How I Met Your Mother

You know what life isn’t?

Television.

Perhaps I should have planned for this article somewhat later, after I had time to digest the passing of a wonderful nine-year series. But in my first reflections, both nostalgic and happy and melancholic and puzzled, I can argue to the best of my ability one thing for certain: season nine, implicitly, prepared us for the series finale.

Because season nine prepared us for the moment. And to live in the moment. And not to follow Ted and his tragic-hero mantra of what-if’s.
Because if Ted had spent the season asking, what-if? If the wedding hadn’t happened, and if we as an audience hadn’t been forced to sit and examine the nitty-gritty details of one moment, one weekend, in time, we too would have constantly thought about the future. If How I Met Your Mother tried to show its viewers anything, it was to live in the present, and not to spend it thinking about the future.

In doing so, you can better tackle the future objectively and unabashedly when it comes. When it is time.

Barney showed us successes can still be finite and successful.

Robin taught us not to budge from the truth.

Lily told us to be here—here—for the big moments.

Marshall demonstrated the power of patience.

And Ted, the power of the present.

Really, all those lessons combined into the LAST moment, the last ten minutes for anyone who counted, when Ted finished his story, said goodbye, and picked up the phone. All those lessons culminated into the story’s finale. Ted’s success happened to be finite, but he went for it anyway. He stayed for the big moments, and kept creating bigger ones. He was patient, he was now, and, in the end, he got what he wanted next.

Yes, I could critique parts of the episode, its ending, or the series’ ending.
But how poignant is the message of our disquiet? Shouldn’t the unsettling teach us something as well?

Because life isn’t television; life isn’t perfect. How I Met Your Mother knew this from the start and gave us a finale to reflect only the real.

"It's...kind of insane how much happened a day in a half."

We finally discover who was in the car with Lily.

Or, rather, whose car it was at all. When Lily called none other than the Captain for help—and Ted was so close, too—she wasn’t calling for an emergency smoke break. No, she wasn’t even calling for someone to talk to.

She was calling to confirm whether or not she would have another child she refused to make a consolation prize.

For all those that thought Marshall getting his way seemed a little unfair, congrats: he, Lily, Marvin—and Daisy (two flower names, all)—will spend one year in Italy as a forever-family. Grazie.

Just in time to witness the spilt secret, Robin’s mother braved a plane flight to make it to her daughter’s wedding. Last episode already told us she would supply Robin’s bridal breakdown; it just failed to mention it would come in the form of confirming her worst Freudian fears. Lily now plays two roles: secret-keeper extraordinaire and the one to tell her best friend that, no, of course you’re not marrying your father, stop listening to your mother! Goodness. Someone needs to learn their manners.

We catch up with the Captain one last time, presumably, before the grand finale. He met his match, proposed to her too, and hired the Von Trapps to tend to his house. What’s more, we discover he would be hopeless at a game of Clue. Colonel Mustard, with the candlestick, on a boat.

CBS did not fail to make clear that there were just three more episodes total: two new, then the finale. Three short weeks before our lives are over for good. Or, so we said when F.R.I.E.N.D.S ended. And Breaking Bad. And, at the end of the day, it makes us wonder what new friend will find their way onto our networks next?

Don't You Forget About Me

80’s montages kill me.

After the drunken night following the last episode, Barney finds his way down the highway, accosts two losers—I mean, young men—and finds a strip club sooner than it takes Ted and Robin to find him again. He takes them on one last go-round the night before his wedding, ensuring protégé might exist in his place.

But I wanted to be that bro in training.

Also, it says so much when you realize he passed on the Playbook in sticky-note form. He had it memorized—although, perhaps, that in and of itself isn’t such a surprise. The most important takeaway? "It's not legendary unless your friends are there to see it."

While Ted and Robin trail the beach to find him (far, far off their mark), we finally witness Ted’s failed journey to find Robin’s locket. In essence, he must relive his three most influential girlfriends on the locket’s trail, only to watch it chucked off a bridge by the crazy Jeanette in the same manner he lost his childhood balloon.

I’m still not clear on WHEN he had the time to fly to Los Angeles and back from the east coast. Perhaps I’m missing something. All the same, he learns to let go of Robin, finally, on the morning of the big day. And in grand John Hughes style, no less.

We never learn who was in the car with Lily. But, we see Lily and Marshall break up, though not before choice warnings on Ghost Lily’s part: marriage isn’t a competition. And if you make it one, the only one that will lose, is you. Don’t make your spouse the opposite team; make them a team player.

Analogies aside, even Marshall and Lily bury their seven-year hatchet on the ceremony’s dawn. Now it’s a countdown to see just how long they can stave off the season—and series—finale.

PLEASE

The labor scenes helped me affirm what we already knew—that Ted found perfect, and they both found for keeps. The duo really seems to indicate they both accept each other’s faults.

Meanwhile, Lily’s on her way out the door and into the passenger seat of a questionable future.

Tell you what; the Farhampton Inn sure gets its share of business. Marked by their meeting, surely, Ted and his wife revisit the suite on the most esteemed—and unintentional—of days. The writers dotted the episode with flashbacks to the labor of their second son, Luke, first daughter Penny in tow on a morning after 2 a.m.

At least he got one Star Wars character into the mix.

In the present 2 a.m., however, Marshall sent Barney into all kinds of drunk trying to stall his fight with Lily. And so, Barney achieved truth serum drunk, a drunk so pervasive he spilled the beans of every major series secret. Most notably among them, he uncovered the meaning behind his vague career path: Please. Literally, “PLEASE,” an acronym that (in layman’s terms) stands for acting as the signature holder on less-than-legal documents so your company doesn’t have to. Evidently, the job—and risk—pays big.

And, of course, that he hired a ring bearER for the wedding. He did NOT say, however, that he didn’t hire a “bear.”

On the other side of the inn, when Marshall finally fails to stall his paused fight any longer, he and Lily fail to make any headway into the argument as it stands. In fact, it turns left and tracks back to the seven-year-old rendezvous to San Francisco. We’re not sure yet how Marshall kept his cool—or where Lily fled, conflict paused yet again—but we know that, in the end, it just has to work out for the longtime couple.

It has to.
Really.
Writers, really.

The Slapate Kid

Get it? Marshall? “Marshall Arts?”

Okay.

HIMYM once again prequels the slap of all slaps, with a very riveting slap-prenticeship story on behalf of Marshall Eriksen, who somehow trained in Shanghai (and Cleveland) for over a year in order to become a Slap master. Goes to show what happens when you take legendary consultation from an eight year old.

Confused yet? Read on.

Marshall, in an effort to scare Barney with his slapability, retold the story of how he gained his slapping prowess and superiority: by training under the tutelage of the three Slap Masters: Red Bird, White Flower, and…The Calligrapher. They maintain the creeds of Speed, Strength, and Accuracy, respectively. And they all mysteriously retired and did not physically age beyond approximately 32.

Red Bird instilled Speed with the slapprentice; then, atop Slap Mountain, deep in the Slapalachian range, White Flower taught him Strength.
The Calligrapher accidentally died, but he was able to give Marshall a succinct explanation of how to aim first.

All to focus Marshall’s energy into his fourth slap, The Slap, for Barney Stinson.

The episode finished with a tear-jerking, soul-filling rendition of You Just Got Slapped, followed by a slap montage (a slaptage) of all the HIMYM slap footage on record.

And that’s still with one slap left.

We don’t have much left of the series HIMYM. How will Marshall fulfill his last slap? Will he have the time before Robin and Barney take their slap-vows on their slap-wedding day? At the slapel? By the slap in next to the slapping shore?

Yes, okay, I’m done. Promise.

Favorite quotes include:

“Huh. That is much [gold].”
- Bar owner

“I wasn’t held slaptive in Shanghai.”
- Marshall

“The Punishing Scholarship of White Flower.”

“Brooooo.”

- The Calligrapher (and most definitely not Ted)

Next episode: Barney cannot tell a lie. Really, that’s all you need to know to get excited.