How I Met Your Mother - General Discussion

[java82]

I think the thing that ruined the ending for me was the reaction of the kids. We got no sense of their to their mother.

But then you backtrack to "are we being punished?" when Ted first said he wanted to tell them the story of how he met their mom. Sure you're a teenager and everything is lame, but you would think that when your dad wants to tell a story about your deceased mom, your attitude would be a tad different. Did C&C think they were being funny with that? Ugh...

My main concern is that we didn't get the time between 2024 and 2030. The 9 seasons of hath show were Ted's journey to become the man he needed to be in order to be ready to meet Tracy. But now that we know Robin was endgame (still ugh), what about Ted's journey between those six years where they started to fall in love again? That time is so pivotal to making the end believable. Without it, I just can't buy how it end.

When she was upset seeing Ted with Tracy. She said " The man I should of chose" not the man I love the man I care about. And she looked at Ted her good friend who had been sad so long. Saw him happy but never showed any happiness for him. Not sure how or why the audience should be happy they end up back together?

Exactly—Ted was happy for Robin and Barney, and let her go. She couldn't be happy for him. Like you said, she didn't seem to want him back because she loved him, but rather he was more "husband material" than Barney, and looked good on paper.

Edited July 28, 2014 by java82

[Eolivet]

TVLine posts the alternate DVD ending, but it's blocked, and settles for summarizing it:

 

http://tvline.com/2014/09/05/how-i-met-your-mother-alternate-ending-video-ted-the-mother/

 

Basically, it's everything fans have speculated it should have been. I know I would've sighed happily and turned off my television on March 31 and not spent two months tearing out my hair in disgust over wasting my time on this show had they kept this "alternate" ending.

[Morrigan2575]

http://www.spoilertv.com/2014/09/how-i-met-your-mother-series-finale.html

Spoiler TV has the video...so much better then the crap that aired, IMO,

[larrybear]

That alternate finale was LITERALLY 10 million times better than what aired. Seriously, what were they thinking??

[CleoCaesar]

THAT was the alternate finale? Some new (ill-suited) music and a montage, with no new appearance from the mother? So lazy. They could have at least given us a montage of Ted's life with the freaking mother. Ughhh.

[arc]

Jezebel still has it up for now. (Edit: gone now.)

It's better than the official ending, but honestly for me the fan edit was better. I think the emotion in the aired voiceover was so moving and the one in this alt version just felt so much more phoned-in.

Edited September 8, 2014 by arc

[SenSational]

THAT (or the fan edit) was definitely the ending I have kept in my little head, refusing to acknowledge what was aired as the actual ending! (Although, CleoCaesar, you do have a point, that they could've put in more vignettes of Ted and Tracy's life together.) Carter & Bays had to choose between those endings, but they really should've swapped them, airing this and leaving the other to the DVDs. If I knew that this once great show ended with scenes of the show's Title fulfilling itself in it's final moments, well sure, it would have been fun to see another "what if" chapter as an alternate ending with Ted courting Robin again. It would have been a comfortable glimpse into a different potential life, yet, I would've still been able to go to canon that the show ended on a great note, and that the many years of buildup wasn't all for naught. 

Edited September 6, 2014 by SenSational

[greedo]

Oh, the alternate ending is so, so disgusting. I'm still vomiting from all the rainbows and sunshines. Thank Gd this cheesy, cliché crap is just a consolation prize for those who feel the need to complain about a mediocre tv show months after it ended.

[Kromm]

It's like they're trying to bolster their own shitty ending by making a bad alternate.  They think that will cause people to re-evaluate.

 

Actual craft and care would have been somewhere in the middle.  A "happy" ending that's not simply cliches, and which doesn't cheat on the premise of the entire show or use The Mother as a sacrificial goat.

[Jac]

I don't even have a problem with the mother dying, because as it has been pointed out, shit happens, what pisses me off is that Ted appears to have learn nothing in the space of virtually his whole adult life. The perfect end for me would have been the mother dying and Ted moving on with a non-Robin person. That would have been growth. Or Tracy and Ted live happily ever after because as much as I've grown to dislike Ted over the years, I love Tracy.

[Runningwild]

Finally brought myself to watch this last night. I loved the first few seasons but checked out around the time Marvin was born. So sad they didn't include Tracy in more episodes. She was a PERFECT fit. For Ted and the group. I'm not horrified that Ted and Robin ended up together because widowers usually remarry. Men just can't be alone. But they should have gone with "I'm lonely" or something. Not have the kids say "You love Robin." Tracy was the love of his life.

[Starscream]

I liked it a lot.  I was intrigued by the theories that Ted was telling the story about his dead wife and that he and Robin would reunite later in life (I wouldn't say I was one of those believers, but it all made a ton of sense).  It was particularly satisfying, since fans who actually believed that would happen were treated liked shit by the hordes who beat the drum for conventional wisdom. 

 

Beyond that, I just liked the story they were telling.  I admit I'm more forgiving of the obvious cheating they employed to deliver their story, but I feel like the end justifies the means.  It's certainly a story better suited for a book or a film, and the final season as a whole was an unmitigated disaster, but the ending made me feel more for this show than I had in years.

Edited September 29, 2014 by Starscream

[peggy06]

Finally saw the finale. I don't care if they came up with this ending in S2. It should have been scrapped. It made a nonsense of the very premise of the show. It made Ted look like a huge jerk, purporting to tell his kids a story about their mother, when it wasn't that at all. It made the kids look incredibly callous. It was overly pat with the parallelism. The divorce bit was a huge slap in the face to anyone who watched the entire season centered around Barney and Robin's wedding. It committed the artistic crime of creating a character just to be a plot device, and then making her tragic on top of that. How much cheaper can you get?

 

As a person who liked Ted/Robin, I feel insulted that the show considers this fan service. A character is tossed away to make way for them to get together? Ted's kids, instead of feeling offended and hurt on their mother's behalf, give their blessing? Just no. Everything about this was artistically wrong, from the pace and tone, to inconsistencies with the tone of previous episodes. The series should have ended with the Ted/Tracy meeting. No offense to the actors, but I forgot all about Ted's kids and did not need a bookend final scene featuring them. If things had ended at the umbrella scene, there would still be problems like the depressing portrayal of Robin, but at least the title premise would have been honored. A simple voice-over of Bob Saget saying "And that, kids, is how I met your mother" would have been enough of a wrapup.

 

The last two seasons were disappointing, chiefly because I never cared about or believed in Robin with Barney, but I guess that's for another thread.

Edited October 17, 2014 by peggy06

[DrSpaceman]

It wasn't just the finale that was a mess, it was the entire last season.

They easily could have spend MUCH less time on the lead up to the wedding that lasted about 10 minutes on the show and spent more time flash forwarding and telling the story of the time between the wedding and the ending. If they had done that, even if I wasn't a big fan of how Ted/Robyn ending up together, the ending could have been much better. Instead they tried to cram all that into 30 or 45 minutes.

[Janet Snakehole]

I just watched this last night. As someone who really liked Ted/Robin but despised Barney/Robin (mostly because I think Robin as introduced had too much self respect to give Barney the time of day and I will openly admit I really dislike Barney's treatment of women), I liked the basic premise of it. I loved Tracy and was sad that she died, but I like the idea of being able to move on and thought it would make sense it would be with Robin, given how central she was to the story. I don't think the ending was out of left field at all, and it kind of reminded me of Definitely Maybe. The idea would have really worked well in the beginning of the show's run and to be honest the show probably should have ended seasons ago, just because of the downgrade in quality.

I think it would have not bothered me at all and I would have borderline loved it with a few tweaks. Like, Ted and Tracy should have gotten married way sooner, given his over the top personality with regards to romance. They should have let Tracy have some of her own friends at the wedding, like it really bugged me that Robin stood up there with her. Why not have Rachel Bilson's character up there, they were close and she was previously introduced? It just made it seem like it was all about Ted. Also, the daughter and son could have sounded a bit more tactful when telling Ted to go after Robin. But yeah, not to sound overly critical, but basically I would have been sold on this had they made a few changes to show Tracy a bit more respect.

Edited October 31, 2014 by Janet Snakehole

[AAEBoiler]

Nope, absolutely hated it. The creators hit the jackpot with Cristin Milioti and her chemistry with Josh Radnor. In the end, I think they were too in love with themselves and how clever they were with filming the kids during season 1 to alter their plans. They had character assassinated Robin over the last several seasons and it just felt bleh having Ted go after her.

 

I watched every single episode as they aired and I don't generally hold a grudge but I haven't watched a single second in syndicated repeat since the finale because of how they ended the series. I don't know if I ever will.

[La Tortuga]

I was fine with the ending. Not overwhelmed with joy that Ted and Robin finally got back together, but fine with it. This may be because I marathon-watched the whole thing instead of watching it drag on for nine years. Watching it in compressed form, you get a good sense of how the kids would feel hearing it in compressed form. Then it becomes more obvious that Ted is telling his children about how he loved their Aunt Robin and got along with her, and that while he loved their mom and wouldn't trade that for anything, the love for Robin hasn't gone away and he's looking for permission to rekindle the relationship. It's also clear that Ted believes the only thing that really held him back from Robin was wanting kids and a settled life; now that he has the kids, and they're big enough not to need constant supervision, and he's had time to grieve over Tracey, the obstacles he and Robin used to have aren't there anymore. (I don't think that's actually the case--Ted still wants his life in the suburbs with his children, and Robin still wants her life as a jet-setting Manhattanite--but Ted seems to think these hurdles aren't insurmountable.)

 

I think what held me back from liking the ending a lot more was that, unlike Ted and his children, I was only just starting to get to know Tracey and really enjoy her, and then she was gone. So it's more that I'm fine with a middle-aged man rekindling an old romance once his kids are old enough to deal with it, not that I'm rooting for Ted & Robin to be together out of a sense of destiny. Tracey was Ted's destiny; Robin is what he used to want and is finally allowed to have.

[BizBuzz]

Thank you La Tortuga for eloquently expressing my feelings. 

 

My daughter (15) and I just finished binge watching (if you can call it binge watching, we started in April of this year with the very first episode) and I couldn't have been more pleased with the ending.

 

I wasn't invested week after week, month after month, year after year, and by watching it the way we did, I really thought the apparent cleverness worked and worked well.

 

Watching it this way, it was VERY obvious to me that I was supposed to know that Ted and Robin were somehow two friends that are very into each other, but knowing they have two very different paths they want to take, so even though there is this attraction, they know it can't work and so form other relationships that help them towards those goals.

 

I think that Ted and Tracey were a fine match, and they were happy.  I don't know if I would call it destiny.  I don't know if that is what they were going for.  I do believe that they were happy.  And Ted got what he wanted, which was a family.  And Robin got what she wanted, which was a career that involved traveling. 

 

I think if Tracey hadn't died, Ted would have never given that life with Robin another thought.  But since she had, I can only think it normal that old flames start crossing your minds.  History is strong.  Gosh, I know this one.

 

Anyway, I am happy with the ending.  I enjoyed the show.  I felt it funny on so many levels and I laughed so hard sometimes I cried, and for that, I was happy for this diversion this year!

[Miss Dee]

I would have been better with the ending if it'd had a different tone. It seemed too...peppy. "Hey Dad, Mom's dead and Robin's alive! Go for it!!" If it had been more poignant, a heart to heart between a daughter and her father where she gently let him know it was okay for him to love again, I think it would have come across much better. Especially as we had just left the death of the mother and the audience wasn't in a light-hearted mood.

[braziliangirl]

When I watched I liked it. But I hadn't follow the show for a few seasons (except the last). But now I'm watching some episodes of seasons 7-9 and I don't know...Robin just doesn't seem to really like Ted that way. And thinking back I don't think she really ever did. I'm starting to think that it wasn't about getting too serious or  wanting to marry, it was more about not wanting to do these things with Ted. It really reminded me that dialogue from 500 days of summer: "I just woke up one day and I knew...What I was never sure of with you."

Maybe that will change with other episodes...

[Tiger]

I would have been better with the ending if it'd had a different tone. It seemed too...peppy. "Hey Dad, Mom's dead and Robin's alive! Go for it!!" If it had been more poignant, a heart to heart between a daughter and her father where she gently let him know it was okay for him to love again, I think it would have come across much better. Especially as we had just left the death of the mother and the audience wasn't in a light-hearted mood.

This is my problem too. I hated the Barney/Robin pairing, I never thought it made any sense and never saw any chemistry between NPH & CS. So I so happy that they torpedoed their marriage 10 minutes after the ceremony. But Tracy dying and then Ted & Robin reuniting within 2 minutes was ridiculous.

I dunno, maybe I wouldn't feel this way if Robin hadn't been turned into a "desperate ho bag" to try and make the pairing with Barney work, but instead bore at least some semblance to the character as she was for the first five seasons.

ETA: I think Bays & Thomas also grossly underestimated how much people liked Tracy. CM really clicked with the audience and with JR. So for the character to be quickly cast aside because the creators were committed to their original ending, it didn't work.

Edited December 23, 2014 by Tiger

[Chaos Theory]

For at least the first half of the show ( which is why I think this show should have been 5 seasons tops)  they had Barney at least growing as a person.  He started to have "Girlfriends" and not just one night stands.  I remember two instances in particular:  one was after Robin had broken up with both Ted and Barney and had been for awhile.  It eventually came up with Ted that he thought they didn't work because she didn't need him and he needed to be needed.  Robin went to her "other" boyfriend and he said she didn't need him at all, and that was what he liked about her.  (I honestly think that is when I started shipping Robin with Barney).  The other moment is when Barney was dating the stripper (who's name escapes me) and they had their first big fight.  After joking about all the scenarios he might be walking back into someone brought up the idea that she might not even be there when he got back - that is what scared Barney the most and I thought that episode showed amazing potential for the character.   The problem is that when the show had episodes to fill they made Barney a clown who "loved sexing it up with women and then leaving them in a dumpster".   I think Bays and Tomas thought those scenes were funnier then the audience did.     Then again  NPH is arguably the funniest person on the show so it was a good bet that often didn't pay off.  Barney played better as a  Pater Pan who was dragged into growing up kicking and screaming but ultimately chose to be a better man when he found someone worth it....and less the guy who though of nothing but getting laid.  

 

That is just me though and comes from someone who stayed a Robin and Barney shipper until the bitter bitter end especially since the entire first eight seasons where about how Robin and Ted were wrong for each other.  

Edited December 24, 2014 by Chaos Theory

[random chance]

Barney had to remain sleezy and awful because Ted was telling the story, and he wound up with Robin. If these were real people I'd assume Ted was lying about Barney from the get-go, so as to get my sympathy when he got to the part where Robin chose him.

[braziliangirl]

About season 6: I reaaally dislike Zoey. I never warmed up to Stella (But I really liked Victoria and the Mother.) but Zoey made me cringe a lot.

[KatWay]

I actually liked the ending in itself, I just think they majorly screwed up the way to giving us that ending. If it was always going to be Ted/Robin in the end (and I loved their relationship, thought they had great chemistry), they shouldn't have bungled up the pairing so much. Should have given us more moments to remind us that Robin loved Ted too, instead of all that unrequited crap from Ted. And they really never should have gone back to Barney/Robin (or started it at all, I always thought it was a dumb idea). Why spend so much time on a pairing that they knew were never going to be endgame? Sure to piss off those who loved the pairing and those who didn't (because why did I have to sit through all of that then and why did they give Robin a personality transplant to make her a better fit for Barney?).

 

I also really loved the Mother and was sad she died. The ending probably would have worked much better if it had come at an earlier time in the show, so if the show hadn't lasted 9 seasons. But alas.

 

P.S. I also hated how poor Marshall suffered for years in a job he loathed and was miserable at, just because Lily just had to have her dream year in Italy in that stupid fantasy job that was never remotely plausible. Because I know they painted Lily as the always supporting wife who was willing to go with Marshall's dreams instead of her own so she deserved that sacrifice, but that's not how I saw their relationship. There was a period where she supported him (during his law school and when he was an environmental lawyer not making any money), but he also supported them and her credit card debts with a coroporate job he disliked for years. And she already dumped him once to go follow her dream of being a painter.

[braziliangirl]

 

Should have given us more moments to remind us that Robin loved Ted too, instead of all that unrequited crap from Ted.

Yeah, I agree. Watching season 7-9 after the finale made me rethink a little bit because of what you said. It's so unrequited. There's hardly evidence of Robin liking him that way. Add that to their history and to the fact she got engaged with Kevin, fell very hard for Don and all the Barney stuff...Robin seemed to like almost every boyfriend that she had more than Ted. I liked the idea of having this great love (the mother) but moving on after her death and finding happiness again but I wish they did it what you suggested.

[BizBuzz]

I see things a bit differently ... I have observed in my five decades on earth that when there is unrequited love there seems to be an overcompensating that happens.

 

I didn't watch this show live, in fact, I binge watched it last year, never knowing how it would end ... I gathered that all the different loves of Robin's and Ted's were a way to forget each other.  Trying to find what they thought they had in a person that could share their views of the future.  I saw it as trying to convince themselves that their desires for what they wanted out of life outweighed the intense feelings they had for each other.

 

I couldn't mention them right now if I wanted to (when you binge watch, you tend to lose the details) but there were times I felt that Robin had unrequited love for Ted.

 

I felt that during the run, there were many scenes that showed Robin's love for Ted ... and maybe in the last couple of seasons it might have seemed heavy handed leaning on Ted ... but overall I felt they loved each other a lot ... just different goals.

[Tiger]

Should have given us more moments to remind us that Robin loved Ted too, instead of all that unrequited crap from Ted. And they really never should have gone back to Barney/Robin (or started it at all, I always thought it was a dumb idea). Why spend so much time on a pairing that they knew were never going to be endgame? Sure to piss off those who loved the pairing and those who didn't (because why did I have to sit through all of that then and why did they give Robin a personality transplant to make her a better fit for Barney?).

My CW just wrapped up season 8 and started over at season 3 (oddly) and upon re-watch I think that not only did Robin get a personality transplant at the beginning of season 7, but all five characters did.

Beyond that, i am truly baffled by Robin & Barney even more than before because i think the show, even in seasons 7-9 went of its way to show not only that was Ted right for Robin, but that she was still in love with him. When Ted did that light display in the apartment, when Ted confessed he was still in love with Robin, when Ted tried to help Robin find her locket and then she alone in the car with Barney, and lastly on the beach right before the wedding, Cobie played it as Robin very much in love with Ted.

[Xazeal]

One of my main problems with the show's basic premise was how it started. Ted is telling his children the story of how he met their mother. Why start with how he met Robin? She was no more instrumental in the story than the other main characters, or for that matter any of the other girls he dated throughout the show. Meeting Robin was not some catalyst that started a series of events that eventually led to meeting the mother. He may as well have started with meeting Barney, or Stella, or Bla Bla, or his own birth. Starting it with Robin felt way arbitrary to me, and although I realized that they started it that way for TV purposes, not for story purposes, it bugged me. 

 

Because of how they ended it, the beginning now makes sense. For that alone, I'm happy with it. Although personally, I would've preferred for Robin to go back to her early-season self and ditch the group after realizing that they had turned into massive assholes.

[lilabennet]

I absolutely hated the ending and I will never watch the show again.  I can imagine that Craig Thomas and Carter Bays thought they were sooooo clever when they planned to end the show with the same stupid blue french horn image from the end of the first episode.  I think they planned that very early in the run of the show, probably over a couple of doobies ("You're the best bro", "No, you're the best bro.  We are so smart.  This is gonna be epic!"), and it would have been a great idea if the show had lasted 3 or 4 seasons, but it didn't.  Instead, they managed to destroy in one episode something that took 9 years to build.  They turned a story that was supposed to be "How I met your mother" into "How your dead mother was not the love of my life.  She was actually just a baby receptacle so that I could have the 2 kids I always wanted, because the real love of my life can't have kids.  And now your mother has conveniently died so I can be with my one true love your Aunt Robin".  I hope they lose millions of dollars in syndication revenue.  Yes, I am bitter that I wasted so much time on this show.

[biakbiak]

Why start with how he met Robin? She was no more instrumental in the story than the other main characters, or for that matter any of the other girls he dated throughout the show. Meeting Robin was not some catalyst that started a series of events that eventually led to meeting the mother.

 

Well he could have started it with when he met Barney because she and Barney were slightly more responsible than anyone else because he met Tracy at their wedding, but since they all met Robin that night it did make some amount of sense.

[DrSpaceman]

I have been rewatching Season One and I am amazed at how well it holds up and how much I am enjoying it.  So much happens, lots of plot development and character development.  Its like the exact opposite of the final season

 

My only quibble is if he tells the kids he is starting in 2005, and they have at least a vague idea of how he met their mother and when, they should know from the beginning this will be a LONG story, since it ended in 2014.  But I know all that just has to do with TV shows and scheduling, not knowing how long a run they will have, many other factors, so I can forgive it. 

 

I would think by the last season though those kids would have been just BEGGING Ted to get on with the story and stop the excrutiating detail about wedding weekend.

[mageineer]

I loved the ending. I think it did justice to the characters, the show, and its themes.

[DrSpaceman]

Also noticed on watching this again, Lilly gets off WAY too easily for acting selfishly time and again

 

She leaves Marhsal while engaged to go pursue her art in San Francisco for a summer and just cuts off all contact with everyone.  OK, its a tough issue, but still, the way she did it, came off as very selfish

 

Huge credit card debt and doesn't tell Marshal until they go to buy a house

 

She breaks up Ted with multiple girlfriends she doesn't like just because they don't meet her approval of how they fit in with her future.

 

There is an episode where she and Marshal argue at the two extremes about the type of basketball coach he is with her kids.  Neither is really right, but at the end at least Marshal acknowledges he is wrong to be so hard on them, she never admits her "go out and play and forget about learning the game" method is stupid as well. 

[RainbowBrite]

Also noticed on watching this again, Lilly gets off WAY too easily for acting selfishly time and again

 

She leaves Marhsal while engaged to go pursue her art in San Francisco for a summer and just cuts off all contact with everyone.  OK, its a tough issue, but still, the way she did it, came off as very selfish

 

Huge credit card debt and doesn't tell Marshal until they go to buy a house

 

She breaks up Ted with multiple girlfriends she doesn't like just because they don't meet her approval of how they fit in with her future.

 

There is an episode where she and Marshal argue at the two extremes about the type of basketball coach he is with her kids.  Neither is really right, but at the end at least Marshal acknowledges he is wrong to be so hard on them, she never admits her "go out and play and forget about learning the game" method is stupid as well. 

Word. She is quite heinous. She is definitely my least favourite character. At least Barney owns his terrible behaviour and lifestyle. Lily judges people constantly, while behaving terribly herself. I recently rewatched the Aldrin Justice, which is another example of Lily being Lily. 

[DrSpaceman]

Word. She is quite heinous. She is definitely my least favourite character. At least Barney owns his terrible behaviour and lifestyle. Lily judges people constantly, while behaving terribly herself. I recently rewatched the Aldrin Justice, which is another example of Lily being Lily. 

 

 

It just gets worse as I continue watching. 

 

First episode Season Five, she locks Robin and Barney in a room until they discuss their relationship and come up with a "definition" of themselves that she deems acceptable. 

 

Maybe if she hadn't butted in and forced this on them they would have figured it out themselves and the first time they dated may have turned out different. 

[DrSpaceman]

I am rewatching the whole series now, so my mind may change, but I think the ending would have been better :

 

1.  Without the whole crappy last season, which was basically a whole season of filler. 

2.  If the meeting of Ted and the mother was not the very last episode, but instead they explored at least for a few episode or say a 4 or so episode arc what happened after the met.

 

And these two are really related.  I do think it was more execution of the plot than the idea, in the end. 

 

I would have much rather had more time related directly to Ted and the Mother and less of the teaser to meet her at the very end.  They rushed the finale by stuffing in a divorce, death, the whole aftermath.  They had a whole final season to plan this, they spend 90% of time exploring a couple of days of a wedding that ended in the first 15 minutes of the next episode and then spent little time on the intervening 15 years until the telling of the story takes place. 

[Janet Snakehole]

I cannot deal with Robin and Barney together. I know I am in the minority on this, but I liked Robin as the together career woman who liked Ted despite herself, but with Barney she was building herself up to supposedly be better than all the women he used as one night stands. I hated it. I missed the Robin in season one who had other female friends that she stood up for. I also hated that she was not into having kids but got with Barney who wanted the kids but did not respect the idea of commitment. They ruined Robin.

Edited August 23, 2015 by Janet Snakehole

[Aussie Grrrl]

I cannot deal with Robin and Barney together. I know I am in the minority on this, but I liked Robin as the together career woman who liked Ted despite herself, but with Barney she was building herself up to supposedly be better than all the women he used as one night stands. I hated it. I missed the Robin in season one who had other female friends that she stood up for. I also hated that she was not into having kids but got with Barney who wanted the kids but did not respect the idea of commitment. They ruined Robin.

 

Yeah I agree, she became a woman so desperate to be in a relationship, that she dated her gynacologist, therapist and the not-so-smart Nick then marries Barney.

[DrSpaceman73]

Not a big fan of Robin Barney together either.

I didn't mind them dating, but not marrying and being the central part to the crappy last season.

I think that was some fanwanking earlier on in the show that for some reason the writers loved so much they took it WAY to far. I can't imagine that was a plan from the beginning, unlike the killing off the mother to be with Robin idea.

[braziliangirl]

 

I have been rewatching Season One and I am amazed at how well it holds up and how much I am enjoying it.

I've done the same and season 1 is so good. Also, HIMYM has a killer soundtrack. I was watching "Milk" and the scene where Ted imagines his wedding (him in the aisle while looking at Robin) is perfectly paired with Roxy Music in the background.

Edited September 12, 2015 by braziliangirl

[nobody30]

I have to say I was ok with the story of the ending itself, though it was really sad and I was never a big fan of Ted and Robin. It was life, bad things can happen in life, Ted met his perfect match, his soulmate, but then some day she died. And after years of grief, who else would he date, if he starts dating again, but Robin?

 

What really upset me though is the way the story was told in the end, which in my opinion showed a lack of respect for the audience, the characters and the idea of the show itself. I mean after 9 years in the making, Ted and Tracy finally meet, and the scene was really beautifully done, not too cheesy but special. And then cut, and now she's dead, but you have the hots for aunt Robin dad, oh by the way, you just told us a story about Robin an you, mom had nothing to do with it. Wow, THAT was a real slap in the face! I still skip that scene every time I see it.

 

I mean I get what they were doing there, and if the show had lastet for only 3 or 4 seasons, this might have actually worked. They obviously wanted to show us how clever they were, because they knew how it would end all along, but that failed completely. Sometimes you have to get rid of your "love child" as a writer and producer, they should have cut that scene out, but they obviously couldn't. They also underestimated the amount of chemistry that Josh and Christin had on screen and how popular the mother, that they never really planned on introducing in the first place, would get.

 

It would have been much better if they had left that crap scene with the kids out, and broke our hearts by directly cutting from the Train station to the cementry, with something like "that's how I met your mother....and then I lost her". They should have given the audience the time, and if it's only 5 minutes, to grieve with Ted, to let her go, talk to her at her grave, show us that it's hard for him, and maybe have Lily or somebody else encourage him to date again, and of course it's Robin, that's fine with me, they still oculd have gone full circle with the blue horn, why not.

 

I don't agree with those who say that the ending ruined rewatching the show ever again for them, that's abosulety not true, still the way the filmed the ending was, like I said, to some degree a slap in the face for the audience.

[methodwriter85]

I seriously wonder if the showrunners regretted casting Cristin, because they clearly didn't expect that many fans to fall in love with her despite the very little screen time she got. It might have been better for their endgame if they had casted someone who sucks.

[ParadoxLost]

I think the problem was less about having an actress that was liked and more that they spent too many years doing way too good a job proving that Robin and Ted don't work.

[takalotti]

A Mosby-esque backstory to explain how I ended up watching this show in such a disjointed fashion.

I'm pretty sure we started watching the show live with S04.E01. A friend had highly recommended the show, so we picked it up.

We didn't bother trying to watch the episodes we missed. This is because I knew that after the series finale, I'd want to go back and watch the whole thing again anyway to find clues/hidden meanings that aren't apparent until you know the ending (think your second rewatch of The Sixth Sense). I read what recaplets were available on TWoP just to get familiar with some of the group dynamics, but that was it.

Then S06 happened. Hubby and I had been trying to get pregnant and it wasn't going well. So Lily and Marshall freaking out "It's been 3 days and we're not pregnant yet! Something's wrong!!!" really grated on me (Try four years, bitch!!!). Then they did get pregnant and I managed to avoid being jealous of a TV couple.

But then ... S07.E12: Symphony of Illumination. I couldn't handle it. I was Robin, except worse. Because I did want kids but didn't even have the certainty of infertility to know if I should give up on trying to conceive. I bawled my eyes out watching her kids fade away and decided I had to quit the show.

Near the end of S08 I got pregnant and all turned out well for our little family in the middle of S09. Which meant I was ready to revisit the idea of watching the show again.

Once everything was available on Amazon Prime, I watched both parts of the series finale (but hubby didn't). Then we started the entire series over from the beginning, catching the three seasons we missed, rewatching the fun years we knew, rewatching the not so fun year where the old pain only lingered as a dull ache now, and then coming back around to the ones we knew (almost) nothing about.

We just finished S08.E20: Time Travelers. This was the first time I felt like coming back to forums to bother talking about a show that's been over for a while.

Up until this point, my knowledge of the ending just made me watch the Ted/Robin dynamics carefully. Even though we always knew Robin wasn't the mother, now I knew this was really a love story about Ted and Robin, not Ted and the mother.

But this episode reminded me that it's still a story being told by a man grieving his wife, who did love her very much, and didn't just settle for her when he couldn't get Robin. Who wished he could have met his wife just a little sooner to have had 45 more days with her because he now knew how finite their days together would be.

And then I realized that during the first run, his 45 more days comment probably just sounded like regular romantic Ted, simply wishing he didn't need to wait 45 more days to see her. It's possible this might have been the point where some more perceptive viewers picked up on where this was going since his tone was somber rather than cheerful. But I wonder how many people who didn't see the end coming, then finished the series, remembered his 45 more days comment and realized what he truly meant.

I did my best not to cry because I didn't want to tip off Hubby. He caught me, but I think he just thought I was either feeling sappy or just sorry for Ted being so depressed. It didn't seem like a lightbulb went off, at least. I hope I remember to ask him about it when we finish.

Needless to say, I hope I remember not to rewatch this show yet again if I become a widow.

[Miss Dee]

I think for many the ending with Robin came out of left field, especially as Tracy was so enjoyable as a character. I really think it would have come off better if Ted's daughter had spoken to him about Robin in a heartfelt way that honored the story of "how I met your mother" yet encouraged him to move on, rather than the jokey "Duh, Dad, plow Robin already" vibe they went with.

[biakbiak]

I think the creators were too obsessed with getting the final scene of the kids that was filmed so long ago that they didn't care that the audience and the story had moved on. Even if the actress they cast for the mother hadn't been charming and fit in with the ensemble, how Ted and Robin evolved as characters and the changes in their relationship would have still made me hate the ending, even if I hated the mother. The ending makes me sad for Ted and Robin.

[Spartan Girl]

You know what I really hated? The running gag where Ted repeatedly corrects Barney by telling him they Marshall is his "best" friend, and not Barney. Dude, you don't tell that to your other friends. It's such a jerkass thing to say.

It was especially awful when Barney was upset that Ted didn't tell him that he was moving to Chicago since they were best friends, and Ted once again said that Marshall was his best friend....good for Barney for cutting him off with a "DONT EVEN THINK ABOUT IT!"

Also hated how in "Platonish" Marshall tried to get Ted to go after Robin because she was "his" girl. STFU Marshall. Robin was nobody's property and she made her feelings very clear (at least then). Stop meddling because of some stupid bet with Lily.

Honestly, Ted and Marshall were both dicks in the final seasons.

[Rinaldo]

Well, the writers just forgot how real people behave by that point. Everyone and everything was a contrivance.

[Vikitty]

I've been rewatching the seasons I own of this, which is Seasons 1-4. IMO, they were the strongest of the show and by Season 4 the quality seemed to go astray. I only watched sporadically through the next few seasons, though I did watch some of the last season just because I wanted to finally find out who the Mother was.

 

Lily and Marshall were my least favourite characters on the show, and as a rule I can't stand when shows bring in babies. So I just didn't care about their storyline at all, and in fact it bored and repelled me. And I ship both Ted/Robin and Barney/Robin, but watching Sandcastles in the Sand last night, I definitely would have preferred things work out between them, even if I didn't think they necessarily needed to get married (another sitcom trope).