After nine years of drinks at MacLaren’s, slap bets, suiting up, high fives, duels, "The Bro Code," Robin Sparkles, playing “Have You Met Ted?”, laser tag, magic tricks, “The Playbook,” “The Naked Man,” “eating sandwiches” and getting lawyer’d, How I Met Your Mother is coming to an end. It was a show everyone would watch, and after nine years, it taught us a lot about life, and even more about love.
Though it’s overdue, and has gone downhill, this show won’t be remembered for how it ended, but for how it got there. This is my toast to How I Met Your Mother. Here are some of the best things we learned from this awesome show.
Cast members of How I Met Your Mother Neil Patrick Harris, Cobie Smulders, Josh Radnor, Alyson... [+]
Falling in Love Requires Courage & Maturity
In life there are two kinds of people: ones that are constantly falling in love (like Ted) and others that are deathly afraid of it (like Robin and Barney). This show does a great job of illustrating the various reasons why relationships do and do not work. Ted has several failed loves on the show, and he swept a few of them off their feet (courage and romance weren’t Ted’s weaknesses) but they all got him closer to the person he needed to be to meet his soul mate. Ted didn't know it, but he needed to grow up before he met "The Mother." He went through hell to get there, but he made it, and that's because he had the courage to keep putting himself out there and to keep learning from his mistakes.
The People You Love the Most Are the Most Obnoxious
One of the most satisfying things about the "slap bet" plot line was seeing Barney cringe in fear, then get brutally slapped by Marshall. Let’s be honest, Barney deserved a good slap just for being himself. We hated Lily for leaving Marshall to be an artist in San Francisco. We hated Ted for leaving good women for Robin. We hated Robin for leading Ted on. Every week we watched, to see if they were going to get it together, because like them, we learned something from what they went through and how to handle it. But most of all, we kept watching because we loved them anyway. The people you love the most are also the first people you want to hit on the side of the head with a frying pan. They annoy you because you care, even if they’re just TV characters.
Your Exes Are Important
Many TV shows always tell the same story: two of the main characters have chemistry, get together, break-up for a predictable and cliché reason, and they spend forever hating each other. The story that’s not often told because it's difficult and more complex is when the exes remain friends, sometimes best friends. It’s not as dramatic or as juicy as the latter, but Ted learns a lot about himself and what his soul mate will look like in nine years, and that is because of his relationship with Robin. She’s the first girl he said would be, “the future Mrs. Ted Mosby.”
Robin helped shape Ted into the man he needed to be in order to meet “The Mother,” and that story is important too.
The Best Relationships Are Never Easy
Everyone knows a Lily and Marshall. There is always a couple that makes you believe that true love is out there, and that it’s something worth holding out for. You put all of your faith in true love in their basket- if they can’t make it work, no one can. That being said, Lily and Marshall went through a lot in nine years.
They got engaged, broke up, got back together, got married and had a baby. Marshall’s father died. Lily got them into serious credit card debt. When they fought and struggled, it was real. But everyone still wanted the love that Marshall and Lily had together, because even when they had fights or tragedy struck or one of them was stupid, they wanted to work it out together, always (well, almost always).
Nothing Good Happens After 2 A.M.
As grown up Ted says in his voiceover, “When 2 a.m. rolls around, just go home and go to bed. Because the decisions you make after 2 a.m. are the wrong decisions.” If the person you really, really want to call you calls you after 2 a.m., that person you have a very gray area relationship with, just go to bed.
Design Your Own Building
Ted got his big break as an architect by designing his own building to pitch to a big bank client for his firm. He looked at the building his boss designed, and felt he could do better. During the day he made styrofoam trees for his bosses model, then worked overtime to create his own blueprints for his design. It was the first time Ted transferred the courage he exhibited in his love life into his professional life.
Ted taught us to have the courage to execute the ideas you believe in, because in life the best idea wins. You never know what will happen, and because Ted believed in himself and in his design he got a huge career breakthrough. According to the show, he became “the youngest architect to design a building over 70 stories, probably.”
Life Won’t Go As You Planned
A great episode is the trilogy episode, “Trilogy Time,” it’s about how Barney, Ted and Marshall vow to watch Star Wars every three years. Each viewing becomes a measuring stick for Ted, and he begins to realize that he hasn’t fulfilled his dreams, especially when it comes to love. Watching him have this epiphany is raw, real and moving. Throughout the show we watch Marshall’s dream evolve from an environmental lawyer, to a corporate lawyer, to (almost) a judge. Lily goes back and forth between teaching in New York and running away to fulfill her dream of becoming an artist. Ted struggles to become an architect, and Robin climbs the media ladder as she fights for airtime as a news anchor. Marshall and Lily get engaged, break up, then get married and live happily ever after. Barney and Robin are getting married- to each other! It’s all a big mess that we could never anticipate, and we loved every minute of it. We loved knowing Ted, Marshall, Lily, Robin, Barney, and last but not least, “The Mother.” Even though it’s time, it’s sad to see them go. It’s been a beautiful ride. It’s been legend…wait for it…dary.
Post-Finale Update:
In the finale, HIMYM taught us one last lesson:
Learn To Accept the Inevitable, Even If You Don’t Like It
We all saw the signs, there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s unproductive to be angry. Remember the show for what it was, there are a lot of fond memories there.
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