Well, the first episode was all about the narrator character meeting this awesome girl in a bar, falling for her, asking her out and then blowing the date by blurting out that he loved her, and then he finished the episode telling the kids, "That's how I met your Aunt Robin!" Then he takes the whole first season to finally start dating her (after blowing a relationship for a chance to get with her), dated her throughout the second season which was pretty much viewed as the creative and humorous high point of the show, broke up with her and spent seasons 2-9 pursuing relationships with other women, up to and including casual exploitative sex with other women. He got engaged, left at the altar, resumed a relationship with the girl he had dumped for Robin back in season 1, by helping her leave HER fiance at the altar. He had occasional episodes of getting crushes on Robin while she was dating other people. In the 3rd season he pitched a fit when his friend, Barney, slept with Robin months after he & Robin had broken up, and refused to talk to Barney until he was nearly killed in an accident. He then gave Barney encouragement and helpful advice on dating Robin and was the best man at Barney's & Robin's wedding after THEY broke up, dated other people, got engaged to another woman, had a pregnancy scare after cheating on their respective love interests, and got back together. Then the show spent half the 8th & penultimate season first cheering on Barney's quest to get Robin back, then causing Robin to be disturbed by the extremes of his past promiscuity, which she had been witnessing with amusement for more than seven years at that point, all in the name of first making the short notice wedding seem legitimate(Barney & Robin were engaged to and dating other people, respectively, in September of 2012; by the following spring, they were days away from their own wedding), while at the same time, attempting to muddy up Barney, the breakout star character and comic lead of the show, in the eyes of the fans.

During the last season, which largely took place at the resort where Barney & Robin got married, there was a long and torturous plotline where Ted, the narrator, struggled with his resurfaced crush on Robin, to the point where he had taken a job in another city to get away from the soon-to-be married couple, before finally letting go for good. Interspersed throughout were scenes of his future life with the eponymous mother, with stuff highlighting how compatible and perfect for one another they were, as well as her encounters with the other members of the group, suggesting how well she'd fit in. They had many episodes about with Robin & Barney dealing with relationship issues that emerged under the stress of the wedding preparations, and how they dealt with those, overcame them and reaffirmed their devotion to each other (all the while encouraging Ted to move on).

At that point, I, and most long-term fans I know, were hate-watching, because the show was beating old ground to death, hammering home concepts about life and friendships and family and relationships that were practically cliches after almost 200 episodes of a show about those very topics. Characters were being sold out for cheap, typical sitcom jokes, and their development and changes throughout the seasons kept getting lost in service to the caricatures they had become and to force the obviously long-planned ending.

So last night was the finale, where Ted finally meets the eyes of the future mother of his children across the dance floor, where she is playing in the band, and apparently forbidden from speaking to the guests. Then he leaves for the train to Chicago, but it's late, and the same girl shows up at the platform, carrying an umbrella that was a plot device back in season 3, and they meet and hit it off, and he misses the train, and they get together, have kids, blah, blah, blah. Meanwhile, the rest of the episode is all about how Robin and Barney decide they are not happy, have an amicable divorce, Robin travels the world and the gang never sees her again. So much for the last season and a half the show invested in that marriage.

Barney has a bastard daughter which inspires him to put aside his lothario ways and grow up, Robin, who can't have kids and never wanted any, doesn't want anything to do with this group of friends who include five parents, two married couples and her ex husband. And then at the end, as Ted is raving to his kids about how much he loved their mother, and their love got him through all the tough times, including when she got sick and died. At which point the kids tell him "Oh, you're obviously still in love with Aunt Robin. You should totally hit that. Mom's been dead for six years, and we think she's cool so go for it."

The entire show was a fake out from day one. All the little asides and hints about the Mother is just the story of how this guy has been pining for the real love of his life for over twenty years. Oh, and all that stuff on the show, about the wedding that preoccupied over thirty episodes? Didn't matter. The marital couple got divorced in a couple of years, and the girl introduced at that wedding died a little over a decade later.