I've been with How I Met Your Mother since the beginning, which I can't say very often, especially involving shows whose series finales are considered "events." Usually I either get into shows after they're well established, or already finished (The Wire, The Sopranos, Arrested Development, etc.), or I don't really care about the show, and so all the end-of-series hoopla means little to me (Friends, Lost, 24.) The shows I get in on from the beginning usually meet their end tragically early or with little fanfare (Chappelle Show, Ed, Party Down, Love Monkey) and I end up pissed off. Or, in the case of Beverly Hills 90210, it lasts for like 17 years and I'm begging for FOX to just take it behind the shed and shoot it already. (Hey Brando, thanks for the goodbye video in the series finale though! Wouldn't want you to break a sweat or anything.)
So even though the last couple seasons of HIMYM have been at best uneven, and at worst unwatchable...here we are at the end. I didn't laugh a whole lot this last season, but now that it's gone, I'm going to miss this show.
It's sorta like breaking up with a girl, and you're just about to pull the trigger...and then all you can remember are all the good times, like Barney on The Price Is Right (how does that clip not exist on youtube?!?!?), or Robin Sparkles, or the slap bet, or SUIT UP!, etc. etc. You forget about how much the Barney-Robin relationship pissed you off at the time, or how much of a little bitch Ted could be, and you forgive all the stupid false alarms about when The Mother was going to be revealed throughout the years....and that's how you end up getting hammered and booty-calling your girl at 3 in the morning every couple weekends for the next eight months, and starting the spiral over, again and again.
{SPOILERS BELOW}
As for the series finale, I kinda liked it. It was a bummer in a lot of ways, but I liked that it was realistic, and it showed a lot of soul in the process. It can't always be Ross & Rachel or Jim & Pam or whatever. People get divorced. People have children out of wedlock with people they barely know. Careers don't always work out like you hoped they would. Spouses pass away, and years later, the widower might venture out to date again. I have friends I've regrettably fallen out of touch with. I still miss my college apartment from time to time. If I was 21 years old, I don't think I'd enjoy this show near as much, but for people in my age range, it's pretty damn accurate.
I know I'm in the minority in enjoying the finale, and I can definitely understand people who didn't like it, or who even hated it. I'm not gonna sit here and tell people how they should interpret the last few scenes. But here's one thing I think the general internet is maybe freaking out about a bit too much...I don't think the show definitively stated that Ted and Robin "END UP TOGETHER", or that the last scene signified that Robin was the love of Ted's life all along. He was married to a woman he loved maybe more than anyone else, had kids, lost her to illness, is thinking about dipping his toe into the pool again, and hey, Robin and I are older and more mature now, why not give it a whirl? All he was doing was going over and asking her out on a date (albeit with the blue french horn from the pilot episode, which implies a certain level of romanticism.) But it's not like they showed them together 35 years later, happily married, sitting in their rocking chairs. Just a date. That's all. There's nine years of evidence stating that Ted & Robin don't necessarily make it work.
For people who wanted a true happy ending after investing nearly a decade into the show, I can understand the frustration. All I know is that someday soon, I'm probably gonna be drinking a bottle of Pendleton and texting an ex-girlfriend about how good we were together-- a.k.a. digging out the Season 1 DVDs and starting the show all over again.
