I know people who believe HIMYM is better than the classic and beloved TV show Friends. Slow your boat there sailor, it’s good, but it’s no Friends. The Friends finale didn’t rip our hearts out and make us want to throw things at our TV. The Friends finale gave us the peaceful closure we needed. But the HIMYM finale, that’s a whole different story… a long and very dragged out story. Don’t get me wrong though, I liked HIMYM, in fact I loved the first five seasons – they were legen… (Wait for it) …dary. Legendary.
With all the predictability in TV shows today, it’s refreshing to have something with an unexpected twist. But did we deserve something THAT unexpected? The name of the show is ‘How I met your mother’, so we watch it with the expectation that we’re going to meet the mother. Nope, it’s basically about how Ted falls in love with Robin over and over again, which eventually had us thinking, ‘Ooh, maybe Robin IS the mother!’ Nope, the kids clearly refer to her as ‘Aunt Robin’.
So although we love Robin and rooted for Robin and Ted to end up together (even when we weren’t supposed to)… we accept that she isn’t the one for Ted and we finally get off the Ted and Robin bus. This feels good, we’re moving on.
We then conjure up the image of the long-awaited mother, this magical unicorn, the inspiration for this entire story. When we do meet her, she’s even better than we imagined. She’s Ted’s perfect match. She’s witty, adorable, quirky and she’s even into the same geeky stuff he’s into. We should have known it was too good to be true.
This is what this show did to us:
It made us care far too deeply about major moments that ultimately didn’t matter, it made us root for the ‘wrong couples’.
It made us root for Barney and Robin, the only woman who made this suit-wearing playboy want to settle down. And then they give us an ENTIRE season based on Barney and Robin’s wedding weekend and we just know they’re going to have an epic love story.
Nope, we then watch them get divorced five minutes/”three years” later.
Just like that.
And then they made us root for the hopeless romantic cheese ball, Ted and his bass guitar-playing magical unicorn with the yellow umbrella. They’re adorable together and she’s such a lovable character, we’re so glad Ted can finally have a normal love life.
Nope, we then find out this magical unicorn we were rooting for has been dead the entire time.
Just like that.
If the series wasn’t milked out for all its worth and it ended at season 6… there’s a chance the finale would have been more palatable. Because maybe we’d still remember Ted and Robin’s love story – and maybe we wouldn’t have stopped rooting for them.
Yumnatarian 
I enjoyed the finale. I thought it was pretty good and then you realize why he was actually telling his kids the story about how he met their mother.. Not too shabby hey..
I think it would have been better if it wasn’t so dragged out, because I remember rooting for Robin and Ted very strongly.