Vindication

How I Met Your Mother's series finale aired on Monday. Would it live up to expectations? What fate awaited the characters we have followed for nine years? Bays and Thomas said there would be a message of hope, and fans who stuck around this long would be rewarded.

What I couldn't have known is, they meant fans like me. We have long been berated, scorned, and ridiculed for wanting Ted and Robin to end up together. Many deserted our ranks, but I was on Team Blue French Horn until the bitter end. And when all hope seemed lost, we were rewarded for persevering. We were finally vindicated after all this time.

The old adage "he who laughs last laughs best" rings so true. I have to admit: knowing the arrogant Ted/Robin detractors who ridiculed us for years finally got their comeuppance increased my enjoyment of the ending considerably. Here is a sample of the brilliant pieces of critique written by one of them:

"The [Ted/Robin] shippers refuse to see what's in front of them and somehow instead manage to see what isn't there.

I get the feeling some of these people are poorly skilled in symbolism, common sense, irony, reflection, introspection, spatial reasoning, general reasoning, memory recall, and general social interactions.

They somehow instead specialize in delusion, irrational chaining of information, and misinterpretation."

The same person also wrote:

"Yup. They [Ted/Robin fans] somehow ignore every single intention of the writers, completely miss the theme, purpose and message of the show....then come up with some wild theories they string together with bits and pieces of things that did or didn't, may or may not have happened."

This is the very definition of poetic justice.