The How I Met Your Mother series finale was abominable. How bad was it? When our own Catherine Smyka asked how bad it was "on a scale of one to the series finale of Lost," I answered "It was 3 Lost finales bad."

Lots of people have spent the entire day discussing how badly the finale ruined the show, and possibly their lives. Seattle's Lauren Hoffman gives a great breakdown of the expectations versus the reality of what happened, and Flavorwire wants you to think about the inevitable disappointment of TV finales.

There are so many things they fucked up (the only way Barney learns to finally treat women with respect is by creating one? Oh, fuck off.) But I come here not with questions—I have solutions. There is one way this finale could have knocked it out of the park:

They should have murdered Ted Mosby.

I've never liked him. I wish there was a way to murder him in the first season, but the entire premise of the show hung on his whiny, mopey shoulders. Think of how many times you wanted to watch Ted Mosby die. It's practically every time he was on screen, right?

The series finale should have pulled back to reveal his children talking to his holographic, disembodied head. After sitting through 9,000 hours of his story, one of them would get up, gently kiss the glass container, flip the switch to turn it off, and then dump the entire contraption in the garbage. Both of them would high-five over their newfound emancipation, sell the house, and use the proceeds to travel the world with their dope Aunt Robin after making a pact to never treat their partners with a frightening mix of entitlement and caution the way their father did. They would be better TV characters. They would be different.