I must admit my favorite TV show of all time is "How I met your Mother" by far. Admittedly there were many aspects stolen from the show "Friends" (Which I also enjoyed) but How I met you Mother (I'm going to abbreviate this from now on) seemed to be a much more put together story with less "fluff" episodes and a more precise direction. Friends essentially had the direction of whether or not Rachel and Ross would end up together, but that is never quite a clear ending of the season. With HIMYM, we already know what the ending will be before we even start the show. By the end, we will meet Ted's future wife.

Now, if you have not seen the show all the way through, please stop reading here, because I do not want to ruin the end for you and you must see the ending (and not hear it from someone else, it totally ruins the experience).

Now, if you have seen the ending, please let me know your opinions of the end by commenting or messaging me because I would love to start a conversation on this.

By the third season of HIMYM, the character of Barney Stinson has started to evolve and change. Suddenly he has feelings for one woman rather than every woman in New York.

It's true, the first time Barney and Robin get together, their relationship is not very good. They're always screaming at each other and not really supporting each other. Their break up is a little interesting in that they do love each other, but for some reason, they are killing each other's personalities.

Then for a season Barney goes back to his old self and his playbook. We learn more and more about Barney's character and the focus on Ted seems to drift from him to Barney. Ted goes through several girlfriends in this time: Stella, Zoie, Victoria, Janette, Karen and several others. Barney, on the other hand, goes through one major girlfriend other than Robin: Quinn. In this, he almost gets married and when he finally breaks up with her, he realizes the only woman in his life is Robin.

Robin also goes through some character development when she dates Don and finally chooses a man over her career (Which she never does again). When Don dumps her she only gets more attached to her Job. That, and she suddenly gets the hots for Barney again. (Which was completely manipulated by Barney).

The interesting thing here is that Ted never really stops loving Robin. It does seem like he doesn't care the first time Robin and Barney and dating, but the second time they start he seems extremely hurt by it. Now I'm not trying to complain about this. I completely believe that feelings for a person can come and go and change over time. This is totally normal. Sorry for that rant. Back to Robin's character developing. After breaking up with Don, she goes back to her old self, though slightly changing to be more like Barney's character. I can't decide if this was just the Writers trying to make Barney and Robin more compatible so it seemed practical for them to get married or what.

The ninth season is technically only a few days long in the show's time. Robin and Barney's wedding is full of many different events, mainly that of all of Ted's friends meeting Tracy (Ted's future wife) before he does. During this, Barney and Robin fall more in love and as an audience, the more we want those two to end up together and Ted to move on and meet his future wife.

We finally get to "The end of the aisle" and Barney and Robin are married. The very next episode crushes our hopes of them being happy when the two of them announce that they got a divorce. The first time watching this show, I was very upset by this. Yes, it's probably true that Barney's character would get divorced, but the interesting thing is that it isn't Barney's fault for getting divorced. From what it looks like, Barney gave up his career and he follows after Robin wherever she goes, but the job is destroying him. He doesn't get enough time with her. From this, we can see that he truly loves her, but her job is destroying his happiness, so when she gives him an "exit" he takes it because he can't handle being unhappy anymore. This frustrated me to no end. Robin gave up her dream job for Don, but she couldn't do it for Barney. Barney's character has met his fulfillment, and essentially I think Robin meets hers. Her job matters more to her than Love ever did.

So what does Barney do from here? Well, of course, he goes back to his old ways. That was his happiness before Robin, so it makes sense. And Robin is sad that all her friends are moving on and being happy when she herself is not happy. She made the mistake, and I think she realizes it. That's why I think she starts to long after Ted because if it had been Ted that had married her, Ted would've stuck with her (at least in her mind) and he would've stayed. Though, if we thought about it, Ted wouldn't have been happy with her either. He wanted kids. He wanted to settle down. Robin wouldn't have done it. Barney would've done more than what Ted would've. (Though perhaps in Ted's mind he would've done anything for her, but I think in reality he would've been very unhappy with her).

So this brings me to the end of the show, where we finally meet Ted's wife and Ted finishes the story for his children. We figure out that the entire point of the story was to see if his kids were okay with him going after Robin again. So we come back to the title. How I met your mother. Is the mother really Robin that Ted is talking about? It would make sense as most of the story is about her. I do think it is beautiful that Ted has a line in there, something about "You just keep on loving them no matter what" and he does this for Robin. Yes, romantic and precious, but... I still don't think Ted would be happy with her unless she figures out that he career is not the thing she has to chase after. Perhaps she finally does figure this out, it just took years to figure it out. So perhaps she and Ted were supposed to end up together.

It still puzzles me why the show would develop Barney so much and practically make him the main character in season 9. Anyone else feel this way? Then again I suppose this is life. Sometimes we do develop our character but eventually do we hit a plateau? Or maybe we go back downhill?