Yes, I realize I am a few weeks behind. Give me a break... I'm a working mother of a toddler who is spending all her spare time at the tanning bed and the gym. So, yes, I do have to DVR every single show that I watch. I did finally get around to watching the series finale of How I Met Your Mother. And I feel like I need to toss my two cents out into the blogosphere. Even if I wasn't live-tweeting during the finale, that doesn't make my mindless dribble any less important than other people's mindless dribble.
Back in September 2005, when the show first premiered, I was at a super weird cross-roads in my life. I had just reconnected with Mr. Smith after not speaking for several years after our break-up. I wasn't sure I wanted to stay with The Ex. I hated my job, but I had one thing to look forward to... a trip to New Zealand that December. When the show premiered, The Ex and I decided to take it on. (We had a lot of time to watch lots of TV back then.) We would watch it, and then I would lock myself in our spare room, in front of the computer, and chat on Instant Messenger (remember that???) with Mr. Smith. He was also watching the show and we would discuss it. (Amongst other things.)
The show became some weird, unspoken parallel to our own lives. He was Ted. I was Robin.
One of my biggest qualms with some TV shows is when they hook up characters too early in the run of the show. "Bones" is a good example... I want Brennan and Booth to end up together, but to me, that needs to be the last episode. Ever. At the very bitter end, they finally get together. However, the writers don't always agree with my view on this. Hence Brennan & Booth being together... and me hating it. I feel the same way currently about Nick & Jess over on "New Girl." And I felt the same when HIMYM finally got Robin & Ted together. Yes, I wanted them to be a couple... just not til the bitter end.
I will say, that I absolutely hated the Barney & Robin thing. It just never felt like it was going to work. It didn't feel real... the womanizer and the career-minded woman. They weren't going to last. No... Ted was the hopeless romantic that Robin needed to be with. Just like I ran the parallel that I was the career-minded, hardened girl who wasn't always enamored by romance, but there was that one person in life who could get to me that way... Mr. Smith was my Casanova.
While I am a happily married woman and Mr. Smith is a happily married man, I couldn't help but smile at the end finale of HIMYM. (Spoiler alert - Ted's wife dies and he goes to win back Robin.) In my smiles, I had some tears. Not just at the end of the series that has meant so much to me for all these years, but for that little bit of romance that I know Mr. Smith had impacted on my life. I could see that, years down the road, if something were to ever happen in our lives that brought us back to a situation where we were both single, Mr. Smith would bring me a blue French horn. (Symbolically speaking, of course.)
I hope I never come to that place in life. But it brought a sweet peace to me, to the me who saw myself through those characters, that they ended up together in the end. So while I didn't love all of the finale (I didn't agree with Barney having a baby) I was definitely OK with how it all wound up. I was never vested in "the mother." It didn't upset me that after all the build-up, she was hardly in the story at all. No... because the story I wanted was Ted & Robin together in the end. I think I'm in the minority of people who agreed or liked the ending. (At least amongst my friends anyway.)
It was that hopeless romantic hiding deep inside me. Shhhh.... that's our little secret.
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