How I Met Your Mother

[Lord Dalek]

Truly a great finale on the scale of Newhart and Seinfeld. So many feels...

[Spark Of Spirit]

*Cough*

[Daxdiv]

*Cough*

*Rubs back of neck like Hank Hill*

So... uh... why wasn't Future Ted Bob Sagat again?

[Avaitor]

This is how the show ended.

Nope, nothing else happened. Nope.

[Spark Of Spirit]

There was a pretty good comment I read about it:

Creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas had a plan from the beginning, a plan they couldn't deviate from, which led to misdirection, says Alan Sepinwall. "The problem is that at a certain point the misdirection became vastly more entertaining than the illusion it was designed to facilitate, and as a result we just wind up feeling tricked, and annoyed, and wondering why we went along with all of it, when we should have known from the very first episode ? from the Aunt Robin joke that got us into this gigantic mess ? that this was a show that would not hesitate to make us feel tricked. And once upon a time, when we and 'HIMYM' were younger, that was fun, but at a certain point, like the idea of Barney Stinson still having a Playbook in his 40s, it's just sad." PLUS: The finale bailed on the entire show, the finale turned the entire series into an elaborate con job, what a hackney last-minute plot twist, this was the worst possible ending, and it should've been called "How I Settled For Your Mother."

Basically, the ending should have changed as the characters grew. Keeping it the same makes most of the series inconsequential and pointless.

Why couldn't they just have kept it simple and to the point instead of concocting that?

[Avaitor]

I still love this show and I still love these characters. Even Robin. Even Ted. Even Tracy, and I truly wish Cristin Milioti the best. She was fantastic and deserved better than this.

But this isn't what How I Met Your Mother was leading to. Not at all. If the show ended 7 or even 5 years ago, maybe it could have worked. But the Ted Mosby and Robin Scherbatsky of this point should know better.

[LumRanmaYasha]

I don't think I can overlook how years of character development for Ted, Robin, and Barney were utterly destroyed in a single hour.

It'll be on the back of my mind whenever I watch reruns of the show. I don't think I can just...forget that all this time, all that build up and character development, all of it was for naught for an antiquated ending that did not fit what the show and these characters had become. Character regression is the single biggest thing that infuriates me in a story. While I loved this show so much, this ending has done a lot to damage exactly what I loved about it. I guess I'll have to see how much entertainment I can still draw from the show on re-watches, but I don't think I can be a fan of it anymore. 

[Avaitor]

I actually did try out a couple of episodes earlier today, and somehow the finale is already removed enough from my mind for them to still entertain.

I might get into another rant later anyway, but I'm not sure. It's still...

[Spark Of Spirit]

I never understand finales like this or Seinfeld or Newhart. People don't want to be "surprised" by finales, I thought that was well known. They just want the logical progression to reach its normal end.

Just, like, end it. How hard can it be?

[Nel_Annette]

It was a killing spree ending, wasn't it? NPH finally realized he was a better actor than the others, and just blew them all away, didn't he?

[Spark Of Spirit]

The only person who died was the mother.

The whole point of the show.

[Daxdiv]

Then it's revealed that he told this story to his kids because he still held a torch for Robin after all those years (which kind of shits all over the "This will never work." angle they've been doing with those 2), wanted a booty call from her and wanted their blessing. I don't know... if I was one of their kids, I would consider therapy after this.

From what I can gather, this is like their version of One More Day for HIMYM fans.

EDIT: Finally watched it in it's full "glory" It pretty much took a giant shit on the years of development and spoiler alert, I'm pretty much the guy that just catches the occasional rerun on networks like My Network and FX. Still felt like a middle finger to me.

To even add to my OMD comparison, I'm also throwing in the controversy surrounding Mass Effect 3 ending into the ring as well. Never have I seen so much nerd rage thrown around than those 2 things.

[Avaitor]

I would have been fine with the mother being dead.

I would have been fine with Barney and Robin divorcing.

I would have been fine with Ted and Robin getting back together (kind of).

But wow, did this not work out. Like, at all.

The idea of the mother being dead has been around since the show began, but especially came up in discussion after this speech (which is somehow still one of my favorite moments in the show) from last season, and were all but confirmed here, just a few episodes prior. I know that no matter how you'd spin it, a decent amount of the fanbase would not like this concept at all. Whatever amount of defense I could have given it, though, was thrown out of the window when Ted barely reflects on it. Yes, the kids know that their mom isn't with them anymore, and they probably have heard why a million times over and have seen Ted grieve in the 6 years since, but you know what? We haven't. And especially after she was added as a character this season, portrayed by somebody who had given so much life to her, it's insulting that we don't even get to know what disease she suffered from, and not even a minute after revealing to the audience that she's dead, her husband goes and tries to win back his ex. Again, I understand that a different amount of time has passed on the show for them as it has for us, but that is wrong.

As for Barney and Robin, it's no secret that I love them, both together and separately. I was really rooting for them, even though there were obvious signs present about their demise over this season. But any black cloud has a silver lining, and they were able to patch up most of them before they said "I do". You know what wasn't a problem, though? Robin's future as a world-traveling news anchor. But you know what? Even though the idea that Barney wasn't happy with Robin constantly being out of the state or country was something just brought up later, I can believe it. I wouldn't exactly be chipper about my wife being away most of the time, although I'm not so sure that I'd want a divorce because of it.

I don't buy, and certainly don't like, that after the divorce, this is basically it for the couple. They barely interact after telling the gang about it, and the only hint that either one still has feelings in that way about the other is Robin's annoyance at Barney getting a random woman's number. Is it too much to wish that one still held a candle for the other? Or did constantly being away from one another completely terminate their passion for each other?

And while we're at it, part of me understands why Barney reverted back to his old ways right after the divorce. It happened when he and Robin broke up the first time, and like many a recovering addict after a bad ordeal, he relapsed. Yet I can't tell what's more gross- the fact that a man in his 40's wrote an entirely new Playbook to hit on random women, or that Barney's wonderful oath to Robin that he wouldn't lie to her (which, as far as we know, he did keep) wasn't enough of a sign of true love for him, since the only way he can fine happiness is from the birth of a kid by a woman whose name we only know as #31? Which, now that I think about it, is absolutely disgusting.

And yes, Ted and Robin did love each other. I think they kind of never stopped, as many times as Ted said that he did. But why on earth would Robin want to get back with a guy who forced her to get rid of her dogs? Whose ideas of forced romance did little but bug her over the years? Who, just like Barney, did not like the idea of her traveling around the world? And for that matter, why did Ted attempt to tell his kids such a bloated story, promising to tell them about their mother but barely does, just for approval to bate their "aunt"? That's just gross.

Not to mention that we've been told before that "aunt" Robin was supposed to be close to Ted's kids, yet the first time his daughter sees her in a speaking role, she calls Robin "bus lady"?

It's just... wrong. I didn't talk about Marshall and Lily, because I actually kind of like how their arc went. It would have been too fantastical for Lily to succeed in the art industry, as everyone else got to have their dreams come true. Especially since it's been proven before that she isn't a particularly good artist, and that the person she helped find pieces for was constantly proven to be an unstable man. It's kind of dark that she ended up becoming a housewife and mother of three, while Marshall got to work for the senate, but that's the kind of "realism" that I think turned out fine.

For a show that teaches us about the importance of the little things in life, there's a lot of little things that do not work here, and as a fan, I'm not sure if I can ever forgive Bays and Thomas for it. I'll keep my DVDs and will buy the last season, but I don't think I can watch the finale again, or if I do, it'll be a much shorter experience.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Nice impressions. Though I'm not a big fan like you, I certainly was disappointed with it for the same reasons as you. I didn't have any problems with Marshall and Lily because it was fairly realistic as it goes and not anything out of left field. It was a logical end point. The problem was the rest of the mess.

The worst part is the implication that he was only telling his kids this story so he could get permission to date Robin.

Way to undercut everything about the show.

[Avaitor]

Not to mention that it makes the entire season a waste since Barney and Robin, whose wedding day weekend was the whole of this final season, broke up not even 20 minutes into the finale.

I've said before, and have seen others also say, that instead of dedicating basically this entire season on their wedding, they should have cut that arc in half and spend the rest of the season up to the finale going over the developments that occurred there. A lot of these ideas could have worked with more time, not to mention that there was a LOT of fat in this season that could've easily gone away.

A final episode where Ted sits with Tracy on her deathbed, says his goodbyes, and then gets to see the gang before Ted finishes his story would have made for a better ending in my mind.