How I Met Your Mother: The End of the Aisle (9x22)

This is the last episode before the finale! It was... very sentimental. And it included Robin and Barney's actual wedding!

A mere half hour before the wedding, Barney and Robin are both freaking out. Robin insists that it's a bad sign that Barney couldn't magically give Robin her missing locket. So, Ted gives the locket to Barney and tells him to give it to Robin. He does so, but Robin talks with Ted privately, revealing that she knows he was the one who found it. Ted briefly tells Robin the whole story of how he got the locket, right down to diving into the river to get it back. Robin says that maybe she's supposed to be with Ted, since he got her the locket back. However, Ted refuses to run away with her.

Robin decides to run away by herself, but she runs headlong into The Mother on the way out. The Mother encourages Robin to take three deep breaths before making any rash decisions.

Meanwhile, Barney is struggling to perfect his vows. Lily and Marshall try to help him, but Barney points out that they've broken all of their vows to one another over the years of marriage. They decide to make new vows, promising to keep updating their vows throughout a lifetime of changes. They promise to always love each other, and to fall in love with each other more each day.

Barney witnesses this loving exchange and goes to talk to Robin. He promises Robin to be honest with her from now on. At the ceremony, Barney has one last freak-out, which Marshall ends by giving Barney the last slap from the Slap Bet. The wedding goes wonderfully, and we see that Barney did indeed have a ring bear for the ceremony. However, Robin loves it. The two of them get married.

Cheeeeeesy. But hey, I guess when a show goes on for nine years, you've got to give the writers some leeway when they're wrapping things up. Still, I was rather annoyed at certain elements of this episode.

First of all, how the hell am I supposed to believe that Barney and Robin will be a good, stable couple, when she was considering running out on him literally right before the wedding ceremony? It seems like a little bit of a freak-out would make sense. But Robin suddenly considering Ted as an alternative? Why?! That's so stupid!

Also, the cheesiness got a bit hard to take at some parts, especially when Ted was talking about how love is the best thing that people do. Seriously. It was a liiiitle bit over the top.

But there are nice things about the cheesiness, and there are nice things about this episode. Let's mention some of those.

Lily and Marshall's renewed vows were very sweet. Yes, cheesy. But the good kind, this time. It's a surprisingly genuine and adorable idea, to have them vow to keep renewing their vows. It's true that people change throughout their lives, but a good loving relationship means that the two people find a way to change together, instead of change apart.

Barney promising to be honest! To me, this was finally the moment where I thought I could understand them as a couple. A couple that could conceivably make it. All of Barney's issues are tied up in his dishonesty, and even if he doesn't always keep that vow to Robin perfectly, the fact that he acknowledges the problem and makes a conscious effort to work on it seems to be a good sign for his growth as a person.

Then there were a few other lovely details here at the end: the ring bear was a nice quiet little moment. I expected a more out of control joke to be made of it all, but I actually liked what they did with it. The song that Robin walked down the aisle to was a modified "Sandcastles in the Sand", which I thought was really neat. And I liked the unexpected but totally appropriate final slap, just before the wedding. That seemed to be the perfect way to wrap up that ongoing joke!

I'll stop there. Even though this was cheesy as hell, I still had fun watching it.

7/10