“It’s Robin Sparkles four, y’all!” And it was everything you could ever want.
So far, How I Met Your Mother has done a brilliant job with revealing Robin’s hidden past as a Canadian pop star, and “P.S. I Love You” was the fitting end of the saga. There were some people a little nervous about how the show would handle it, but I was looking forward to it from the get-go. I claim to be Robin Sparkles’ number-one fan; after all, I have “Let’s All Go To The Mall” and “Sandcastles in the Sand” on my iPod.
The episode starts off with the gang a little worried that Ted is turning into a stalker with this girl he met on the subway. He’s determined that he is in the green when it comes to his Dobler/Dahmer theory. You see, if you do something crazy but the other person loves it, you’re similar to Lloyd Dobler, but if you do something crazy and the other person thinks it’s creepy, you’re more like Jeffrey Dahmer. Ted thinks that Jeanette (Abby Elliott) is destined to be something important in his life, but everyone else thinks he’s a creepy stalker—except Robin, who says there’s a fine line between loving and crazy and that anyone can cross it. She even admits she received a restraining order of 50 meters from a man she loved in Canada.
Cut to Barney breaking into Robin’s teenaged diaries, fighting Alan Thicke and flying to Vancouver and interviewing a series of ex-boyfriends over a box of donuts in a Tim Horton’s. Simon (James Van Der Beek) returns and believes the answer is found in Underneath the Tunes—the Canadian answer to Behind the Music—and suggests Barney watch it to learn more about his fiancé.
Barney finds the tape and watches it with the rest of the gang as they uncover the downfall of Robin Sparkles, watching as she morphs into an Alanis Morissette-esque grunge rocker named Robin Dagger. The fictional music documentary brings on a slew of Canadian stars including Jason Priestly, Geddy Lee, Alex Trebek, Paul Shaffer, Luc Robitaille, Dave Coulier, KD Lang and Steven Page. They all speculate who exactly “P.S. I Love You” is about and Coulier adamantly denies it was about him and is tired of everyone thinking these types of angry love songs are directed at him.
In the end, it’s revealed that Robin fell for Paul Shaffer and gets Barney to admit everyone can get a little stalkerish. We also discover that Ted isn’t the one going all Dahmer on Jeanette, but it is the other way around: Jeannette has been following Ted after seeing him in a magazine article, but this doesn’t creep Ted out and he decides to stick it out with her. Future Ted reveals it was his last mistake before meeting the mother, bringing us one step closer to the ultimate goal of the series. But I have a feeling we’re still a long way from actually seeing her.