The first girl Ted ever had his eye on, way back in the first season of How I Met Your Mother, was Robin. As we all know, things didn’t work out then and over the years their relationship has gone back and forth from sweet to awkward to downright weird. In the last few seasons though, it’s really been more aggravating than anything else. Of course, with this being the weekend of Robin’s wedding, Ted’s going to be at his most emotionally vulnerable, and those feelings finally reach their peak in tonight’s episode Sunrise.
Last week’s episode left off with Ted realizing that a drunk Barney had escaped from his room, which leads to him finding Robin and taking her on a rescue mission in the middle of the night. Instead of actually looking for Barney though, they take a long, romantic walk in the middle of the night, where Ted confesses everything that he’s been keeping secret over the past year.
While all that’s going on, Marshall is stressing over his fight with Lily. Without Lily in the room, he discusses their issues with the ghost of Lily and the ghost of seven years ago Lily. Marshall realizes that cutting Lily out of decisions has been wrong, and more importantly, he realizes that he wants to be with her far more than he wants anything else in the world.
Elsewhere, Barney spends the episode teaching two random guys how to live. It’s basically what he wishes he could have done with Ted, but these guys are receptive to being shown how to be awesome. Barney takes them to a strip club, then to his tailor, then to a party where he teaches them how to talk to girls. By the end of the night, he’s sobered up, passed along his wisdom and ready to head back to his wedding.
The episode was all flowing along fine, with plenty of comedy and quality heartfelt moments, until the scene where Ted meets Jeanette on the bridge. Then all of a sudden the train falls off the tracks, rolls over a cliff, and crashes on top of all the success of the last few weeks. I wish the last third of the episode could be passed off as some sort of joke, but we’re supposed to believe that is what makes Ted finally give up his love for Robin and get to a place where he can date other women? Not a chance.
First of all, no longer feeling the need to give Robin the locket could be the moment that signifies he’s finally ready to move on. That would be a neat moment to see, and it would definitely get the job done. But instead of leaving it at that, this episode has Ted confess his love to Robin a week after that “major” moment occurs, meaning it has absolutely no significance at all.
There’s also the infuriatingly ridiculous scene where Robin becomes the balloon and floats away. Things should never be that on the nose. Ever. Even if I was still on board with this episode up until that point, I would’ve lost it all when I saw that scene. Considering I was already bewildered at how this episode made its way into the second half of this final season, Robin up against a crummy green screen with terrible effects was probably the single thing that could have made the episode worse.