HIMYM Series Finale Thoughts

It has now been a full week since the series finale.

But first, before I tell you my thoughts on the actual hour-long episode, I want to tell you about me and the show.

The first time I heard of How I Met Your Mother was in one of my magazines (either YM or CosmoGirl), where they were naming shows that could replace the hole Sex and the City was leaving in people’s hearts. (The description was something like: “A group of friends who always get together at the same bar, and the redhead is the voice of reason!”)

I can’t quite pinpoint the moment I started watching HIMYM, and it’s likely that I haven’t seen all the episodes because I never made a conscious effort to catch up. I started watching and I liked it. A funny sitcom with fun characters and a loose larger plotline that threaded through these standalone episodes.

However.
I was really glad when they announced that this season would be the last.
I have gotten awfully tired of the show.

Specifically, I started really having issues with these characters. My least favorite characters are Lily and Ted. I will tell you why this is in another post, but know that I was waiting for this show to be over. I needed relief.

ONTO THE ACTUAL FINALE.
I didn’t have the chance to watch it live because I was at trivia night with my friends. Needless to say, I saw spoilers that weren’t a big shocker to me. I’ve been reading a lot of good articles and blog posts about the finale (among them this and this) and here is my main takeaway about the episode (WARNING: SPOILERS TO FOLLOW)

Tracy was a great character and she was reduced to, essentially, a plot device.
Seriously, though, they didn’t take advantage of Cristin Milioti’s talent and her great character.
There was a beautiful message driven home about how Robin & Barney made it work despite all the obstacles and that was flushed down the toilet.
The fact that Ted simply never got over Robin is heartbreaking to me. Not because I love their relationship, but I feel like it really cheapens his great relationship with Tracy. (If they wanted to avoid that, they could’ve written it in or included the supposed scenes that were cut.)
The writing just went so downhill with the show in general, this episode could’ve saved it and it did the complete opposite.
They definitely should’ve spent more time with Ted getting over the death of his soulmate before having him remember that he was still in love with Robin.
The Lily and Marshall plotline kind of just got shoved aside, I felt like it wasn’t resolved in a satisfactory way.
Why was that 3rd child of theirs just kind of ignored?
Ugh Lily. UGH I really dislike that character.
While I’m happy that Barney found a way to channel his love, where is the mother of his child? What exactly happened there? That’s a needlessly loose end.

Ugh. I just can’t even list all the reasons that I was disappointed with this episode. There were a lot, and if you read the links I included above, I largely agree with most of their points.