Editor's Note: This article contains spoilers for How I Met Your Mother and

Season 1 of How I Met Your Father.

It's pretty normal for sitcoms to not age very well. That doesn't really have much to do with any political or social reasons; it's just because people's tastes in comedy change insanely quickly. Look back at any one of your favorite comedies from the early 2000s, and you will see that a lot of jokes don't hit as hard as they used to. It's the natural process of humor and why comedies can be so hard to make. How I Met Your Mother is one of those cases. Looking back at the series, it's easier to see cracks in its armor now that it's not being watched week-to-week over the course of 10 years.

For example, a lot of Barney's (Neil Patrick Harris) jokes just aren't that funny anymore. They rely a lot on the "LOL So Random" humor that was popular at the time. But the thing that has aged most strangely in the show isn't even the comedy, it's how it treats one of its lead characters: Robin Scherbatsky played by Cobie Smulders.

Robin enters the show as a love interest for Ted (Josh Radnor) that ultimately doesn't work out. After Robin and Ted eventually start dating and break up, she became a nuanced role within the core cast of friends. She was actually an inversion of a lot of love interest tropes on sitcoms from the previous decades. Yes, at first she has that girl next door aesthetic, but as the show went on the layers of the character became unwrapped and showed just how strange and cool she is. It's surprisingly underplayed and groundbreaking how the lead female character in a sitcom has character motivations around wanting to focus on her career in friendships instead of a family life.

Cobie Smulders How I Met Your Mother

A lot of television shows kept women in comedy in the roles of housewives or love interests. There's nothing wrong with spending your life that way, or having those type of goals but the over-dependence of it in television has become problematic as years go by. Meanwhile, Robin is a gun-toting, cigar smoking, whiskey drinking, Canadian.

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Viewers do discover later on that part of the reason she ended up this way is that her father wanted a son, and she always tries to meet that expectation. She was also a failed one hit wonder singer who was kind of jaded to the world after seeing how it treated her as a young celebrity. It's a really refreshing change of pace because it changes up the types of stories that are being told with female characters in comedy.

The problem is the show went on, and the writers just had no ideas of what to do with her and move her forward instead of flanderizing regression. It was progressive and different to have a character who wasn't overly concerned about relationships and didn't want kids. But the show never felt confident in any of her character arcs, which made the point moot. They knew where she started and how she would end up being with Ted early on in the series, and because the show went on for 10 seasons, this reveal didn't feel earned because Ted and Robin have already moved past this ending.

It could have been cute if the show ended about five years before it did. But as the seasons went on, Ted and Robin had broken up and gotten back together multiple times, same case with Barney and Robin and those two even got engaged and married in the show. All of that in theory is pretty good because viewers got to watch slowly over the course of 10 years how Robin changed to want to reach that point and get married. It shows a lot of well-written characterization that she eventually wanted to marry Barney of all people. But about 15 minutes of screen time after she got married, she and Barney were divorced.

Cobie Smulders in a wedding dress in How I Met Your Mother
Imaga via Bays & Thomas Productions and 20th Century Fox Television

Not only were they divorced but Robin spends the rest of the series finale of How I Met Your Mother terrifically sad and alone. She's openly disappointed with how her life turned out and is upset that she has a successful career but no one to share it with. The last scene of the show put her right back in the place that she was on the very first episode, living alone with a bunch of dogs in a pretty nice apartment. Which again, isn't a problem in theory and are admirable goals, it just didn't fit for Robin anymore. The writers didn't judge her for wanting this type of life. But the finale makes this lifestyle sad and pathetic. Robin deserves much better than that.

It would've been cool if she was content and happy with her life. But she's just shut herself in more and more, and it's really sad to see such a fun character that's been beloved by fans for many years end up having a fate where they're just alone and sad forever.

She even tells Lily (Alyson Hannigan) that the reason she doesn't want to hang out with them anymore is because her group of friends are her ex-husband, ex-boyfriend, and a married couple. It's a pretty understandable emotion, especially for someone who's going through a divorce. But it always felt so out of place for Robin not wanting to see Marshall (Jason Segal), Lily, and Ted anymore.

How I Met Your Mother- Cobie Smulders & Neil Patrick Harris & Allyson Hannigan

To make matters worse, her surprise roll at the end of How I Met Your Father Season 1 makes all of this more depressing. The episode she appears in at the end of the spinoff takes place about 10 years after her wedding and about eight years before she and Ted get back together. At least that is the case within the show's timeline.

She's just sitting alone in the same bar she used to hang out with her best friends in every episode of the original series. Drinking by herself, staring at the booth she used to spend so much time in. Asking strangers, like How I Met Your Father's lead Sophie (Hillary Duff), about their love life and crazy relationship stories. She tells the bartender that she has fans and is excited to be recognized for her career as an anchor woman by Sophie, but the bartender just rolls his eyes.

After hearing Sophie's story, she gets up and proposes that maybe they should meet at the bar again in another 10 years. Because she's expecting to spend another decade alone in a bar, missing her friends. What's sad is because of how the original series ended, we know she's almost right she's just off by a couple of years.

Then we have the final scene of the original show that takes place after that. A scene that was written and partially shot many years before the episode aired.It was written back when it would make sense for Robin and Ted to get back together. But as mentioned earlier, this reunion does not feel happy. It's mostly reminiscent of the ending of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Yes these characters we like are back together and that should be good, but when you look at the context of the entire story you know these characters are just going to try and fail again. History doomed to repeat itself over again.

Robin Scherbatsky was a badass, she was hilarious, charming, and rich with a hilarious backstory and character arc through most of the show's run. But her ending is just too much. It's not fair that she was punished so hard, Robin Scherbatsky deserved a happier ending. The best we can do is cross our fingers and see that Robin's life eventually did get better by the end of How I Met Your Father if she sees Sophie again. That would be legendary.