P.S. I Love You (How I Met Your Mother)

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"P.S. I Love You" is the 15th episode of the eighth season of the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother, and the 175th episode overall.

Plot

Ted tells the gang that he found his destined love on the subway—they were both reading One Hundred Years of Solitude—but lost her at the next stop. Ted hopes to find her again, but Marshall and Lily are unsure of this, especially when Ted reveals he has written details he remembered about her. However, Ted indeed reunites with the woman, Jeanette, after a fire alarm at his Columbia building. He believes that it was destiny, since Jeanette had written down details she remembered about him; but could not figure out which class he was at until the fire alarm rang.

Skeptical of Jeanette's intentions toward Ted, Marshall explains that one cannot force destiny, but instead must let it happen, and he describes Lily's seemingly random choice of picking his door to knock on in 1996 at Wesleyan University. Marshall gets Ted to realise that it was unlikely Jeanette just happened to be at the fire alarm, so she must have been stalking him at that point and pulled it in order to meet him. Charmed by the sentiment, Ted explains his theory that a romantic advance could be "Dobler or Dahmer"; an act is only charming if the recipient finds it charming, making it "Dobler" (a reference to Lloyd Dobler in Say Anything...), but if the recipient is creeped out by it, it is "Dahmer" (a reference to American serial killer and sex offender Jeffrey Dahmer). He is charmed by Jeanette, therefore, her pulling the fire alarm is charming. Robin admits to the gang that she was once a stalker. When she refuses to tell Barney with whom she was obsessed until he admits that anyone can become obsessed, he breaks into her apartment and reads her teenage journals, and is puzzled by the cryptic phrase "P.S. I Love You".

While Barney flies to Robin's hometown of

The episode describes the ultimate decline of Robin's career as Robin Sparkles, who first appeared in the season 2 episode "Slap Bet", returning in the season 3 episode "Sandcastles in the Sand" (also the name of Sparkles' music video) and the season 6 episode "Glitter". Series co-creator Craig Thomas said it would be a "fitting end" to the show tackling Robin's music past.^[2] Dave Coulier's appearance references the theory that Alanis Morissette wrote the song You Oughta Know about him; it also references Coulier's friendship with How I Met Your Mother actor Bob Saget.

Reception

Ratings

In Canada, the episode was watched by 890,000 viewers through

Critical reception

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The episode received positive reviews. Donna Bowman of the A.V. Club gave the episode an A−.^[4] Bill Kuchman of TV.com said the episode provided some of the season's funniest moments.^[5] IGN's Max Nicholson said the episode was "redemption" for some of the show's rough patches this season.^[6] Alan Sepinwall of Uproxx stated that the episode's plot on Robin Sparkles was a "genuine idea" almost as big as her introduction in "Slap Bet".^[7]