, reading and reposting Buzzfeed article after Buzzfeed article, bitching to all your friends over drinks, and, of course, the personal wallowing. But the time has come for you to discover that in fact the series finale of HIMYM was the perfect ending but you're too emotionally connected to the fictional characters to see it. [Yeah, I know you're not supposed to insult the readership in the first paragraph but, “SUIT UP!”]
First, you must understand that I get
it. I'm a TV junkie. I'm not exaggerating when I say that the amount
of TV that I keep up with during the week equates to the hours of a
full time job. I feel the connection. I cried, I laughed, and I felt
heartbreak for the past 9 years with Ted, Marshall, Barney, Lily,
Robin, and the 13.1 million of you who all watched last week and most
likely have been watching all along for all 208 episodes. But let's get it straight.
You're mad because you finally accepted that Ted and Robin weren't
right for each other because the writers for the past 7 years (since
Ted and Robin broke up in Season 2, SEASON 2 PEOPLE) have been
writing, line after line, about how Ted and Robin could never work.
And you were mad. We were all mad. We all wanted Robin to be the
mother. But the more the writers wrote why it wouldn't work, the more
we began to accept and believe it.
You're mad because the writers convinced you they weren't meant be. And you believed them and then they gave you the biggest plot twist of your life [which BTW good on them!] AND YOU FELL FOR IT. They had you convinced for 7 years that Robin wasn't going to end up with Ted because it's supposed to be a story about how Ted meets the mother and Robin isn't the mother so how could this possibly be the finale?!
Here's where you say, “YOU'RE MAKING MY CASE FOR ME, IT'S ABOUT HOW TED MET THE MOTHER. IT'S IN THE TITLE!!”
And you're right...that is the title but there is a line in the last 5 minutes of the show that maybe you forgot about because 4 minutes later you were just so angry that he ends up with Robin. THE LINE is from Ted's daughter, Penny, who tells it like it is...
"You made us sit down and
listen to this story about how you met mom. Yet mom is hardly in this
story. No, this is a story about how you're totally in love with Aunt
Robin. And you're thinking about asking her out and you want to know
if we're OK with it."
And that was the show. “How I Met Your Mother” was just a title, not some gigantic 9 year ruse to keep up ratings. Everything that has happened since the show began is about how Ted is in love with Robin and how selfless and true that love is. He continues, episode after episode, whether as a couple or as friends, to go to the moon and back for her. So while we were convinced it could never work out, thanks to those pesky writers, it also shouldn't have come as a shock. Those same damn writers ensured in almost every episode that you knew that Ted had the most beautiful, unwavering, true, and selfless love for Robin even until the very end when she's going to marry Barney, he loved her so much he let her go.
I could go through the another 17+ examples of why the writers and show creators did a stand up job and why this shouldn't be ranked as one of the worst finales of all time or I could just leave you with this.
The title was “How I Met Your Mother” not “How I Met The Love of My Life” and that's something that's honest, and true, and messy and sometimes how life works out. If you reflect a little deeper and a little harder, I don't think you're mad about fictional characters and story lines, I think you're mad because no one wants to believe that they don't get to marry the love of their life.
