Am I getting ready to bed? No.

PS I Love You

There was quite a bit of hype around this episode three weeks before its release date (something that excited me given I'm watching the show online since this season has been slow to air on E4) which was due to a. the return of Robin Sparkles and b. the number of cameos from Canadian celebrities. Clearly, this episode is a Canada tribute and while it was lovely to embrace Canadian things, this twenty minute something of a show is maintaining the horror that is season eight.

The first thing wrong with this episode is Janette, Ted's final, horrible mistake of a girlfriend before he meets his wife, although this is actually a blessing in disguise - we are one step away from meeting the mother, unless of course the writers want to piss us off further. I'm glad she's the last one, I just hate the way they meet because I feel it's a ridiculous storyline. The characters should have just referred to Barney's hot-crazy theory rather than the Dobler-Dahmer one. I suppose the writers didn't have much choice of material; they needed something to start the unravelling of Robin Sparkles' downfall.

Which brings us to the essence of PS I Love You:   Robin's descent from a fun, sweet popstar to an obsessive, dark figure known as Robin Daggers. Of course, Robin's mistake in revealing her stalkerish ways for a particular man has Barney diving for Ted's driller so he can access her teenage diaries in a bid to find out who she was insanely in love with. List in hand, he flies to Vancouver to interrogate her previous boyfriends played by guest stars, including James Van Der Beek as Simon, whom we first saw in Sandcastles in the Sand. He reveals to Barney in doughnut cafe, Tim Hortons, that an episode of 'Underneath the Music' (apparently a fictitious show of Behind The Music) sheds light on Robin's mysterious past. 

Securing the VHS tape, Barney returns home to show the gang what he's found. While they're fascinated, I don't think real friends of Robin would be so excited to find out why she became a bit of a dark horse, I think they'd be more concerned than turning the TV up. Robin then tells them she was in love with Paul Shaffer before placating Barney with a kiss and a promise of her love.

This brings us to the final part: when Barney is forced to admit anyone can be obsessive, and Lily confesses to Marshall she "couldn't stand the idea of not meeting him" because she fell for him during orientation in their freshman year and had to find him the next day. I found this part of the episode most irritating because this is not Lily-behaviour and it shatters their "destined" meet-cute. The show needs to stop adding weird bits to how Lily and Marshall met, I mean why couldn't the writers have preserved the mystery behind who lived in dorm 110 and let Lily just discover Marshall by herself?!

Another thing that bothered me about this episode is the amount of inconsistencies. The Lily and Marshall part is one example but to go back to Robin's pop career, she describes her first singles Let's Go to the Mall and Sandcastles in the Sand as "minor hit" and "it tanked" yet Underneath the Music proves the opposite. Either Robin lied to protect herself or HIMYM's writers are new. The only character who bothered to remain consistent was Simon, who reminds us he dumped Robin for Louise Marsh.

To talk about the title of the episode, PS I Love You, I thought Robin Daggers' song was as awful as the episode. The video was ridiculous as well as scary, her singing was horrible (her previous songs were much better) and her dark image is unsightly. To go back to my remark on using Paul Shaffer as Robin's love interest, it may have been comical but had it been just an ordinary guy, I think the whole outlook of the episode and the song would have been more devastating and provided an incentive for her wedding to Barney to fall apart.

This episode doesn't convince me as a HIMYM show due to the inconsistencies, the ridiculous stalker plotline (even if beneficial to Robin's past) and the fact that there are holes in it the writers have failed to address for the last six seasons. The hole I'm talking about is Robin's relationship with her parents and how she moved from one parent to the other. We addressed the issue with her father in s8 e14, Ring Up, and Robin's ex boyfriend Turk mentions to Barney she confided in him her inadequacy problems and her relationship with her mother. This is what we, as the fans (and Barney, who clearly hasn't a clue) don't know about Robin and should know by her wedding day.