How I Met Your Mother finale tonight — Page 3

I don't know whether this was the planned outcome from its inception, but this is typical, since all they ever tried to do with this show is to prove how clever they can be.

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“They had actually planned the ending during our pilot,” Cobie revealed. “They shot some scenes with the two children…who are now in their mid-20s. It’s kind of amazing that it’s been nine years, and it’s come full circle.”


‘HIMYM’: Was Cobie Smulders Shocked By Series Finale? — Interview

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The review/article on hitflix made some good points about how at one point that might of worked a little better, but ultimately is was a terrible decision. They had their hearts set on them ending together and weren't willing to change that goal as the show and characters grew.

On one hand it's not called "How I Met, Married, and Spent Eternity with your Mother". However, to spend the entire final season at Barney and Robin's wedding and have them get divorced just three years later feels like a cheap trick pulled by the writers. It's a comedy series finale on network TV, it didn't have to be so depressing.

The writers may have built towards this conclusion, but spending the last 4-5 seasons un-investing the audience in Ted and Robin robs it of any emotional resonance.

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I said this in another thread, so I'll say it here, too: I wasn't sure how to feel about the final moments, but then I thought about it. The entire series has flashed forward and back, and present (the penultimate episode during Ted and Robin's aforementioned conversation up this thread), to Ted going back to Robin. But *she* gave up on him a couple years ago, and chose Barney. He had to go forward, so he met, married, and had kids with a woman he loved dearly. And she died. So...it's perfectly realistic that he'd be able and willing to love again (I agree with Namo, here). They were both available, so... there you go. I don't think it belies the truth of the characters or their personalities, at all. It would have belied them had the finale ended in some fairy tale "happy ending" way.

As for Sutton saying above that it was annoying to have had Robin and Barney's couple-hood be such a focus leading up to the ending, I never quite bought that they'd stay together. Both of them have been consistently depicted as oil-and-water independent thinkers, independent people, who weren't suited for partnerships. The finale shows that with their divorce. It's not a "happy ending," but that's life in modern society.

And yes, as someone else posted above, there have been numerous interviews floating around this week, both with Cobie Smulders and I believe, Miliotti, stating that the show's creators wrote this ending at the beginning. That's why they taped the bits with the kids when they were still young. As an entertainer and broadcaster, I can tell you it is a *major* writing tool that you always know the punchline of a joke, or the conclusion of a vignette or story, when you write the beginning. Comedians do it all the time. It's a skill. And the way they led up to this was brilliant. Life has twists and turns. So, at first, watching and wanting to be entertained, this finale had an initial feeling of "where's the happy ending?!?" But really, it had a realistic, and still lovely one, imho.

Btw, with all the complaints, I haven't seen one person say what they *did* want to see. Yes, it's generally been mentioned that people wanted to see Ted and Tracy together...but what would that have looked like? A close up backing up into a long-shot of them playing around at Christmas in their big house in the suburbs with a bevy full of kids? Ugh. No. Then people would have just said how cliche' it was, and they'd have been right. Just curious.

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I think the issue is, the fact the entire pretense of the season was made around the Robin and Barney wedding, to then have them divorce an episode later, even if it was years in the show's mind, is just bad storytelling. As noted before, the writers on this show are the first to pat themselves on the back for being so clever about pulling out the rug on issues like this. It's fine to not have Barney and Robin work out, in fact many people did not think they were well-matched and were toxic for each other. How about move past the wedding and focus more on the cast as a group and the inter-relationship dynamics?

Sepinwall also noted on his podcast that, in retrospect, his set visits to the show with other critics, he could sense that the people invested in The Mother/Tracy were the fans and the critics who watched the show than its very creators. The Mother was a construct and concept, but such an intricate one at that largely created by the writers. But the writers seemed to just make her a connective tissue, ultimately. The problem was Cristin Milioti's charming appearances on the show reinforced and surpassed a lot of expectations fans and critics had about The Mother. The writers somehow did not realize this when they were shooting episodes.

I just was never invested in Ted and Robin and when I was noticing in the later episodes this past season of these Ted Mosby Grand Romantic Gestures returning and it involving Robin and, for the first time ever, not being labeled ridiculous by the writers who never missed a moment to call out Ted giving too much- I was getting worried. So, of course, the final scene is a callback to a Ted Mosby Grand Romantic Gesture. But the stuff with the locket just felt forced drama and an anvil over what was to happen next. I couldn't buy it. I couldn't be sold on it. I was too exhausted by years/seasons of these two in this type of situation. This wedding should've been over and done with for just a few episodes at the most.

The Barney POV and Ted as an unreliable narrator is an interesting point. There were also some fans, who paid much more attention to the series who have insisted that there were points in the Saget-narration that spoke of The Mother in present tense. I could believe that. I think, much like the Robin infertility revelations (which frankly felt like character assassination by the writers), that a dead mother was not pre-planned. On one hand, maybe the reveal should just be that Ted met a nice surrogate with his true love Robin (though it is hard to erase the Aunt Robin line(s) from the record) but on the other hand Cristin Milioti was the only thing that had me being attentive to this friggin' show in years.

Anyway, there is being tied to a vision but the execution and the storytelling up until that point by the writers of the show seemed to not realize how exhausted people were by the status quo and found a shake-up, the reveal of The Mother, refreshing and necessary. There are points to be made about having more than one great love in life but the show bent over backwards to make sure Ted and Robin did not look like jerks- except the fact the whole story was just an elaborate wish from a widowed father to tell his kids he wanted to go out with somebody he long knew, who they knew as an aunt. It feels a bit icky, especially in the context of how the final episode laid out and paced the steps of dead mother to Blue French Horn.

Updated On: 4/3/14 at 12:42 AM

For my part, I have been a casual but consistent viewer of the show all these years, because, once you start on something, you should see how it ends. So, I've been reading a few articles about it just because I know I *haven't* invested quite as much as some people, and clearly missed things. This is a pretty good article, written this week:

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-how-i-met-your-mother-series-finale-20140402,0,5749656.story?track=rss#axzz2xh5xOFaF

And I've realized I'm *so* under-invested, that *this* article, linked in the article above, shows we've all kind of missed SO much:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2014/03/04/how_i_met_your_mother_theories_is_the_mother_dead.html


Perhaps all that missed forshadowing will make people feel better that the story was told pretty brilliantly, yet cryptically, all along.



EDIT:
There's also this. Yep, some of us missed a LOT of clues:
http://blog.zap2it.com/frominsidethebox/2014/01/how-i-met-your-mother-10-key-moments-in-the-mother-and-teds-history.html

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Updated On: 4/3/14 at 02:38 AM

An online petition asking for a new finale has reached over 10,000 signatures: http://www.change.org/petitions/cbs-rewrite-and-reshoot-the-himym-ending

I think it's time for people to move on.

Wow, a petition is pretty ridiculous. It's good to keep discussing it, but demanding someone change their own show? Christ.

"Btw, with all the complaints, I haven't seen one person say what they *did* want to see."

I wanted to see Ted and Tracy have a happy marriage, and I wanted to see her come in when Ted is talking to them. We had been waiting for Ted to find this girl, and a happy ending would have been great. Marshall and Lily got that, why couldn't Ted and Tracy? I would have also wanted to see Robin and Barney become good friends again, and not horribly awkward around each other, like they were at that Halloween party. Finally, I wanted the last shot to be the five of them at MacLaren's just hanging out. It was an ensemble show, and to me, that made the most sense.

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^^^So that explains the crappy ending - they want you to buy the DVD to get a happy ending.

not there.

The alternate ending is so, so much better. The whole Ted/Robin thing really felt like an early plan for the show's ending before it's success and subsequent lengthy run. It could have worked if the show had been shorter, if there hadn't been so much time spent on Robin and Barney (including a whole season centered on their wedding), if they hadn't taken such care to introduce Tracy and make us fall in love with her. There was probably SOME way to do it earlier in the run, but it's like they had this idea at the beginning and then never revised it.