And now for something completely different…

It’s been a week and most people have gotten over the shock of the How I Met your Mother series finale. There are gazillions of opinions on the internets about the show and whatnot but this was one of my favorite shows and it resonates with me. Thus, my $0.02.

Hindsight is 20/20 and hindsight can be a real bitch. Many things are a real bitch, but clarity on things past is one of the nastiest known to humans.

That type of clarity can be cold and unforgiving. Regrets, miscues, missed opportunities and saddest of all, broken relationships. Life is lived forward and understood backward but that understanding often comes as the second chance at living correctly.

In How I Met Your Mother, the series ends up being (and where the digital wailing and gnashing of teeth begins) of the father reliving stories about his wife who has passed on and when called on it by his daughter, reveals he wants to ask out their Aunt Robin. The ending circles to the beginning with Ted outside Robin’s apartment, blue french horn in tow.

Type in #HIMYMFINALE on twitter and the responses are beyond amazing. Mostly negative, some positive but all personal, it’s CBS’ biggest dream come true to have that type of emotional response to a show.

The most interesting word in many reviews, for me, is betrayal. Fans and critics feel betrayed that the show turned out the way it did. Some say the finale betrayed the ideals of the show, others claim it betrays the fan’s relationship to the Mother, who was just introduced, then taken away. Right or wrong, that’s quite the word to use for a television show finale.

Betrayal comes from a failure to keep a commitment or expectations. Promises and vows that were sealed are unsealed. In this case, did the show turn back on its commitment in telling the story of how Ted met the mother of this children?

Well, no, with more major caveat.

Most shows, movies, book and etc work under the idea called suspension of belief. This means that by watching the show or reading the book, the reader/watcher agrees to the narrative framework set up by the writer. One will buy into whatever is coming his/her way to be in the story. The only trick is that the writer can only do this once, if there are too many “suspensions,” then the reader won’t engage.

With HIMYM, audiences were fully engaged with the characters and with the story. However, where much of the betrayal is coming from is audiences not engaged fully with the most influential character on the show: Not the Mother, but time.

In order for HIMYM to fully work, the watcher has to accept time on the show’s standards. Thus, the present day was 2030, and in our present day of 2014, Ted and the Mother (her name is Tracy McConnell but it’s hard to call her that since she was the Mother for so long. For me, that is one knock on the last season.) are together with baby Penny on the way.

With time, what’s true that one time is true that one time, but it isn’t true all the time. (How’s that for a little blog wisdom?!). Meaning, in that moment, that’s what happened, that’s what was felt and that’s what mattered. So, in 2005 when the show started, Ted and Robin did meet and did try to make it work and eventually couldn’t make it work. Then, Barney fell for Robin and during that time, they tried to make it work. The same is true for the Mother, who lost her first love in 2005 it took her years to regain a sense of finding companionship again.

For the ninth season that was the weekend of the wedding, in that moment, Ted did have feelings for Robin but let them, and her, go. It meant leaving for Chicago but that’s what the times called for. And, despite the last-minute hesitations, Barney and Robin did get married.

It’s tough in translating these movements of time in a linear format such as television and that’s where most folks are getting lost in translation and thus, the sense of betrayal. Of course, if we spent most of this brutal winter watching Robin and Barney get married only to have that fall apart within the first 15 minutes of the finale, there is a strong sense of cognitive dissonance. Frankly, it wouldn’t surprise me if the creators aimed for that to a certain degree.

But, in the eyes of the narrative, it was three years and for them, that was enough.

In my opinion, embracing all the narrative (time and all) helps to recognize what the show was really about: HIMYM is a story about letting go.

For me, the key part was in season nine in “Vesuivus.” The Mother tells Ted that she’s concerned, saying “I don’t want you to live in your stories forever. I want you to move forward.”

It was subtle but that’s the key. Ted is telling the story of how he met his mother to remember and preserve her memory but also to let her go to face the future. Ted tells all the stories about everything the gang ever did: The slap bet, Robin Sparkles, the pineapple incident (Whatever did happen with the pineapple?) and one of my favorite episodes, The Leap, because they are all a part of his memory and what makes him who he is at that present time.

And when that time passes, it doesn’t make him that person anymore.

It’s not that Ted has been in love in with Robin all this time and the Mother was a placeholder. The title of the show might be a fake-out, as actor Josh Radnor put it, but I think he really did let Robin go and full fully in love with Tracy. That seems to be Ted’s way, all in with no pretenses or excuses.

It just so happened that all of this was shown in a 44-minute setting. Time-wise, that’s pretty jarring. Then again, isn’t that true of all our stories? Our stories about funny events with our friends are often, well, short. But the reality of them, the life that’s filled with time that we try to encapsulate in a small moment, is both long and deep and there’s no way to bring it back We just hold it for a moment, then let it go.

I think that’s what allows the kids to tell their father that he should move forward. In the time of HIMYM, it was six years since Tracy’s passing. The question isn’t if that is an appropriate time to move on or not but rather, was it the right time? And for Ted, it was.

The characters are roughly the same age as me, so I feel I’ve grown up with this show. I did leave during some of the latter seasons (because seriously, I couldn’t stand Zoey and Barney’s antics were often a little too much) but I watched faithfully this past season and I’m glad I did. I haven’t met the mother of my children on a train station in a fictional New York town but I have lived my 20s and 30s in an urban environment with many of my friends and I can relate with Ted’s quest for love.

So, like the show says, it’s time to take the leap, get to the station and say hello.

*Also, you gotta applaud Carter Bays and Craig Thomas for playing out with the Walkmen.*