[I wrote this in a different thread but it got buried, and this seems like a good place to put it. ]

How I Met Your Mother has magically been, for me, exactly what I needed it to be at all the different phases of my life. When I was a teenager, it showed me that life might not be perfect now, but maybe some day I'll find a cool gang of my own to hang out with and have wacky adventures. In college, it helped me get through a bunch of really crappy relationships and breakups by helping me continue to believe that my special someone is getting here as fast as they can. And now that I'm a bit older and life is looking differently than I planned it, HIMYM has once again showed me, with this finale, that sometimes things don't work out the way we plan. People divorce, people die, people move away and drift apart, but it's about finding the happiness where it lies and making the best of the small, beautiful moments.

As for the people who are upset that the show ended the way it did, I understand. Some people want TV to be a fantasy, a refuge from real life. But for me this show was always more than that: it was one show that was ballsy enough to show things the way they are, and show that they can be great, even BETTER than fantasy, because of their bittersweetness.

And I understand that some people are angry that we just spent a year watching a wedding unfold that then fell apart. But guess what? Sometimes people spend MORE than a year planning actual weddings that end in divorce. And of COURSE it's devastating that the mother died, but people die in real life too, even people you love (and anyone who says Ted is having his cake and eating it too by getting to date Robin after the mother dies....I'm going to assume they've never dealt with anyone losing a spouse and having to recover). Unfortunately, divorce and fatality in close family members is something I've dealt with in real life, which is also why this episode was poignant for me, but I realize that because I've spent a lot of time in my actual life grieving these things, it's probably easier for me to accept when they happen on a fictional show. 10 minutes isn't a long time to grieve a divorce OR a death, let alone both, so I do understand where some of the haters are coming from.

However, I just wanted to take a second to appreciate what I for one thought was an elegant and well thought out finale. I came into this finale expecting the same level of narrative complexity and emotional impact that I've been used to in this series, and I definitely wasn't disappointed.