Photo: Courtesy of CBS.Introducing: Your Weekly Hate-Like, wherein we expose our deepest darkest feelings about those things we loathe and love in equal measure. Whether it's a tacky product, idiotic film, or a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad celebrity — who we can't help but root for — Your Weekly Hate-Like is a chance to commiserate, roll your eyes, and enjoy the guiltiest pleasures we can think of.
Why, television writers of Hollywood, do you constantly insist upon ruining everything for me? First Dexter, and now How I Met Your Mother — is nothing sacred? I've been a hopeless devotee of Ted Mosby and the MacLaren's gang for almost a decade of my life, and I really don't want to regret it. The relationship was great at first. For most of the show, the characters were easy to invest in (if not always likable), the show's central gimmick was interesting, and the inside jokes were great. To this day, I will never not crack up at Swarley. But, things started to go south — really south — this year.
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It's partly the format: Stretching an entire season of television across a single weekend of plot time was a bold move, but the execution was, well, bad. You should only write 24 episodes if you have 24 episodes worth of material. (Newsflash: How I Met Your Mother fell short.) The result was entire episodes devoted to a single gag, and more flashbacks than even this Lost-loving gal can endure. And, don't even get me started on this Ted and Robin back-and-forth crap. (Actually, get me started).
For the first half of the series, the Ted and Robin storyline felt genuine. They loved each other, but it just wasn't meant to be. Now, watching the two of them drone over their feelings makes me want to pull my hair out one by one. Clearly, the writers couldn't come up with enough material so they decided to play the sickest guessing game of all time on the poor saps who've still stuck with the show. I'm still not entirely convinced that Robin and Barney are even going to go through with this godforsaken wedding and that makes me so angry.
The worst part about all of this is that I hate feeling so angry. I really loved HIMYM, and I wanted the show to go out with an emotional bang. I wanted to spend each episode of the final season reminiscing about how much I loved Barney, Robin, Ted, Marshall, and Lily, instead of praying to the television gods that an electrical fire would render my flat-screen inoperable at 8 p.m. every Monday.
My expectations for the finale have sunk so low that I'm not even upset at the thought that the mother might be dead. The character that the show is named after — and the person we've been not-so-patiently-waiting to meet — has very possibly been dead all along, but at least it's a goddamn plot development. I, as one of the most frequent criers in viewing history, have yet to shed a tear for HIMYM since Barney's proposal to Robin, and it is about damn time for some waterworks. I've just sworn more in this article than all other articles combined, so that should give you some hint as to how deeply I feel about this.
I'm not a total pessimist, though; I'm still holding out hope that my favorite show won't disappoint me in its final hours. So, Ted Mosby, if you're reading this on your fictional computer, you know what to do.