Ron P. Jaffe/FoxHappy 10th Birthday, How I Met Your Mother! Let's celebrate by continuing to argue over your series finale!
Seriously, it's been 10 years since we were first introduced to Ted (Josh Radnor), Robin (Cobie Smulders), Barney (Neil Patrick Harris), Marshall (Jason Segel) and Lily (Alyson Hannigan), and began the longest story ever told: how Ted met his wife, which he was telling to his two children. After a lot of inside jokes, laughs, losses and questionable love interests (Britney Spears, anyone?!), the legendary tale came to an end after nine seasons and over 200 episodes, and boy, did people have thoughts on the ending. which might go down as one of TV's most polarizing finales ever. In fact, people are STILL arguing and placing slap bets over it.
Now, two members of our TV Scoop Team are pleading their cases for why they still love AND hate the CBS sitcom's series ending. Warning, spoilers ahead!
Why I Loved the HIMYM Finale
Confession: I hated the HIMYM finale before I even watched it. I remember watching the east coast faction of my Twitter feed completely s—t on it in real time, furiously tweeting their anger over the ending, feeling manipulated and lied to. So guess what? I felt that way, too. Such is the power of peer pressure via social media. (You're talking to a girl who used to wear flip flops in the snow because her friends did.)
Then a funny thing happened: I watched the finale and loved it. And the more I saw people rip it apart, the more I came to respect what HIMYM managed to do.
Listen, I won't lie. Watching The Mother die, after falling madly in love with her all season, sucked. But I totally invested in their love story, and we did get THEIR story. There is no bigger rom-com fan that me, and they NAILED Ted and The Mother's story, every step of the way. But lucky me, I got TWO perfect rom-coms for the price of one, as, to my complete shock, I also totally bought the happy ending for Ted and Robin. The ultimate ending proved that people can have more than one epic love—even fictional TV characters, no matter what the Internet believes. —Tierney Bricker
Why I Hated the HIMYM Finale
I didn't want to hate the How I Met Your Mother finale, but I did. I really, really did, and the more I think about it, the more I still hate it. I hate it as much as I once loved that show, which is a whole lot.
I haven't been able to watch an episode since, because the whole show just feels tainted now. Throughout its run, HIMYM consistently made a point of reminding us that we were headed towards something great with a mystery character who was going to be worth all the heartache that Ted went through for nine seasons, and then it was so close to actually making good on that promise. The Mother was worth it, despite how easy it could have been for her to fall short after so much build up.
But then, they took that perfect character, killed her, divorced Ted's two best friends after we spent a whole season at their wedding, then put Ted back together with the woman he spent half the show getting over.
Twists are fun, but not twists that basically nullify all the character and relationship development that had come before. This finale would have worked at the end of season one, but it was like the writers hadn't even noticed how the show had grown in the eight seasons since.
I felt like I got emotionally slapped in the face, and I may never get over it. —Lauren Piester
So legendary or meh? Let us know what you think of HIMYM's series finale now that you'd had some time to think it over!