How I said goodbye to How I Met Your Mother

By the time you read this, Ted Mosby will have finally met “the mother,” meaning television fans everywhere will have finally said goodbye to the nine year long run of the CBS sitcom, How I Met Your Mother.

Which raises the question: so what? Unlike many other shows that have debuted since 2005 – the year HIMYM premiered – HIMYM has stuck with a style that is seemingly less evolved. Single-camera shows parodying reality TV tropes like The Office, or Modern Family changed the way an audience interacted with the characters and created new styles of storytelling, while 30 Rock and Parks and Recreation brought a new kind of wit and satire to network TV comedy.

In comparison, the canned laughter, small variety in setting, and premise of HIMYM make it all seem a little dated – a little too simple.

But to me, and likely many fans, the show was so, so much more than that. What made HIMYM so great is that it was for the most part, just a funnier version of real life; something that you could learn from.

I learned to laugh at my awkward moments, and as ridiculous as he is, Barney taught me to try and make every night out as awesome as I possibly could.

Filled with theories about dating and friendship, (the hot/crazy scale, relationships are like a freeway), the show profiled experiences most 20-somethings inevitably run into. Accidentally breaking up with someone on their birthday, chasing pests in your house (be they mice, cockroach, or a mix of the two) or keeping someone who likes you on a theoretical “hook” are hard to avoid in life.

This made watching the characters go through more serious issues all the more moving for the very same reason. Marshall dealing with the death of his father, Robin realizing she’s infertile and Barney meeting his real father all represented deeply human moments that we watched the characters grow and evolve from.

It seems to me, that by seeing these events play out from the perspective of a dad looking nostalgically back on his memories, it only made me appreciate the moments I might have otherwise missed in my own life, and the funny stories that have gone along with them.

So maybe I’ve just got “graduation goggles”, but it’s hard not to look back on the last nine seasons and think they were pretty legendary.