Vows

Robin lives through her long-time-coming wedding freak-out, Ted delivers the locket (but not in the way you think), Lily and Marshall renew their vows (for now), and Barney and Robin get married. It’s the second to last episode of How I Met Your Mother.

Admittedly, I didn’t think Ted went back into the water to fetch the locket in Central Park, but I was naïve enough to think Robin would believe that Barney found the locket and that would be that. Not a chance, not on THIS second to last episode before the whole series finale.

After Robin gets the truth out of Ted, she relives her exi-Stinson crisis and wonders whether Barney is really the right match for her. Ted said some amiable things—he always does—but in the end, didn’t stop Robin from fleeing the coop.

Or rather, trying to. Before she ran headlong into The Mother.

The Mother, ever useful (and almost more useful than Ted himself), encouraged the would-be Bride to take three deep breaths. Because those, she wisely counseled, could change everything.
The conflict resolved as one WOULD expect a conflict to resolve right before the series end, however: with Barney making the vow he should have promised all along. The vow of honesty.

Thirty minutes later, Barney Stinson and Robin Scherbatsky were finally married.
And they had a ring-bear. Bear.
Robin loved it.

Barney decided one true vow was better than many false vows, and Lily and Marshall decided evolving vows were better than vows left in stasis. Married life may not have been as glamorous as they imagined, but it ended up being married life. After realizing they broke most of their wedding vows by natural course of action, they borrowed the altar before the wedding and renewed their own vows, promising to keep renewing them as their marriage changed and evolved and grew. Aww. Vow dare they stay so perfect?
I’ll stop.

The previews almost slayed me. Next week can’t come slowly enough…but yes. Yes, next Monday will air the last ever, new episode of How I Met Your Mother. The kids can finally get up off that couch and change clothes.
Now that I think about it, Ted raised really polite kids, considering they seldom interrupted and, you know, never just got up and left.

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.