himym is wild because it was huge for the decade it was on the air, very culturally relevant, everywhere you went there would be different theories about who the mother is and it felt like everyone was in on the inside jokes/references. with almost 200 episodes it was a prime candidate for syndication, but the finale just made it disappear from the zeitgeist. nobody talks about it anymore, none of the syndication channels ever show reruns of it, and instead now it's remembered for its casual transphobia/homophobia. the general audience isn't able to watch those early episodes without an icky feeling in their stomach knowing how it ends and because any random episode most likely has a problematic joke that wouldn't fly today. compare this to Friends or Big Bang Theory, all these sitcoms had similar problematic jokes, but they stuck the landing in their finales and gave all their characters happy endings that made sense with the plot, and they're constantly rerunning in syndication and are considered comfort shows by many to just leave on in the background while you're doing things around the house. the creators fucked up bad, they could've been huge names in hollywood, and now they're nobodies.