madcougar

Fuck Bays & Thomas. Fuck them in their stupid asses.

I guess I should have seen this load of shit coming a mile away what with how they continued the will they/won't they bullshit up until the next to the last episode. But I think it's ridiculous to set up an entire season of episodes to convince us that Barney and Robin are right for each other just to shit on it 10 minutes into the last episode. This episode, minus the crap ending, also felt super rushed, like all of a sudden they ran out of episodes and no one noticed. I think it's just shitty storytelling to set up the mother to be this angel-like creature just to kill her off to hook Ted up with women who is a boozy slut at best and a boozy slut at worst. Fuck you Bays & Thomas fuck you up your stupid asses.

TheKing

I think what happened here is that they had the idea for the ending right so early in the run, and were able to put that footage with the kids in the can, that they decided to run with it. But they never thought they'd be on 9 years.

They probably never thought they'd do the Ted and Robin thing over and over and over again. Never thought they'd find an actress with such great chemistry with Ted that just about everyone would rather see her with Ted than Robin. They cast the mother err Tracy too perfectly.

The meeting was at least worth the wait. Perfect. They nailed all the references and hints and made it all come together. But even as I watched the episode, you could see that the mother just wasn't there in the scenes with the others. I mean Ted has found his one but she doesn't go out with him? Hell, all the other random babes did! They just kept hammering home the fact that it was all about those 5 characters and the mother was always a prop.

If they didn't want us to like Tracy, why cast her as Ted's dream woman? It also makes Robin look like a total sap.

I will say this. Unlike Lost where people could say that they wrote it as they went along and made things up and changed the story, you can't say that here. They had the idea, committed it to film 8 years ago, and ran with it. I respect them for that, I just disagree with it.

Of course they could have also filmed one where he winds up with Lily or where the kids are just annoyed at the end as well, and all we saw was the Robin ending, but still, they planned it.

Jackskeleton

Annoying considering how many filler episodes they had this season of stretching a season into the span of three or four days, but then cram 16 or so years into two episodes.

I'm not even mad about the death, but to just completely ignore the great chemistry between Ted and Tracy or show stories of their parenting years or whatever time the kids couldn't remember was just glossing over the mother's character completely. And that's the problem.

Not even her death, which was just swept up under the rug so quickly. Fucking hilariously bad.

dolphinboy

I'm the camp that thought it was a very bad finale. Not nearly X-Files bad, but bad.

Great tweet:

@kinseyholley: Your Mother Went To Her Grave Knowing I Never Stopped Loving Aunt Robin, Kids #HowIMetYourMotherFinalepisode

E Unit

I'm not happy with the way this ended, but sadly it got realistic. But for a show that knew what their endgame was going to be years ago, I really wished they didn't hit us with so much in one damn episode. One thing I wish they did was to bring back the 2 actors who played Ted'd kids he told the stories to and showed them all grown up still listening to him talk. The boy who was in Wizards of Waverly Place really grew. I'm sure the girl did as well.

TheKing

They did:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/43_37kAU9hQ" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

This ending blows the real one out of the water!

Patman

It would have been cool if they brought the story to 2039, and filmed a final coda with Ted's kids, now in their mid-20s, just to bring the entire cast full circle, without having to also rely on the filmed footage from season 2.

emachine12

God damn, I pretty much called this ending a few weeks ago:

http://forum.dvdtalk.com/12040707-post21.html

Aside from the remarried/stepmom part, Ted was looking for approval to move on. On that note, I hated this ending... reminded me of Seinfeld's with an unsatisfying closure that ran around in circles.

Decker

It was......okay. Not a classic and did feel too rushed. Loved the actual meeting - that hit it out of the park. The rest really dragged by comparison. Hated the divorce so early, but wasn't surprised by it (except that it came right after that hotel sex we'd seen previously this year in a Flash Forward). The ending did feel like a cop out and pretty much matched what we all thought was going to happen. But like I said before I'm okay with the mother having died -- it makes sense both thematically and in build up. I'd be much more irritated if the foreshadowing was a Red Herring.

BTW : They did tell you the Mother's name before! I just happened to be watching a S1 episode this week and in the end of the Thanksgiving episode, Ted talks to a stripper in a club. She introduces herself as "I'm Amber...(whispers) Actually I'm Tracy". Narrator Ted then says "and that's how I met your mother!" The kids freak out, then he says "I'm only kidding!" But in order for the joke to work,her name HAD to be Tracy.

Jackskeleton

We're going to play this game, eh?
http://forum.dvdtalk.com/12034540-post54.html



Still, I would have been fine with the death and jumping back to Robin if we had actually spent this season leading up to it. Instead of leading up to a wedding that they constantly beat us over the head with telling how right it was and amazing it would be.... for all of two years or ten minutes of screen time before they get a divorce.

Show Ted telling stories of him and Tracy and the 10 or so years they spent together. Because they failed miserably as making it seem like Tracy was this perfect girl for Ted and wasn't anything more than a consolation prize. Even in half of the flash forwards Tracy wasn't even there with the "new gang".

emachine12

We didn't even find out who Barney got pregnant so either that mystery or the pineapple are resolved as an extra on the DVD. I suspect the closure of either one of those will still be unsatisfying.

I'll watch the finale again to see what else they closed out but the flash fowards/backs got complicated and that conversation on the platform firmly proved the better writing is for Ted and Tracy.

Geofferson

Thought it was a mixed bag with a few nice moments peppered in. Jumped around way too much, for starters and yeah, sort of made most of this entire season pointless.

I did like Barney's moment with his daughter. Reminded me of Sam Malone's final moment in the Cheers finale on finding his true love (I fully acknowledge a bar and a human being aren't worthy of comparison, but you get the idea).

The Ted/Tracy/Robin thing. I didn't know how it would play out, but fully expected Ted/Robin to be together somehow. We didn't have much vested in Tracy as a character (compared to Robin) -- I just didn't know how they'd pull it off and this seemed like a reasonable way to do it -- they just didn't execute on it very well.

Agreed it was rushed with several things simply glossed over or ignored. I did like the final scene with Ted & Robin though.

hdtv00

Yea people can bitch all they want about how it ended, but the only real mistake they made was entire season on the damn wedding day instead of fleshing out story so the last episode didn't feel rushed like crazy.

Still good job and Bravo to them.

DeputyDave

I really loved the final episode. After going down hill the last few seasons I'm glad I stuck it out.

Oh, and I accept that I was totally wrong when I posted several times this year that there was no way the mother was dying. Oops.

Jackskeleton

Wait, she died? I mean, aside from a throw away line about "when she got sick..." and "it's been six years", you would have never known.

Such a glossed over part that totally cheated Tracy out of great character development all to keep this stupid "we aren't showing how they met till the final episode" crap.

Raul3

Never thought I would be in the complainers camp. That last scene was a big Fuck You.

Yes, Ted and Tracy were perfect together. Ted and Robin not so much.

But yeah, it had good moments.

Overall it's a D+ from me.

Charlie Goose

I really liked the finale, although it did feel slightly rushed.

Perhaps instead of 20+ episodes for the weekend of the wedding (that didn't last), they could've spent the last 5 or 6 episodes fleshing out the future of the group.

Are we certain that the mother's death was natural? Robin has traveled the world, she could've picked up some foreign poison to get her out of the way.

Shamus McAnally

Count me in the "hated it" camp.

Just finally glad this ride (that I was stupid enough to stick with for this long) is over.

(That said, the Barney moment in the hospital with his daughter was legen...)

windom

Some questions from someone who's never watched an episode before this one:

I thought Bob Saget played the father telling the story to the kids, but I didn't hear him at all on this episode. What's up with that?

Why did the guy want to marry his kids' aunt? Was she the father's brother's wife? Or their mother's sister? I was totally confused on this one.

The characters seemed pretty bland and the none of the "jokes" seemed really that funny. Is that typical for the show, or do you have to be a long time watcher to get the jokes? The humor level didn't seem much above a generic sitcom from the '80s. Also, could the cast be any whiter?

Why did the guy give the flat chested girl from Avengers a blue tuba? What was that supposed to mean?

Also, if these people all have families and/or kids then why is maintaining their previous friendships so important to them?

JZ1276

Thats pretty much the only gripe I have with the show. I'm fine with the finale but yeah, the entire story was narrated by Saget's voice...except in this episode.

Could you be anymore racist? There are plenty of all black sitcoms. coughUPNcough.

For exactly that reason. Because she is flat chested. It is a magic tuba, hence the color blue, and when played, it magically turns flat chested girls into big breasted girls.

mnementh

Aunt was used in the sense of a close friend of the family, not a biological aunt.

Watch the pilot episode.

Their friendships are current and they don't want them to diminish.

Decker

Actually, yes : Barney's brother could have been played by a white man.

Jackskeleton

So you have no frame of reference here, Donny. You're like a child who wanders into the middle of a movie and wants to know...

Coral

Thinking about it more, what makes them cheat Tracy (and the audience) even more was that the pairing of Ted and Robin isn't even guaranteed to be permanent. If they were meant to be together, they wouldn't have been on and off so often - they would've been together permanently earlier on. Instead what we get is Tracy (who is perfectly matched up with Ted and has great chemistry) taking a back seat to someone Ted essentially keeps using as a rebound and will never marry.

It felt like if the show were to flash forward another 5 years we'd see Ted infatuated with another chick while Robin waits around for him again.

Goat3001

Now that I've slept on it I have a few more thoughts:

-While I understand why they took the route they did I do feel cheated as well. I was always in the camp that understood that it was about the journey. That all the crap that happened to Ted would one day pay off and he'd meet 'the one' and when he did, it would be perfect, and it was. So to throw her aside like that didn't seem fair to the story we've been following for 9 years. Even if you forget about the chemistry they had this season, looking back, all those moments of him pining to meet the one turned out to be meaningless.

-It feels that the creators may almost have regretted the twist in the pilot. After that, even though they wanted Robin and Ted together they needed to continue to manufacture a love story with 'The Mother'.

-The ending may have been better if we cut out the last few seasons. There was a time when it was all about Robin and Ted but then as the seasons went on we all got sick of the will they/won't they between them. Also, if they never introduced the mother as an almost regular character then we wouldn't have been so tied to her at the end.

-The big BIG mistake they made was pairing Robin and Barney at all. I would have been fine with it if they stuck the two of them together for good. But they knew how the show would end, so having them together at all only seemed to serve as a giant misdirection. I think they would have been better off if they kept the 'old Barney' the entire show only to have him find his true love in Nora, a character everyone seemed to like.

-I mostly enjoyed the final season. I never felt it was a true return to form but I felt it was better than the 2 or 3 seasons before it. However, thinking about it now, the set up kind of ruined the emotional goodbye to the apartment and McLaren's. That scene with Lily standing in the empty apartment would have held a lot more emotional weight if that setting was used at all this season.

-So while I'm clearly not a fan of the end, I did enjoy the entire rest of the finale. We got appropriate closure for everyone. The entire theme of the episode, that life goes on past the relationships you make, was perfect. One that I'm sure many of us can understand.

-Probably looking into it more than I should but I'm a little confused as to how Robin's relationship with the rest of the group progressed. It seemed that they went many months maybe even years without seeing Robin. Yet she's affectionately known as Aunt Robin to the kids. Also, if Ted is planning on being with Robin for good, he's not going to be happy when she's always traveling for her job. The Ted we know would hate that.

-Just realized as I was writing this how the pilot/2nd episode mirrored the whole series. On their first date Ted falls in love with Robin, has to leave her because she gets called into work but then is pushed into seeing her again. That's pretty much the entire series in a nutshell.