Complete and Utter OT: HIMYM Series Finale
This is probably way too OT to be posted, but that Walking Dead thread stayed up so...
Am I the only one who doesn't think that the series finale to How I Met Your Mother was the worst ending to any show in the history of history? I loved the ending, but I feel like I am the only one on earth to love it.
I also think that the ending to Six Feet Under was one of the most perfectly executed endings I have ever seen.
Sopranos? No way! Not a chance man. That last episode left way too many open ends. Glossing it over with "Don't Stop Believing" by Journey fooled no one.
The best ending in history was definitely Breaking Bad. Tight on all fronts.
It wasn't meant to fool anyone. It was a pretty appropriate ending given the shows path. And sometimes things are better left to the imagination. Everyone can draw their own conclusions as to what happened, but there was a reason it was critically acclaimed as one of the greatest endings in television history.
As the only mgoblog person with a Lost avatar, I feel I need to comment here.
G4 (I think that's the channel) shows re-runs of Lost and the other day I caught the finale to Season 2 (the hatch exploding) and I was caught up again. Great acting, set design, interesting characters, etc. I then went and re-watched "The Constant" for the first time in three years and had to leave the room toward the end b/c it was getting dusty in there.
Now, I liked the series ending, and loved the show overall, so perhaps it is easier for me to view old episodes (which I rarely do, b/c I don't have the time). But give it a whirl -- Locke is still Locke, Desmond is still Desmond. Regarding the last episode, you can just refuse to listen to Jack's father and pretend it never happened, if that works for you.
Woah Woah Woah
No one told me there wold be LOST spoilers in this thread!
I thought I kept it pretty general, but honestly I wasn't really worried about spoilers for an epsiode that's about 10 years old.
If you are watching the show -- hope you are enjoying it; I sure did. I wish I had the time to re-watch old episodes, but perhaps that will be better 5/10 years from now, as I will have forgotten much of what went on.
Its been two years since the serie's ended. I am assuming for the sake of humanity that the /s sign is assumed in your statement.
is a big fan of the show, so I feel like I've seen enough of it to say this: the fact that the show has ended justifies how they ended it, no matter how they did it.
Hmm...idk what to think.
I loved the show. The last two seasons kind of sucked, as the jokes started to get older, and Ted turned into more and more of a sissy (or at least his sissiness shined through due to the lack of other substance). The whole show turned into a mush fest. Yuck.
The show probably lasted a bit too long, but after watching a show for 9 years, you kind of feel empty when its gone. Compound that with the basketball team losing, and I have had a rough Sunday/Monday.
As rushed as it seemed, I am glad it is over. And there is some closure. I am not the type to try and figure out endings to shows, because I'd rather enjoy the ride, then fret over if I knew what would happen or not. So I am not mad with the mother being dead, and him ending up with Robin. Or the fact that Ted used that story to get his children's permission. It seems like a Ted thing to do.
My biggest complaint is that it was dumb to make them have 2 kids and wait 7 years to get married? What did that add to anything in the story? But whatever.
I am 54. I found the waiting 7 years and 2 kids to get married as a huge problem, in the morality sense. Not even in the sense of violating a standard. But if he is such a nice guy, and this is so romantic, why didn't he marry her much earlier. The fact that this existed in the story, and was just glossed over, is a problem for me with the screenwriters. That is the kind of thing that led me to not like the show, even though I could spot talent at all levels. I liked Seinfeld, I am from the east and feel like these people were similar to people I knew (for better or worse), but the handling of the actual mother was unacceptable to me. What do you younger people think.
Ted was a Ross-level walking apocalypse from the very first episode and was the major reason I never quite warmed to the show(Wife loved it and I liked all the other characters but Ted, so I maintained vague interest). It felt appropriate that the biggest D-Bag on TV since Ross was a Buckeye fan.
It was a good show, but once they knew it was ending, it started sucking. The last season was such a waste. They spent 20 episodes going through 48 hours of the supposedly biggest weekend of the series, and then breeze through 15 years in 20 minutes? Stupid.
They should have started season 9 with the wedding, then used the rest of the season to move through the rest of that storyline, leading up to whether or not the mom dies in the finale. The last 5 minutes could have been the same, but it would have felt more planned and believable, and not like they realized in the last episode that they had to cover a lot of ground to get to the ending they wanted.
Yeah, I was a bit pissed that Ted and Robin ended up together. Robin had so many chances to be together with someone but she pushed everyone away. The mother was way cooler.
Still caught me in the feels a little bit. I didn't expect it, I've only watched HIMYM casually through the years.
Only show ending that made me tear up was Scrubs.
If you think about it, it was done right in the grand scale. He spent 9 years telling his kids the events that led up to meeting their mother. And the way the show was created from the start, not having Tracy in it, you knew that wasn't the "real story" and she was dead. It was Ted's journey through love and heartache and the one that got away. But I like how the kids said go get Aunt Robin and he did. We're left with a scene where where our two beloved characters are starting something new. Where it went, is a mystery. I like that.
I didn't really care for what they did for Barney's character. I can understand the divorce because they were both so different, but to make him have a baby and he's finally normal? Come on.
I will really really miss this show. IMO it was better than Friends and can go head to head with a Seinfeld/Cheers as the best comedy ever. There were some glorious episodes. I mean they did half an episode about taking a deuce. Deuces are wild Marshal! Supreme Fudge. Barney's blog. Very creative and most of the time, extremely funny.
The last few seasons were meh to me and at times frustrating becuase some episodes wouldn't advance the story at all, but at that point I was in way too deep and had to keep watching. I loved the earlier seasons so much that I just had to see it through and find out how he met the damn mother.
That being said, I didn't like the finale. We've been leading up to him meeting the mother for years now. Going through relationship after relationship to find "the one". Then in the span of 15-20 minutes they just throw her away and he goes back to Robin. What the hell? It took us so long to get here and Ted finally found his love then boom, she's gone just like that? Really cheapens the whole relationship IMO. I guess I should have seen it coming, but I would have content with a "happily ever after" scenario with the mother ending with them being old and playing bridge or something (would have pulled from an old running joke). And what is up with them being unmarried for 7 years? Seems like a very un-Ted like thing to do.
Oh well, its over now.
I want nine years of my life back. I am changing-my-NetFlix-rating-from-five-to-three-stars-and-never-watching-a-re run-again-and-making-sure-to-avoid-the-spin off-and-any-future-works-of-Craig Thomas-and-Carter Bays upset.
The moral of the show wasn't ~life happens~. It was about this:
Anybody can relate to that. That's a good lesson, and particularly applicable to Ted.
Ted wanted the perfect woman, the girl who accepted him for all of his quirks, the girl who he could call right away and fall in love with too fast and would laugh at his shellfish joke and that wouldn't shy away from any of it.
It's one thing to want a happy ending, it's another to actually be ready for it. and that's a beautiful thing. It was a wonderful journey to see how everything neatly tied itself together, all the narrow misses between Ted and "Tracy", how they both met not a minute too soon, and how Ted gained a story that was befitting of a man of his romanticism.
Instead, our takeaway is: don't worry! The one that got away will always be there after you have two kids with another woman, because, after all, that woman didn't want kids with you, so you should meet a lovely lady and put her reproductive system to work while your "friend", who also didn't believe in marriage and always had problems committing to you and frequently put her career ahead of her love life, well, she's going to marry your best friend and you're going to wind up with his sloppy fourths after they divorce, but it's okay, because you're old and grey now and you both really don't have other options!
(the run on sentences are no less sloppy than the execution of the finale or the final season, for that matter)
That's a great premise for a show. /s
That's neither sit-com "awww fuzzy feeling"-inducing nor is it a thought-provoking lesson. It's sad. I spent the latter half of the series not believing my eyes and ears each time Ted kept coming back to Robin, getting tired of the old plot device, and they pair them together after she's virtually undergone NEGATIVE character development and been spayed to the point that even Barney was too good for her?
That Ted never actually gets over Robin is the biggest problem I had with the show too. I started watching the show after a bad breakup, so I am biased as the show began to mean to me that people from your past can be gotten over. In the end, Ted never really got over her, and that they end up together is unrealistic and also demoralizing.
The ending was good, and what the writers wanted to do all along. I read last night that they had the last 10 minutes scripted since the first or second season. I do not blame them for sticking to the plan.
The problem is that the show went on too long in between. I think the audience invested too much time and emotion into the mother's legend, and it overrode what the show really should have been about, which is Ted, Robin, and the other characters we actually saw. Also going 9 seasons, I think, kind of forced the Barney-Robin wedding to happen, which obviously made the divorce have to happen.
May I ask where you read that the writers had the ending scripted in the first or second season?
Curious.
Also: Now that I think about it, they MUST have had the ending scripted in the first season since they shot the kids in the first season. However, they may have had several ideas and could have shot multiple endings with the kids.
attachment to Tracy, the mother. You couldn't get emotionally attached... that was on purpose. If you got emotionally attached to the mother, you'd feel differently about the fact this whole show was about Ted finally getting to be with Robin.
If everyone fell in love with Tracy, the ending, planned years in advance, would have been ruined.
People are killing this finale and I get the whole wedding theme was dragged on beyond belief, but there's NO way this show could have ended with Ted and the mother happily ever after. It would have gone against everything the show had done for however long it was on.
This show was always going to end with Ted and Robin together and it happened. I will never get why critics killed last night.
My wife and I thought it was one of the best series finale we've seen.
I'm being serious; it reminded me why I used to like the show. The past few seasons have been incredibly dumb, but the finale got back to elements in the early seasons that worked.
Well, there is some continuity to HIMYM b/c they did recycle the exact same jokes for every single episode. This last season was terrible
Has to be American Ninja Warrior.
Nobody ever makes it to the top.
Edit:
Or Cops. Nobody ever gets away.
I enjoyed the ending. I thought it was rather sad but fitting. However, I think the writers could have spent less time dragging out the wedding/season and given the finale more than 2 episodes. They seemed to be rushing things at the end when that's what everyone was waiting for this entire season. Overall a great show and Mondays will be strange without it.
I get that the ending is poetic, and makes sense with the story and the kids, yada yada, I get all that. My problem is they spent the last 2-3 years really evolving the characters, showing them learning to love and learning to let go. Then, the whole finale reverses all of the growth and maturity that happened to everyone. They had their plan from day one and stuck with it, no matter what. Ted and Robin had become exhausting. We had moved on. They should have too.
Even though we never saw the mom, I think a lot of people did get attached to her. Her mystery was the frame of the whole show. We desperately wanted to know who the one for Ted was, and in the snipets of the two of them together we saw that he found true love. AND DAMNIT, I WANTED MY RACHEL GETTING OFF THE PLANE MOMENT.
This review sums up my feelings pretty well: http://www.hitfix.com/whats-alan-watching/series-finale-review-how-i-me…
The best ending to a show ever is Moral Orel. If you haven't watched the entire series, spend a few hours on a rainy day watching it.