Yes, I'm still mad about the How I Met Your Mother series finale a week later. I spent nine years investing in this show. It's going to take me more than a day to get over the disappointment. It would be like if Pop Culture Dad (who, BTW, I've been with less years than I was Ted, Marshall, Lily, Barney, and even Robin) came home tomorrow and dumped me in an ugly and unceremonious way. Okay... It's not actually that dramatic. But the finale did. really. suck. y'all!

But you know what's the worst part of that horrible finale? We HIMYM die-hard fans have been defending our loyalty to this show for the last couple of years, and these bastards (Thomas, Bays, and the rest of the HIMYM writers) just punched us in the gut and left us lying in the dirt. It's been hard being a HIMYM fan, and now it was all for nothing.

Pop Culture Dad and I actually met towards the end of the first season of HIMYM. I was a fan. He was not. I quickly caught him up to speed and got him in the HIMYM fan club also. Our relationship grew and blossomed with these characters for five years. And then he dropped out. PCD just couldn't do it anymore. The writing wasn't as good as it had been in the earlier seasons. Ted was becoming increasingly more annoying (particularly his on-again, off-again obsessions with Robin). PCD got tired of them not just jumping to how Ted met the mother and getting over it already. Pop Culture Dad would occasionally watch an episode with me here and there, but many times, he would spend the episodes peppering scenes with an interjection of, "This is so stupid!", "Has this show been cancelled yet?", "I swear the only thing good about this show is Marshall and Lily!", "I swear... Ted is the WORST father ever! Why would you tell your kids this story??", and "WHY ARE YOU STILL WATCHING THIS SHOW??". There were a few episodes that proved the exception to Pop Culture Dad's I-Only-Watch-This-Show-When-You-Make-Me rule in the latter seasons: the Robin Sparkles episodes, the Slap Bet, and Barney's proposal to Robin. Pop Culture Dad isn't the only one who expressed these feelings; many people--all former fans--said similar things when they realized I was still watching HIMYM. Only a few of my friends loyally stuck around as I did. We were all disappointed with the ending.

So now what? We stuck around for nine years--the last few of them spotty and challenging--and we got nothing for the effort. All of the justifications we had made for this show have melted away. All of the naysayers have completely valid reasons for saying, "We told you so," and they were right (dammit!). I never thought I would be that chick who stayed in a bad relationship for years and years after all of my friends and family members kept telling me, "He's no good for you!" and I never listened, because I was clinging to the memories of happier days. But there you have it. I was. And I'm pissed that Bays and Thomas made that kind of fool of me!!

Sigh... But the relationship is over. It's dead (much like Tracy McConnell, RIP. Girl, R. I. P...). It's time to move on.

But first, maybe I need some more closure.

Despite our differences in the end, there are some things that I will always appreciate about How I Met Your Mother.

1.  I love that in a post-Buffy, post-Angel, post-Veronica Mars world, I got nine more years of Alyson Hannigan gracing my screen [and, from time to time, even got a glimpse of her lovely husband. Oh Sandy Rivers/Wesley Wyndham-Pryce, how I adore you, too!]. But, let's face it. Even without HIMYM, Willow wasn't going to be absent from the small screen for too long, because Alyson Hannigan is a National. Fucking. Treasure, goddammit!

Aly, I know we're almost the same age and all, but you can totally be my mom, too!

I know, hon. I feel the same way about Thomas & Bays!

Though, if I'm being totally honest, this is how I prefer to picture NPH. And this has NOTHING to do with HIMYM.

3. Jason Muthafucking Segel.
Look, I know he was doing shit before HIMYM. But I never watched Freaks and Geeks or Undeclared until after HIMYM and every Jason Segel role in a movie since then threw me in the Jason Segel fan club. Seriously, the man can do no wrong... Er, scratch that. I watched This Is the End. And that shit was horrible. But Knocked Up; Forgetting Sarah Marshall; I Love You, Man; Despicable Me; Bad Teacher; Friends with Benefits; The Muppets; Five-Year Engagement; This is 40... OMG. He was golden in ALL of it. Every last drop!

In addition to the fact that I am such a huge Marshmallow/Lily Pad fan (and they're only part of the entire series Pop Culture Dad still liked), I love, love, love that fictitious Marshall and I [and my #4] have the same alma mater, even though we would not have graced the halls at the same time [yes, people, I realize that this is fake!! After all, we're talking about a universe in which New York City has all of four minorities. Dahell...].


4. Brad Morris.
Hey, True Blood only airs during the summertime. So any time I can have an extra bit of Joe Manganiello on my television in various states of undress is a good thing.

5. Robin Sparkles. I would go to the mall with her today and any other day.


So... One would think with all these fond memories, the season finale wouldn't have stung so much. But one would be WRONG. Oh so very wrong.

These fond memories are exactly why the series finale felt like one huge, never-ending Slap Bet to the face. There was so much good about this show before it started sucking. And I could have even let the sucky parts go if the season finale had been worthy of even the mediocre parts of this show. But it was sooo very bad. It felt slapped together and rushed. We spent an entire goddamn season on Robin and Barney's wedding, only for the HIMYM writers to slap together 16 years of twists and turns into 44 minutes. It was so poorly done, you would think they were making it up as they were going along. It was a complete disservice to how they've built these characters over the years and how they've grown. Ted going back to Robin makes NO sense to anyone who believes in having healthy, adult relationships [OMG, they were SO toxic together. At least it was true to previous seasons in that Robin wanted Ted only when someone else had him and that Ted was completely Robin's puppy dog for some inexplicable reason. But did these people seriously not grow at all over two and a half decades of knowing each other??]. While I'm less broken up about The Mother (aka Tracy) being dead, since we all pretty much expected that even before the hints thrown out this season, the way her death was treated was so shoddy that I almost feel like they could have forgotten to write in the part where Ted meets her, and the net result might have been the same. Barney spent all these years growing as a man, only to turn back into a major douchebag (in his 40s, no less) the second that callous bitch Robin dumps him, only to then magically reform again the second he has a daughter [P.S. I am willing to bet money right now that the "Dad" in the new "How I Met Your Dad" ends up being Barney. But I refuse to watch another Thomas/Bays production, so one of you will have to let me know in a few years if that prediction was true]. You all already know how I feel about the children's reactions. And we never found out the meaning behind that fucking pineapple.

In co-creator Craig Thomas's infamous fuck you tweet to fans of the show, he says:

We did a finale about life's twists and turns and that is not always what happens...but THANKS!
— Craig Thomas (@HimymCraig) April 1, 2014

Of course, the irony here is that in a finale allegedly about life's twist and turns, it never occurred to the HIMYM writers that when your show goes on longer than anyone ever planned, the characters have developed in different ways from what you originally plotted, and the fans have fallen in love with different expectations (by your design, no less), maybe instead of rolling with an ending you taped nine years prior, you need to roll with the "twists and turns" and give your show an ending that makes sense in light of everything else that has happened over the last decade!

Pop Culture Baby AKA the Happiest Baby on the Planet started teething a few weeks ago. As a result, she goes from giggling and grinning to screaming her head off in a matter of seconds. During one of these schizophrenic-baby bouts, I started pleading with her to start smiling again. Next thing I knew, my inner child-of-the-'80s kicked in, and I was full-on singing

I grew up with awesome black family shows like Good Times, The Jeffersons, The Cosby Show, and even to some extent, My Wife and Kids (well, I was grown, but didn't have a family yet). Now that I have a child, where are the good black family shows?

No disrespect to Tyler Perry, but I just don’t find his “family” shows to be of the caliber of the black family shows of the 70s, 80s and early 90s. There seems to be something missing. I like Tyler Perry movies just fine (some of them, anyway), but his sitcoms just don’t have that element I’m looking for in my black family shows. Honestly, I don’t know what this missing element is – the x-factor. I just know that it isn’t there. Maybe it’s the relatability that’s missing for me? Or maybe it’s just the humor? I’m not sure.

I got the Evans family, the Jeffersons, the Willises (yes, they were a black family, too, or at least a black and white family), the Huxtables, the Kyles, and even the Drummonds (Different Strokes). Those shows and the families portrayed by those black family shows weren’t at all similar. The Evans family lived in the projects and had three teenage kids and, at one point, a mother and father, but at another a mother who was a widower. The Jeffersons were a wealthy couple with one grown son who no longer lived at home. The Willises were a similarly wealthy couple with one child (married to the Jeffersons’ one child) who no longer lived at home, but they were also a biracial family. The Huxtables were a family with two “very comfortable” working parents who had five children, all of whom eventually left the house, and eventually even one adopted grandchild. The Kyles were a similarly “very comfortable” family with three kids – two teenagers and one pre-tween. And lastly the Drummonds consisted of one wealthy white widower, his teenage daughter, and his two black, adopted sons.

All of these families were vastly different, yet there was something about each one of these shows that was vastly relatable. These were the kind of shows that every member of the family would get together to watch. My parents didn’t feel the need to have me leave the room or over-explain any situation on these shows, even when they tackled extremely sensitive and mature subjects. Maybe it’s just the nostalgia talking, but I think it’s because these shows had a certain level of maturity and seriousness – despite their overall comedic tone – that you just don’t see on most television shows these days. It is sad to me that these types of shows don’t exist anymore, because it means – unless and until people start making black family shows like they used to – that my daughter will never get to see any new shows that carry on this tradition of excellence. In the meantime, thank goodness for TV on DVDs!!