Let’s get the spoiler disclaimer out of the way. If you haven’t seen the finale to How I Met Your Mother don’t bother reading further. You probably also shouldn’t read this if you don’t want to know the endings to Rosanne, Will & Grace, St. Elsewhere, and Newhart.

I find it ironic that in the days leading up to yesterday’s finale I was preparing myself for the disappointment that the Mother (who we now know is named Tracy) was going to pass away leaving Ted alone after all those years of searching for the One. I never imagined my disappointment would come from Ted pulling a 360 (yes, a 360) by going after the elusive Robin. Sure, that was the ending I would have accepted years ago when the show was almost cancelled and you couldn’t imagine another women for Ted but Robin. But this ending doesn’t work now. Not after I spent every episode this ninth season tearing up and falling in love with the idea of Tracy and Ted.

Unfortunately, shows are on this trend to shock audiences in order to be remembered for the last episode rather than being remembered for all the years that preceded it. Maybe, television writers feel that it’s better to go out with a bang (good or bad) than a whimper. However, this comes at a cost to the fans.

Having been burned before by finales in the past, I have managed to keep my expectations low. Very rarely do season finales live up to the entire series. There are very few that knock it out of the park. As a child, I remember appreciating Newhart’s dream finale and the possibility that St. Elsewhere existed in the mind of an autistic child. I may be biased, but Star Trek: The Next Generation’s “All Good Things…” was a one of the best finales ever. However, most of the times, I just hope for a solid season finale. An episode that is not the funniest or a game changer but one that ties it all together – Cheers, Friends, Sex and The City. But then there are the finales that leave you staring at the television saying WTF just happened – Sopranos and Lost. I think these WTF moments hurt the most when they are our favorite sitcoms. Sitcoms are supposed to make us laugh every week. They aren’t supposed to bum us out without any hope of redemption. Dan dying at the end of Rosanne. Will and Grace not being friends for twenty years. Those are WTF moments. And now, HIMYM joins this list.

When it comes to HIMYM finale, I fall in the middle. It didn’t complete ruin everything for me but that’s only because I will chose to forget the last few minutes ever happened. Leading up to those few minutes, I was on board. I wasn’t surprise by Robin and Barney’s failed marriage. I understood how Robin could distance herself from her group of friends. People work. Have kids. Break up. Sadly, friendships can change if you don’t work at it. Surprisingly, I even accepted Tracy’s death. It was sad and the spoilers prepared me. However, I also think the writers did a good job not making it the dramatic focal point for the episode. I especially liked Ted’s message to his children in terms of appreciating the love he has for Tracy for as long as he can. I didn’t even have an issue when Ted’s daughter said at the end that this was just a story on how much Ted liked Aunt Robin. I actually laughed because that was everyone’s impression for many years. Unfortunately, for me it came down to the last moments when Ted decides to go back to Robin. This will be the part that I will erase from my head so years and years from now I can go back and binge watch this show on Netflix (something I was going to do after the finale but now I need time to recover).

I guess your opinion on the show depends on what the show meant to you. I actually had a friend tell me they liked that Ted went back to Robin because it was always about them. Maybe the purpose of the entire show was for Ted to tell his kids he wants to date their Aunt Robin and the only way to do that was to start from the beginning in order to explain that he loved their mother (and always will) but he also cared very deeply for Aunt Robin. And, as I said, that might have worked for me if the show ended years ago.

The finale didn’t work for me because I felt the show was about an important life lesson – sometimes the person you think you are meant to be with is not the one you are meant to be with. How many of us had an ex or a crush that we thought was the One? How many of us had to struggle, like Ted, to get to a past this? That’s what I thought Robin represented to Ted. He thought she was the One but in the end the there was someone more suited for him out there. And once Ted gave up on the fantasy of he and Robin – he finally met Tracy. Naturally, this concept was ripped away from me within a few short minutes. What’s really disappointing is that the ending felt like a last minute game changer based on network notes rather than the well-panned storyline.

I’m not heartless; I don’t think that Ted should be alone for the rest of his life. If it was the writers’ intention that Ted should be with Robin then I think they should have given more credence to Tracy, especially after building her up her character this past year. Tracy may have been dead for 6 years in HIMYM land but to us fans Tracy died only a few minutes before Ted was at Robin’s window. Fans can’t downshift that fast. Personally, if they wanted to go that route then I would have pulled a Sopranos ending and left an open for the viewers to decide. Maybe after the daughter suggests he date Aunt Robin we see that he looks over to the French horn and smiles. End scene. Or something to that effect. Then fans could speculate if he goes back to Robin or not. Maybe that would have still pissed people off too; but, as I have learned with my finales, I would rather be disappointed by something that doesn’t happen then be disappointed by something that does happen.

The show will always mean something to me but like other finales, I will have to push this one aside and appreciate everything that happened before it.

• The Tender Trap – A Sinatra Movie That Lead Me to Plagiarize
• HBO’s Silicon Valley-Awesome Backwards & Forwards

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