Farewell to HIMYM

Ted has met the woman who will become the mother of his children, Barney and Robin are married, and after nine seasons it is time for the beloved series How I Met Your Mother to come to an end.  Fans are already bidding farewell and recalling their favorite legendary moments.

I especially enjoyed the Hollywood Reporter’s list of HIMYM’s best musical moments. Though for me, the best will always be Robin Sparkles.

HIMYM was the “Friends” of the last decade, that show about young people negotiating their post-college years with the kind of close, committed friendships that help them weather everything from unfortunate tattoos, job disappointments, broken hearts, and the loss of a parent.  Architect Ted (Josh Radnor) was the eternal optimist, always looking for love.  His best friends from college, Marshall (Jason Segal) and Lily (Alyson Hannigan) were the stable, forever-committed couple (I’m just going to forget the misbegotten episodes where Lily left Marshall to pursue her art career).  Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) was the debonair lady-killer of the group, unapologetically committed to as many one-night stands as possible.  And Robin (Cobie Smulders) was a television journalist from Canada, sometime love interest for Ted but ultimately marrying Barney in the show’s season-long wedding weekend. What made it stand out was the narrative innovation, with unreliable narration and nested story-telling and the genuine chemistry between its cast members.  Plus some great catch (wait for it) phrases and useful life lessons.  In the Washington Post, Emily Yahr wrote about what made the show so meaningful to its audience.

In addition to capturing nostalgia, there are many reasons the show caught on with the younger crowd: It launched a thousand catchphrases (“Legend – wait for it – dary”), pick-up lines (“Haaave you met Ted?”) and teachings for 20-something life (“Nothing good ever happens after 2 a.m.”). Overall though, “HIMYM” offered a much more valuable lesson about the importance of adult friendship, as the intense bonding in post-college years means that those friends essentially become your family.

And if you want to catch up on nine years of HIMYM in time for the grand finale, here’s your cheat sheet (not to mention that you can pretty much catch it at any time in syndication).  The characters may be gone, but the slap-bet, bro code, woo girls, suiting up, and of course the goat go on forever.  And a spin-off, “How I Met Your Dad,” is set to premiere next fall.