An Open Letter To The Writers Of How I Met Your Mother To Save Me From Paying To Complain About It To A Shrink

By

Dear Carter Bays and Craig Thomas,

(Please read the following in the same voice as Drew Barrymore in “Never Been Kissed.” Yeah. You know the one.)

While I know that you’ll never actually see this and the fact that I’m even writing you this letter on Facebook means that a.) I’m a huge nerd, b.) I’m procrastinating grading, and c.) I take my television programs entirely too seriously, I still feel the need to write this note to you and get this off my chest about the finale of HIMYM.

(To my friends who haven’t seen it yet, stop reading now as the rest of this post will ruin it for you. For everyone else, I’m sorry I’m such a dweeb that needed to do this, but I don’t keep a journal, so this was the next best thing.)

I’ve been a loyal viewer of HIMYM for nine years. I’ve laughed, cried, and grown up with Ted, Robin, Barney, Marshall, and Lily. Your show appealed to me on a level that no others had ever done before because your protagonist, Theodore Evelyn Mosby, was a hopeless romantic who, in spite of the universe constantly telling him love might not be in his future, believed that he would find his love because he was worth it and deserved it. He believed that despite the heartbreak, the seemingly utter hopeless search for a soul mate in this crazy world, all of the horrible dates, and the rejection, he would find “her.” Because of his determination, his perseverance, and his unyielding faith in finding his happy ending, he gave hope to so many of us hopeless romantics that tuned in week to week. While last night’s finale attempted to tell us “believers” that true love is out there and can be found in the strangest of places with the weirdest coincidences, it also told us that life sucks. While I’m very aware of your intentions with this ending paying homage to the unpredictability of real life, I watch television not to be reminded of this all too cruel reality but to escape it. If I wanted to be reminded of the reality of the shitty things that can happen to you in life, I would watch “I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant” on TLC. Hell, if I really wanted to watch art reflect life, I would put the episode of “Glee” where Finn died. Life sucks sometimes. You made us believe in something beautiful and I feel like in the end you killed it – both literally and figuratively.

As if the mother’s untimely death was not a big enough injustice to viewers, Ted, and the wonderful actress who portrayed her, Cristin Milioti, you managed to undo in the first 20 minutes of the show what you tediously tried to build up in not only season 9 but a large portion of season 8 – the love story and eventual marriage of Barney and Robin. Robin made Barney into a better person and he made her believe in love like NO ONE had before – not even Ted. To not only undo this but then to have Barney return to his playboy ways as if none of his previous evolution was real just serves as a sad testament to the idea that real, true romantic love has no transformative power. While it was all cute and adorably sugary sweet that Barney fell in love with his daughter the instant he held her and “changed,” it seemed so forced. What was wrong with Barney remaining with Robin and being in love with her, promising HER his eternal love and everything he has? Why do you have to force the idea that a child is the only real thing that everyone really wants even when they think they don’t? That is not reality. If you wanted to stick to your “reality” theme, you should have shown Barney writing checks to Number 31 every month for 18 years begrudgingly while slipping into a depression caused by his whorish ways and eventual alcoholism.

And while I am on the topic of Barney and Robin, let me point out that Ted and Tracy, the mother, had more chemistry in their one season with limited on-air scenes than Ted and Robin ever had. We get it. You wanted the show to come full circle. It started with a boy in love with a girl looking out of her window, surrounded by dogs looking down at the man she would eventually date and fall in love with holding a French horn. Whoopi-doo. Robin and Barney were good together. Well, at least they were until you forced them to remind us of that couple that we all know who got married too quickly and eventually divorced after realizing that they might have married for the wrong reasons and were too selfish to work on their relationship and continue to fall in love with each other day after day. Why bother putting them together at all? I would have much rathered Barney continue his adventure sleeping with every girl in NYC and Robin stay with any one of the countless men she bedded in the series…other than Ted that is. The only thing that would have been more of a travesty to me would have been if you would have had Lily and Marshall break up after 19 years together to find that Lily cheated on him with Skeeter, her long lost love from high school. It would have been realistic, which is ultimately what you said you were going for, right?

Want to know what else really grinds my gears about last night’s episode? No. Well, I am going to tell you anyway. Why on God’s green planet was Bob Saget the voice of Ted for 9 freaking seasons while telling the stories and last night it was Josh Radnor? Did you kill off Bob Saget’s voice too? Probably so, you joy-sucking, hope-building-only-to-crush-our-dreams jerks! And what in the hell was up with Robin’s wigs?!? I haven’t seen that many wig changes since I saw Cher’s farewell tour in 2004. The last one was the worst. (The wig. Not the last farewell tour, although let’s face it, Cher did enjoy putting on her fair share of farewell tours.) And the kids’ reaction was just the worst. What a crock?!? I mean, I realize they weren’t going for an Emmy for those two kids, but couldn’t they have been just a little bit more believable in their delivery? And why the hell didn’t they cry at all in thinking about their poor, dead mother? Probably because they are cold and heartless like you were when you wrote this atrocious finale.

So, in closing, I just want to say that last night you broke my heart. I get what you tried to do. I even attempted accepting it multiple times in the past 24 hours, but at the end of it all, I still feel overwhelmingly saddened by it, so much so that I couldn’t even watch episodes from old seasons that have seemed to pop up on every channel I have watched since last night. It’s the same feeling that I would have had if Big would not have ended up with Carrie, Ross without Rachel, Michael Scott without Holly, Angela without Tony. (“Who’s the Boss?” I went old school with that one!) I suppose I will just have to pretend that I didn’t see it and in my own imaginary world where I allow romantic Lindsay, who still believes in true love, Santa Claus, and Hogwart’s, to believe that Tracy and Ted live happily ever after in the house next to Robin and Barney across the street from Marshall and Lily.

Sincerely,

A Bitter Fan Who Clearly Takes This Shit Way Too Seriously & Who Will Now Start Watching “Breaking Bad” In Hopes the Meth Will Numb The Pain If Only Metaphorically.

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