I found my Tracy already. And I surely hope she doesn't die after we get a couple of kids. And I'm certainly not going to bounce back to the ex girlfriend I had troubles getting over ten years ago if she dies.
How I Met Your Mother: The Final Season
- Thread starter ryan123450
- Start date
First, God forbid, I hope you're right and you or your Tracy doesn't get sick and die. It could happen though. But if either of you do, wouldn't you want to spend every moment you can together? And wouldn't you be happy for those moments? And you know what? You're right. You probably wouldn't end up back with your ex from ten years ago. But you can't say for certain. Losing your Tracy could change you. Time could change your ex. You and your ex could be two very different people and just be in the right place for each other.
But, don't you think Ted of April 2014... The Ted who's very happy and about to go back to Farhampton with his Tracy... Don't you think he would say the same thing you did about Robin? I admit, they did not do a good job explaining that on Monday night, but I'm pretty sure that's the intent.
I don't deny that it's a bit of a stretch Ted and Robin ending up together. The truth is, that aspect of the show was always hard to swallow for me -- exes hanging out. I barely even speak to my exes. But, the reality of the story is: people die. Sometimes unexpectedly. And Ted and Robin had reconnected over the years. Perhaps because of a Tracy before the wedding. Robin suggests as much in the last scene as MacLarens. Ten years later, that friendship, which was once a romance in this case, could turn into something more. Friends become lovers. It does happen. That's real as well.
But, don't you think Ted of April 2014... The Ted who's very happy and about to go back to Farhampton with his Tracy... Don't you think he would say the same thing you did about Robin? I admit, they did not do a good job explaining that on Monday night, but I'm pretty sure that's the intent.
I don't deny that it's a bit of a stretch Ted and Robin ending up together. The truth is, that aspect of the show was always hard to swallow for me -- exes hanging out. I barely even speak to my exes. But, the reality of the story is: people die. Sometimes unexpectedly. And Ted and Robin had reconnected over the years. Perhaps because of a Tracy before the wedding. Robin suggests as much in the last scene as MacLarens. Ten years later, that friendship, which was once a romance in this case, could turn into something more. Friends become lovers. It does happen. That's real as well.
I had time to sleep over the ending. I hated it initially, now I am kind of ok with it.
It's not the fairy tale ending most of us wished for. Tough.
The one problem I had with it, is that I liked Tracy a whole lot better than Robin and that made me root for her happy ending more than Ted's and Robin's.
It's not the fairy tale ending most of us wished for. Tough.
The one problem I had with it, is that I liked Tracy a whole lot better than Robin and that made me root for her happy ending more than Ted's and Robin's.
The events that occur in the finale are not unrealistic... life is "messy". The main problem is that it is a lot of stuff to be crammed into 44 minutes of air time.
The second problem (which is partially related to the first one) seems to be that the writers and producers weren't sure how the audience would receive Cristin Milioti as The Mother, so they tried to maintain focus on the big five for most of the season. Of course, in hindsight, Milioti was wonderful and Tracy was written very well.
The third problem (and this is also partially related to the first one) is the mood whiplash induced by the final scene with Ted's kids, which was filmed way back in season 2. After a montage of photos of Ted and Tracy living happily together, overlapped with bits of their wedding, and finally meeting while Future Ted narrates how he is eternally grateful that he had met her... Ted's kids kind of laugh it off with a "that's it?" It almost seems that ending was filmed more with an intention that Ted had a failed marriage with one of his many girlfriends and that he had not dated for 6 years... which is more in line with the early seasons.
Ted's kids encouraging Ted to give Robin one last shot after 6 years of mourning Tracy isn't a bad thing in itself, but it needed to be a more serious and somber moment than what we got. Ending with the blue horn scene after a more serious and somber encouragement would have been a sufficiently hopeful ending.
The second problem (which is partially related to the first one) seems to be that the writers and producers weren't sure how the audience would receive Cristin Milioti as The Mother, so they tried to maintain focus on the big five for most of the season. Of course, in hindsight, Milioti was wonderful and Tracy was written very well.
The third problem (and this is also partially related to the first one) is the mood whiplash induced by the final scene with Ted's kids, which was filmed way back in season 2. After a montage of photos of Ted and Tracy living happily together, overlapped with bits of their wedding, and finally meeting while Future Ted narrates how he is eternally grateful that he had met her... Ted's kids kind of laugh it off with a "that's it?" It almost seems that ending was filmed more with an intention that Ted had a failed marriage with one of his many girlfriends and that he had not dated for 6 years... which is more in line with the early seasons.
Ted's kids encouraging Ted to give Robin one last shot after 6 years of mourning Tracy isn't a bad thing in itself, but it needed to be a more serious and somber moment than what we got. Ending with the blue horn scene after a more serious and somber encouragement would have been a sufficiently hopeful ending.
As someone upstream said, it looks like Robin is not traveling as much if at all (the 5 dogs). Maybe she's doing 60 Minutes now, or a network anchor based in NY.
Interesting. Something to think about.
I like the ending because of the twist itself, not because Ted ended up with Robin.
Alice died the same day at TR's mother, as I recall, so it was a double emotional blow.
If I remember correctly, there's only one existing photograph of Alice Roosevelt, and very little of their correspondence has survived. Roosevelt went out of his way to behave as though Alice never existed, and he carefully tried to erase her memory because he was so devastated by her death.
There's some thought that the reason TR's daughter Alice was such a wild child was because TR found her too emotional painful to deal with because she reminded me too much of his first wife.
One of the things that I was hoping for from the finale was that we would get an explanation of why the story had to start with meeting Robin in McLaren's.
For the last several seasons, I had thought that the reason the story of how Ted met the Mother started way back in 2005 because he needed to meet Robin in order to be at Barney and Robin's wedding where he would meet the Mother. But there was something just not quite right about that, because if he was dedicated to sitting down and telling such a long story, he should rightfully have started with meeting Barney 4 years earlier.
Of course Bays and Thomas had no way of knowing 9 years ago how the show was really going to go, but the only indication in the pilot episode of why the story starts there is because it was the day Ted decided he wanted to settle down and get married for the first time.
For the last several seasons, I had thought that the reason the story of how Ted met the Mother started way back in 2005 because he needed to meet Robin in order to be at Barney and Robin's wedding where he would meet the Mother. But there was something just not quite right about that, because if he was dedicated to sitting down and telling such a long story, he should rightfully have started with meeting Barney 4 years earlier.
Of course Bays and Thomas had no way of knowing 9 years ago how the show was really going to go, but the only indication in the pilot episode of why the story starts there is because it was the day Ted decided he wanted to settle down and get married for the first time.
That's just it though. The finale wasn't saying that Ted and Robin will live happily ever after (if the writers wanted us to believe that, then they easily could have just shown us that, like they showed us everyone else's future).
Instead it was only stating that these two-- who had something really special at one time-- will attempt to reconnect once more later in their lives. Maybe it will work, and maybe it won't. The point is that Ted decides (six years after the death of his wife) that it's at least worth it to try.
It's more of a hopeful ending than a fairytale one.
It's not hopeful. It's insane. Ted and Robin are trying to do the same thing again and again expecting different results. And yet, the same thing keeps happening over and over...
Oh, so Ted is at the very same state he was right before he met the mother: trying to chase girls just to not be alone anymore, and still reaching after Robin.
Now he's not only the guy who was left at the altar, but also the guy who found the mother of his children and then witnessed her death.
What a great hopeful ending.
Except that they're not a bunch of messed up 20 and 30 year olds anymore. Not only are they both a lot older and more mature, but unlike the previous times (where one was always more interested than the other, or they wanted to hook up for the wrong reasons), it seemed pretty clear at the end that they both wanted to be together now.
And also the guy who made it clear that he enjoyed and cherished every moment he had with the Mother. And they had a great 11 years together.
At the point he was telling the story, he hardly sounded horribly crushed and depressed about his life, or the cards he had been dealt.
Ted loved Tracy. Ted spent eleven happy years with her. They had two kids. They got married... Eventually. She got sick. She died. He mourned. His kids want him to move on. He's trying to move on. What happens after is up to your imagination. If you want Ted and Robin to be happy? They're happy. You want them to break up? They break up. You want Robin to die falling from the window seconds after the show cuts to black? That can happen too. They left it ambiguous for you to decide. The idea is: they're going to give it a shot. They're in different places than they were during the bulk of the show. Maybe it works. Maybe it doesn't. It's a hopeful ending. Not insane. Not stupid. Hopeful.
I'm done. This argument is just going in circles. Time to just agree to disagree and move on.
I'm done. This argument is just going in circles. Time to just agree to disagree and move on.
All we know is Ted and Robin aren't in their 30s by the end of the episode. We really know NOTHING of the people they are when Ted finishes the story. Robin could be a pill popping diva for all we know--there's nothing that contradicts that. Ted could have a drinking problem--nothing contradicts that.
We know they are older because there's grey in their hair and the title card tells us what year it is, but, we don't know they are more mature. Ted had to tell a story about how he met the kids mom in order to say, hey, I'm interested in your Aunt Robin... does that really scream mature? It feels like the same old Ted.
In the end, my big problem with the "twist" ending--besides dumping the relationship with the mother into the dust bin-- it's totally not earned. We don't know Ted and Robin at that moment in their lives. We don't see how they are, how they have changed and that this time it would work.
Am I the only one who saw it coming that
I thought that this was foreshadowed, probably by one of Ted's voice-overs (but I don't remember in which episode it was).
To put my two cents in, I get it why the finale is polarizing but personally, I was okay with it. It was a bittersweet ending whereat the sad thing was to see how best friends drift apart over the years. Which I find very realistic. The "message" I take from this is: Cherish the unique moments with your friends while you can. As for Ted and Robin, I agreee with Campe98, it's entirely up to you.
So, the only thing that didn't work so well for me were the timejumps foreward. It was like seeing their future lives in fast motion and I wish there had been less jumps. It felt a bit rushed.
the mother dies?
To put my two cents in, I get it why the finale is polarizing but personally, I was okay with it. It was a bittersweet ending whereat the sad thing was to see how best friends drift apart over the years. Which I find very realistic. The "message" I take from this is: Cherish the unique moments with your friends while you can. As for Ted and Robin, I agreee with Campe98, it's entirely up to you.
So, the only thing that didn't work so well for me were the timejumps foreward. It was like seeing their future lives in fast motion and I wish there had been less jumps. It felt a bit rushed.
It has been foreshadowed for years. The mother dying has been a fan favorite theory since at least the 5th or 6th season.
I'm not going to say anything here that hasn't been said by others, but ...
... I didn't have a problem with the story the show ended up telling. I do have a problem with how it was told. There was nothing wrong with the story, but there was everything wrong with the storytelling.
Stuff like Ted's plan at the end happens, and at times, it even works. My grandfather actually did something similar: after my grandparents got divorced, he reconnected with his high school girlfriend, also divorced by then. They eventually got married, and lived happily ever after - i.e., a few decades, before one of them had a stroke and died at a ripe old age. They were a better couple than my grandparents were, and they were certainly a better couple that their high school selves were. The very valid reason they didn't work as teenagers weren't there any more when they were both divorcees in their 40's - they weren't the same people any more.
Maybe the same applies to Ted and Robin. It's not impossible or even implausible. But that's not what they showed us. They just showed us a painfully lenghty demonstration as to why they didn't work as a young couple. Then they showed us Ted actually working very well with somebody else (I'm split on Barney-Robin) .. and then, bang, she's dead. Literally minutes from their first meeting. And then we learn that older versions of the people that were awful as a couple in their youth try to hook up again later in life, with us having no way of knowing how and how much they've changed since. Ted had six years to get over Tracy's death. We had, what, fifteen seconds? Meh. Life can be pretty depressing, but it's rarely *that* depressing.
Horrible, horrible story framing. If this was the story they wanted to tell us, they shouldn't have introduced us to the mother at all. No face, no name. The fact that she was as lovely as she was, and that she *felt* so right for Ted, is the only thing that gave this show any heart this season. Then, almost as an afterthought, they cut they heart out.
... I didn't have a problem with the story the show ended up telling. I do have a problem with how it was told. There was nothing wrong with the story, but there was everything wrong with the storytelling.
Stuff like Ted's plan at the end happens, and at times, it even works. My grandfather actually did something similar: after my grandparents got divorced, he reconnected with his high school girlfriend, also divorced by then. They eventually got married, and lived happily ever after - i.e., a few decades, before one of them had a stroke and died at a ripe old age. They were a better couple than my grandparents were, and they were certainly a better couple that their high school selves were. The very valid reason they didn't work as teenagers weren't there any more when they were both divorcees in their 40's - they weren't the same people any more.
Maybe the same applies to Ted and Robin. It's not impossible or even implausible. But that's not what they showed us. They just showed us a painfully lenghty demonstration as to why they didn't work as a young couple. Then they showed us Ted actually working very well with somebody else (I'm split on Barney-Robin) .. and then, bang, she's dead. Literally minutes from their first meeting. And then we learn that older versions of the people that were awful as a couple in their youth try to hook up again later in life, with us having no way of knowing how and how much they've changed since. Ted had six years to get over Tracy's death. We had, what, fifteen seconds? Meh. Life can be pretty depressing, but it's rarely *that* depressing.
Horrible, horrible story framing. If this was the story they wanted to tell us, they shouldn't have introduced us to the mother at all. No face, no name. The fact that she was as lovely as she was, and that she *felt* so right for Ted, is the only thing that gave this show any heart this season. Then, almost as an afterthought, they cut they heart out.
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