How I Met Your Mother: The Final Season

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

Bays and Thomas have came out and said that was the only scene with the kids that was shot for the series finale.

Which is a huge mistake.

CBS must be pissed, they were hoping for magic to strike twice with the spinoff type of thing. The ratings won't be as high now that they pissed off a lot of the fan base.

But maybe the new show of Cristin Milioti gets a nice boost!

http://insidetv.ew.com/2014/02/12/how-i-met-your-mother-cristin-milioti-rashida-jones-pilot/

 

[Guy Gardener]

I would have loved an alternate where the kids urge him to have an affair with Aunt Lily or gay up with Uncle Barney.

(Polygamy might have just been approved in Congress and they all get married?)

I wonder if Alyson is going to have a guest spot on Grimm with her husband?

 

[Mr Light]

One thing I always thought was really interesting about the show was that Ted and Lily were always 100% platonic. Yet she met him at the same time she met Marshall. I always thought that was really cool. Nice to see some fidelity. And Ted was really close with her too, and they spent time alone together, and it was never weird.

 

[urbandefault]

One thing I always thought was really interesting about the show was that Ted and Lily were always 100% platonic. Yet she met him at the same time she met Marshall. I always thought that was really cool. Nice to see some fidelity. And Ted was really close with her too, and they spent time alone together, and it was never weird.

I don't think that's weird at all. I hung out with a lot of people where there was no sexual tension. Some of my best friends from school were girls that I never dated, and some that I did date for a while. Just because there are two people of opposite sexes in a room, it doesn't mean that they are attracted to each other.

 

[Professor Zoom]

One thing I always thought was really interesting about the show was that Ted and Lily were always 100% platonic. Yet she met him at the same time she met Marshall. I always thought that was really cool. Nice to see some fidelity. And Ted was really close with her too, and they spent time alone together, and it was never weird.

I don't think that's weird at all. I hung out with a lot of people where there was no sexual tension. Some of my best friends from school were girls that I never dated, and some that I did date for a while. Just because there are two people of opposite sexes in a room, it doesn't mean that they are attracted to each other.

Might not be weird in real life. But it's weird in a sitcom.

 

[C_Miller]

One thing I always thought was really interesting about the show was that Ted and Lily were always 100% platonic. Yet she met him at the same time she met Marshall. I always thought that was really cool. Nice to see some fidelity. And Ted was really close with her too, and they spent time alone together, and it was never weird.

I've maintained that the Ted/Lily relationship was often the most underrated relationships on the show. It was always so much more than just his best friend's wife and I often thought that Lily was the only one of the gang to truly understand Ted.

 

[Mr Light]

<<Might not be weird in real life. But it's weird in a sitcom. >>
Exactly! It flew in the face of rom-com sit-com convention!

 

[Guy Gardener]

Ted spent two decades thinking that he made out with Lily at a party, before he was eventually corrected.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_I_Met_Everyone_Else

 

[urbandefault]

Ted spent two decades thinking that he made out with Lily at a party, before he was eventually corrected.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_I_Met_Everyone_Else

Yes, and Lily covertly sabotaged several of Ted's relationships.

All in the (subtextual) hope that Ted and Robin would end up together.

Looking back, the mother's death was foreshadowed in the episode with Ted and Tracy in the coffee shop. It was the scene where she told Ted to never stop telling his stories.

"What kind of mother would miss her own daughter's wedding?"

I didn't get that the first time I saw it, but it screams at me now.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Subliminal. Liminal. Superliminal.

That was superliminal.

...

Sometimes Lily was sabotaging Ted because she and Marshall had an ongoing bet about Ted's future. Winning the bet, and what's best for Ted might not have always coincided.

 

[Mr Light]

I just rewatched the last ten minutes. If they cut the Tracy in the hospital scene, and the kids telling him to date Robin scene, and the Blue French Horn scene... you get:

a loving montage of Ted and Tracy through the years, the actual scene of them meeting at the train station, ending with Future Ted saying "and that, kids, is how I met your Mother." THE END.

Now THAT'S the ending I wanted

(but cutting out Barney and Robin divorcing isn't doable without a lot of reshoots unfortunately. Unless you stick in a throwaway line about them getting back together a few years later)

 

[urbandefault]

Subliminal. Liminal. Superliminal.

That was superliminal.

...

Sometimes Lily was sabotaging Ted because she and Marshall had an ongoing bet about Ted's future. Winning the bet, and what's best for Ted might not have always coincided.

I didn't follow the show from start to finish. But it seems that there is a bigger picture that the writers were working with that we as viewers were never privy to.

It looks like all along they gave us little hints, here and there, as to the end of the story.

That's big stuff for the fans to talk about endlessly, as we do, but regular people would not have caught on to it.

 

[Guy Gardener]

After FAILING that consistently with almost 100 women... It was time for Ted to give men a go.

 

[Caretaker]

Yes, that is weird, since everyone is exactly the same.

Nice. I was just expressing a sentiment. You don't need to be rude.

 

[Finn]

He's not being rude. He's Guy Gardener.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Yes, that is weird, since everyone is exactly the same.

Nice. I was just expressing a sentiment. You don't need to be rude.

In last weeks Inside The Actors Studio, where the cast was interviewed and celebrated by their piers, James Lipton asked the "character" Lily, if she had any romantic affection for "Robin"?

The two actresses finally made out for the joy of the audience.



You're welcome.

 

[Mr Light]

Is this online somewhere?

The whole interview, not just the makeout.

I'm not a perv.

 

[FPAlpha]

I just rewatched the last ten minutes. If they cut the Tracy in the hospital scene, and the kids telling him to date Robin scene, and the Blue French Horn scene... you get:

a loving montage of Ted and Tracy through the years, the actual scene of them meeting at the train station, ending with Future Ted saying "and that, kids, is how I met your Mother." THE END.

Now THAT'S the ending I wanted

(but cutting out Barney and Robin divorcing isn't doable without a lot of reshoots unfortunately. Unless you stick in a throwaway line about them getting back together a few years later)

There's a fan cut linked somewhere upthread that did exactly that and it is very nice and exactly the finale i (and it seems many other) wanted to see.

I don't mind the divorce of Barney and Robin.. even though Barney is a good guy at his core (if you disregard how he lies to women at times to get them into bed) their relationship never seemed quite plausible as opposed to Marshall and Lily. It would have been more believable if Barney ended up with that british woman (forgot her name) because she made Barney change for the better initially and gave him stuff to think about.

What i was trying to say is that sometimes relationships don't work out in the end even if they begin out of true love.. outside interference can throw a wrench into anything and if it happens often enough cracks may appear.

As has been discussed the season box set set to appear in the fall will have a recut ending and possibly more scenes that were cut and i'm curious if they change anything or at best explain the finale we got a bit more.

As it stands the death of the mother and Ted coming back to Robin just ruined it for me for the one fact that it seems that the Mother was just a stepping stone that Ted needed to get back together with the truel love of his life (even if it never worked out but it did with the Mother).

 

[Chilli]

There must have been several endings shot, right? They couldn't possibly know they could make this ending happen back in season 2, when the kid scenes were filmed.

Arguably that's why there's a lot of backlash. In fairness all the kids said that Mom had been dead for six years and that he was in love with Aunt Robin. It didn't really say anything about the story... in fact it probably works out better if it was done at the end of Season 2 or so.

When you go back and look at Season 1 and 2, the show looks like it could easily go in the Robin direction. It's just about how Ted wants to settle down. The mother isn't especially established as a one true love for Ted, just someone who is the mother of his children.

However the show is entirely different now that it was then. I actually see a shift beginning in Season Three, but doesn't fully develop until the fourth season. When you look at the show at the start, it's about Ted looking to settle down and get married. We know he gets married to the kid's mother in the future, but we know next to nothing about her. There's really no reason to believe that she's his soulmate or one true love. The only references to "I never would have met your mother if such and such didn't happen" could easily be interpreted as for the sake of his children. That's why this ending works there. Because as of now, Robin is seen as that one true love for Ted.

However, once "No Tomorrow" happens they introduce the idea of destiny to the fold where they begin trading the Yellow Umbrella. Still he's getting over Robin at the time, so there's still time to have this work as an ending, but once the end of Season Four comes around, it just doesn't anymore. The last few episodes of Season Four ("The Three Days Rule" "Right Place, Right Time" "As Fast as She Can" and "The Leap") all paint the Mother as Ted's soulmate. And that is the story the run with for the rest of the series. Especially in Double Date and Girls Vs. Suits.

And congruently to that, they make Robin less and less of Ted's soulmate. There are too many false starts and times where they give it a try and it just never works. That's why we say the series outgrew the ending and what the writers wanted no longer fit the narrative demands. I fully admit that there was a time where I wanted Ted and Robin together, but nine years later, that's no longer where the show was.

And don't give me anything about how we're not supposed to see that Ted and Robin are meant to be together and how it's just an example of Ted finally being open to other possibilities after the death of the love of his life. The swell of the music (hell read the lyrics) and the Blue French Horn show that ultimately the story was about how Ted and Robin are destined to be together. That's why it doesn't sit well with me. That may have been the story that they were telling early on, but I was in High School when the show started and now I'm two years out of college. A lot can change in that time and this show was one of those things.

100% agree. The ending we got would've been an inspired, albeit rushed, way to conclude the show they were doing more than half a decade ago. At that point, the mother was the ultimate MacGuffin. She was nothing more than a plot/framing device for the Ted/Robin story, which at the time still seemed like something that might've actually had potential.

I also agree with what this review has to say:

What we can learn from the ‘How I Met Your Mother’ backlash

It was quite a week for "How I Met Your Mother" fans. Emotions among viewers were all over the map: sadness, disappointment, resentment, anger, hope, and whatever it is they're feeling now. Probably grief.

Many seemed to think that the series failed its characters and its fans. Despite nine years of growth, characters like Barney and Ted went back to their season 1 selves. After spending an entire season building up to Barney and Robin's wedding, we found out 20 minutes into the finale that they got divorced just three years later -- oh, and that Barney was once again cruising bars and chasing 20-year-olds as if nothing had changed. Not only that, but after her beautiful union with Ted, the Mother dies and her death is covered in less than a minute -- which is when we discovered the whole series was a set-up to justify Ted and Robin getting back together.

Of course, not everyone felt betrayed. Vulture rounded up the best of the "How I Met Your Mother" defenders, who claimed that a fairytale ending wouldn't have done any of the characters justice, and that the series' overarching message was "treasure what you have when you have it."

But while those arguments may have truth to them, they still don't necessarily justify how the writers abandoned everything they worked towards just so they could settle on an ending they wrote nearly a decade ago.

So, what have we learned from all of the "How I Met Your Mother" fallout? Well, a few things:

Don't make plans you can't (or won't) change later on

The finale scenes with Ted's kids were actually filmed way back in 2005, meaning that showrunners had already planned how the series would turn out, which means they obviously didn't take into consideration the variables ahead.

Instead of simply cutting the kids' scenes to accommodate the changing narratives and the evolving character traits (honestly, how dare Barney go back to "Bro Code" spokesman after growing so much?), creators pulled the TV equivalent of a "and it was all a dream," cutting out the Mother with barely a mention just so Ted could return to Robin. Nobody even cared about Ted and Robin anymore, especially after "HIMYM" had spent the last few seasons pointing out how they had outgrown each other romantically and were no longer a good fit. Bays and Thomas easily could have just thrown out their original idea, but they stubbornly decided to stay the course.

Fans of "Lost" would frequently complain that the show's writers didn't have an ultimate plan, and were just making things up on the fly. As the "How I Met Your Mother" finale proved, staying committed to a plan made early on doesn't always work.

[...]

I'm not opposed to sad series finales and bittersweet endings by default. I absolutely loved the Babylon 5's tearjerker finale. But, that finale made sense in the context of the series. It was coherent with the story the show was telling.

The story HIMYM was telling was, in later seasons, that one cannot make a relationship work by pretending the person you love is someone (s)he is not, and that you *shouldn't try* - the person you'd want him/her to be might actually be out there, and'll have been worth the wait. Ending that story by killing off said person within a few seconds .. blargh.

I'm kinda irritated by people justifying the finale with "life is not a fairy tale!" ... well, yeah, I'm aware of that. There are no real happy endings in real life. We all die in the end*. We've all known this for a long time, and spend enough time agonizing about it as it is. The only happy endings there are are stories you stop telling at the right point. It's just shitty story telling IMO to end the story they inadvertently were telling where they did.

(*And then, a few billion years in the future, the sun'll turn into a red giant and destroy any traces there might be left of anything any of us ever did - and if we manage to escape the solar system, the heat death of the universe, the big freeze, the big crunch, or whatever will eventually do us in.)


And hey, if they'd have let Tracy live, the more cynical among us could've still murdered her in their headcanon after the conclusion of the series.

 

[JarodRussell]

There are no real happy endings in real life. We all die in the end*.

Of course there are happy endings. When you die at old age after a fulfilled life and you can look back and say "I have no regrets".

But dying in your 40s before you could see your kids getting married and having their own kids, etc... that's not a happy ending.