How I Met Your Mother

Yeah, I wasn't happy about the end either. I was emotionally invested in Robin as "the one", and when her and Ted split, I basically checked out on the show. Sure, I still watched it, but my heart wasn't in it. It was just the lead in for the show(s) I actually wanted to watch. But now it comes full circle and Robin's it again? Oh, hell no! The online buzz prepared me for the possibility of the mother's death, but this? No sir, I don't like it.

I was pretty confused by the pacing of the finale. It's like, you've essentially done nothing but stall for time for the last three years, and now you want to cram 10 years worth of friendship storyline into an hour? Why the heck weren't you telling us all about these stories between all the couples over the course of the last three years? Did we really need to see 10 weeks worth of story at the friggin bed and breakfast that all amounted to jack squat, since we didn't even see Barney and Robin get married?

I thought the finale itself was fine, although I was a little confused that A) Ted never turned into Danny Tanner, and B) the whole "full circle" bit seems kind of contrived. My real issue was (and will continue to be forever, at this point) the way they strung us along for years with basically no ambition and then rushed to get it all in at the end.

Glad I bailed on this show when I did. From everything I've read, the finale was awful, and cheapened the bulk of the story that came before it.


Here is what I think the fundamental problem for the series was in a nutshell:

They knew WHERE they wanted to go, but had no idea HOW to get there.


This is why American TV sucks for "mystery" shows. The ongoing, we-never-know-how-long-this-show-will-last nature of the beast leads either to shows that are cancelled too soon (e.g., Twin Peaks, Carnivale), or drags on forever where the writers have a rough sense of where the show is going but no real idea of how tehy want to get there with all the seasons in between (e.g., LOST, Galactica, HIMYM). In some cases, they don't even have a clue as to where they're going, they're just making it up as they go along, but continuing to sell the show as if there's a grand plan (e.g., X-Files, Galactica as well).

By contrast, when I watched the UK version of Life on Mars, I got two (2) seasons of an incredible story, that felt complete when it ended. Bam. Done.


I'd say the other problem with this show -- and others like it -- is the bait-and-switch aspect. They sell you up front on a particular kind of story. This is going to be an incredible love story, told as a sitcom, culminating in the guy ultimately finding happiness. To then pull a switcheroo at the end and make it all bittersweet may be true to life, but it isn't true to the bill of goods the audience was sold up front.

Some people are ok with that. I suspect those people would also have been ok with the story ending exactly as it was initially pitched, to both the letter AND spirit of the law (rather than just the former).

But a lot of people, people like myself, do not appreciate being jerked around by writers who feel some need to continually prove that they're more clever than their audience. I don't ask much from television shows. I accept that not every show will have a happy ending. Hell, I welcome that in some cases. The Wire ended almost perfectly, if also perfectly unsatisfyingly. It could've ended at Season 3, too, where we see central characters busted back to beat cops -- but apparently happy, and drug dealers put away while the corrupt politicians who benefited from them walk free.

But this is a ****ing sitcom. Granted, a sitcom with heart (which is why I bothered watching it at all), but still a ****ing sitcom. It's not supposed to be a depressing French film starring Audrey Tautou. It strikes me, based on the reviews/recaps I've read of the show, that the writers forgot that towards the end. Instead of heart, they subbed in pathos. And they did it in a way that didn't hold true to the story they'd been telling for several years. So, bad enough that they broke faith with the viewers by giving them a depressing ending or -- at best -- a bittersweet one. They did so really poorly.

Some people will undoubtedly defend the show by saying "It's about the journey, not the destination." To this, I have three responses.

1. The destination was in the damn title, so don't try to tell me it doesn't matter.

2. If the show was about the journey, then why did the destination so undermine it?

3. You ever notice that people only ever say this when the destination and/or the journey leading to it....suck?

I was mixed on the finale, while there were some good moments, setting the whole season final at the wedding seems like an odd choice - wish we had gotten more of the mother. Guess the actual last slap was for us, hahaha...

Here's another take on it:

Series finale review: How I Met Your Mother - Last Forever: How they conned us all

I definitely have mixed feeling on how things ended up. On one hand, I'm glad that they didn't milk the mother's death (can we call her Tracy now? - nah) like I thought they might. On the other, the short selling of Barney/Robin's marriage really seemed like they pulled the rug out from under us - all that build up and all the belief that Barney was a changed man (although there was a possible redemption with the birth of his daughter - which Robin couldn't give him).

I didn't hate the last season, I enjoyed a great deal of it - it was a schtick that could've failed miserably (and it did wobble at times). The problem is that they could never give us all what we wanted - too many of us had ideas and thing's we wanted for closure - I think for the most part it worked well enough, regardless of the fact that we all wanted something else.

I wanted more of Ted and the mother - I think the flash forwards were too quick and there wasn't enough of the two of them - not enough to get a sense that she was the one. ...and I do think she should've been the one; Robin was a consolation prize. I don't like the idea that Robin was the one after all that, I've no problem with them ending up together at the end (and no problem with her realizing Ted was the one she should've ended up with) - but with the idea that while Robin was (almost) always there - the mother was the great big love of his life; trying to make it Robin cheapens (a bit) the entire kids existence (in a way).

I'm babbling - but it's not like I'm writing an essay, here. I guess in the end, I'm glad it ended this way - although a part of me wishes Barney and Robin would've worked.

I kinda thought "T.M." stood for The Mother.

I read Alan's post. His reviews and attitude re: this final season largely mirrored my own. He quit watching a lot sooner than I did, but I quit watching as well, and I'm glad I did. But I agree with his analysis from what else I've seen about the episode, and how it pays off the series.

I get what the creators were trying to do, but:

A. It's not a story in which I'm at all interested.

B. It's not the story they said they were telling me when they started telling me the story. And had I known that they were telling me Love In The Time of Cholera: The Sitcom, I'd never have watched at all.

C. I actually don't think that their narrative effectively worked, given the ending they ultimately wound up with. Much of the character development is tossed out the window by the ending, and basically the entire 9th and most of the 8th seasons are rendered pointless.


I think (C) could've been dealt with had they written the story more effectively. They could've led into the finale a lot better if they hadn't spent two or three seasons getting Barney and Robin together and all the hoopla around that. Likewise, if they hadn't introduced the Mother at all, and had just had her as some non-character at the train station saying "Hi, my name is Tracy" and that's it, at least it would've fit better into the existing narrative structure.

But even then, I still maintain that (A) or (B) would've been alleviated. This is not a story I wanted to hear. This is not a story I find entertaining. This is not how I wanted to spend my time. It may be artistic (or would have been, had it been executed far better), but I do not appreciate being BSed for 9 seasons.

Well, the story wasn't called 'How You Wanted Ted To Meet the Mother.' While I do agree with some points some folks are bickering about - I can only think that this series mirrored life - you don't know how or why it ends up the way it does. I loved the HIMYM ride, glad I jumped on board and didn't quit on it.

I didnt mind the ending. What I didn't like was the whole series leading up to it. The reason I didnt mind what happened was by the time the mother came into it. I wasnt really bothered about her character. I felt the whole series was full of completley random fillers to get to the end. We got to a point were we didnt feel as attatched to the characters anymore. Perhaps it was the series. Perhaps it was too much of a good thing.

Theres usually a big build up to what happens in a finale. Where as I was bored of the whole wedding episodes. We kept saying is this wedding ever going to happen... We're bored already.. The series last few episodes should have been at mclarens (we actually thought it was going down hill from last season). The 'sonofabeech!' Joke was also starting to get on our nerves eventually. Rather then flashbacks to random stories just so there was mclaren footage. Meaning random story timelines and plots that werent related to the current timeline.
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I felt the barney and robin thing was too rushed when they fell out. And when it happened I knew right away what was going to happen to the mother. Like I said. I dont dislike the episodes at the end. I just didnt like the lead up from the season start.
Still.. on a whole me and my partner thoroughly enjoyed it. Even though the whole last season we were really just sticking with it to find out what happens at the end. Im glad I watched it from the start.

J

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"More like 'How I Settled for Your Mother After I Accidentally Knocked Her Up After Robin Turned Me Down. Repeatedly.' Amirite???"

Best summary of the show i've seen yet

Let me clarify here.

I don't mind -- in an abstract sense -- that the story ends a particular way. Writers can and should tell whatever story they want to tell.

What I object more to is how effectively this story was told. Seasons 6-9 have, in large part, been about getting Robin and Barney back together, and Ted letting go (slowly) of his feelings for Robin while realizing that she's not the right woman for him. So, the writers have spent several seasons -- including a single season devoted to detailing every freaking hour of the wedding itself -- doing all of this....only to basically undo it in appx. 45 minutes.

To me, that's ineffective storytelling. They've wasted the audience's time -- especially this past season -- showing largely irrelevant things. They undermined the character growth that happened in those seasons with the events of the finale. Robin, Barney, and Ted all revert basically to the people they were at the start of the show. True, Barney MAY have found redemption in his daughter, and Robin MAY be more open to a real relationship with Ted, and Ted MAY be more confident where the story ends, but essentially, all the growth they went through gets tossed out the window. It seems jarring and calls into question the point of the previous seasons when you have them revert to Season 1 form. That said, if they'd been able to more effectively show how these transitions happened, I can see where the story MIGHT have hung together better. I may not have liked it, but at least I could see the A-to-B-to-C of it without feeling like it was poorly told.


My other objection is the bait-and-switch aspect. I really, REALLY dislike getting jerked around by a show. Don't tell me you're going to tell a particular story, and then fail to deliver both the letter and spirit of that story. Don't spend years setting me up for a given ending only to yank the rug out from under me. It's not so much that I dislike when a show doesn't end the way I want. It's that I dislike when a show misleads or lies to me about where it's going. Had I known this would be the destination, I wouldn't have taken the journey in the first place. Destinations matter. They matter just as much as the journey, because they are part of the journey. You can't separate the two and claim that one doesn't matter. And in this case, it strikes me that the writers basically misled me by suggesting from the outset that the story would be something very different from what it ended up being. We had a bargain, and they didn't live up to their end. Or at least, that's how I feel.


Like I said, I don't begrudge anyone their enjoyment of the show, including the finale and the last season. If you dug it, good for you. I'm actually kinda jealous. But for me, the whole last season and what I've heard about the last episode...yeah, a part of me wishes I'd never even started watching this show. Feels like my time's been seriously wasted.

Having had time to mull over this, I think I've mostly grasped the problems I have with it. In addition to what others have mentioned (the bait and switch, the undermining Barney's growth, etc) it suggests that the entire series was a lie. Ted has been shown repeatedly to be an unreliable narrator (sandwiches for example) so for all we know Ted lied to his kids. As Penny said, the story's about how awesome Robin is, not about Tracy. The whole thing could be nothing more than Ted lying to the kids about how he loved their mother more than anything and Robin's just an awesome consolation prize when what's presented on screen suggests that Tracy was the consolation prize. He's being manipulative with the story and the kids get conned by it the same as the audience got conned by the presented premise.

I just don't think Ted would've ended up with Robin had the mother lived - it became a matter of convenience that she died and Robin was single (and we didn't get much of Robin's story at that point - there may've been a whole string of guys and another marriage). Just because Ted showed up at her place with the blue horn doesn't mean that they hooked up (although it's blatantly apparent that's what the creators implied).

I don't get the venom some fans are having (but, then again I also hate the Nolan Batfilms and Man of Steel with a passion)... I thought there were some turns that we didn't like or predict - but, so goes life. This wasn't the story of Ted and the mother, this was the story of five friends and I'm glad I was along for the ride.

I just rewatched the finale and I have to admit, I hated it less than yesterday. What made me mad today was knowing the shows ending. But before the tears start, lemme just ask? Has anyone made any props from the show? Say Blue French Horn?


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Why didnt they just end it with Robin as their adopted mother coming into scene? That's an improvement on his own children telling him to be with Robin instead of:

The whole damn show was just a framing device for a widower to tell his kids that he'd pretty much wanted to nail his ex the whole time.

Click to expand...

People Are So, So Pissed About the How I Met Your Mother Finale

You'd have to be blind to not see they'd end up together and I've only seen a hand full of episodes.

A friend sent me the video I linked to below that actually avoided a lot of the headaches by basically eliminating the voiceover bit about "when she got sick," and then ending it with them under the umbrella talking. I think if that's how it had ended, there'd be a lot less venom for the finale. People would still be annoyed that we spent a whole damn season on a wedding (much of it rather annoying in the first half of the season), only to undo the wedding about 15 min into the finale, but the look between Barney and Robin being basically ok would've at least kinda sold it, and the group being back together at that point would've made it seem like, yeah, they drift apart, but never fully leave each others lives. And Ted would've gotten a real happy ending.

Maybe some day someone will do a fan edit of the series, eliminating the pointless episodes (E.G. Burning Beekeeper, pretty much all of Season 9), and the actual ending, with this instead.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/0caCEG1nH3E?feature=player_detailpage

As predicted way back when...?


(I know, I know: Ted isn't "still single").

I gave up on this show early on due the excess of schmaltz and moral message beating that seems so popular in US mainstream sitcoms. What is up with that?

It is interesting, though, that the show blew the finale by a determination to stick with the early planned ending. Just goes to show that can be as big a mistake as those shows who winged it throughout (Galactica, Lost etc).

Easy to blame the writers, but when cancellation, or unexpected continuation are totally out of your hands, any sort of 'mystery' show must be a nightmare to run.