At Least 'HIMYM' Was Successful in One Regard

The series finale to CBS' long-running How I Met Your Mother has a lot of people feeling a lot of things. There's mild disappointment, blind rage, Carrie Underwood declaring it "perfect!," it really runs the gamut. The sheer bulk of emotions you're probably witnessing on your Internet travels today also seem to be reflective of one thing: A hell of a lot of people watched the How I Met Your Mother finale.

The exact number's 12.9 million viewers, obviously not counting things like people on the west coast who live-streamed it to avoid Twitter spoilers. The episode's numbers also jumped over 50 percent from its ratings last week, which makes sense. When a show's gone nine seasons and been talked about this much (and with such an emphasis on the ending) I'd wager a whole lot of people tuned, in ranging from the diehard fans who devoured every episode even during the more critically maligned seasons, to the people who caught scattered glimpses through reruns on TNT, to a few who'd never seen an episode but wanted to be in on the inevitable conversation that would follow.

According to Vulture's Joe Adalain, the finale did best with women under 35 and terribly with girls aged 12-17 (an aging Ted Mosby might not be their thing). And as Maclean's writer Jaime Weinman pointed out there might be another added bonus to CBS:

Image: CBS