<p>Thoughts? I feel unsettled. I think I want to cry. </p>
<p>I liked it. Although I don’t think Robin deserved Ted. I wish that tonight’s episode had been spread out over 4-5. episodes and the wedding wasn’t so long. All of that time invested for them to get divorced. I also really didn’t like all of the flash forwards of Ted and the mom. I wanted a heart stopping moment when they met and I think that was ruined by seeing them together already. I think they had been setting up her death and the T&R ending for a while so I wasn’t surprised. I would have been disappointed if it had a sappy happily ever after.</p>
<p>I liked it. Then I read the board at Televisionwitoutpity – and boy, did people hate it. With a passion.</p>
<p>I thought this last season was horrible. Devoting an entire season to one weekend was stupid and boring. It just dragged, and the story lines were particularly insipid.</p>
<p>But I thought the finale was well done. I liked that we saw what happened to the characters over the next 15 years, and that there were as many downs as ups. The moment Ted and Tracey met under the yellow umbrella was sweet and touching, and they really connected. As much as I hated this season, in the final analysis I’m glad this moment was at the very end. Well, almost the end. And I was OK with the last couple scenes, too. </p>
<p>It all makes sense but it was a roller coaster to watch. I’ve read a lot of disappointment on twitter but looking back there was a lot of foreshadowing for this outcome. I like the two of them together, though the mother was perfect, maybe too perfect. Only in looking back in loss would someone be that perfect. </p>
<p>I gave up on HIMYM a while ago and only watched a few episodes here and there. After the finale, I have no interest in watching what I’ve missed. </p>
<p>I hated it. Yes, I know that it was all foreshadowed and this is what most people expected to happen but I hated it. I liked Robin and Barney. Why pour all that time into their wedding and relationship just to have it end so abruptly? </p>
<p>Ted and Robin would’ve worked several seasons ago… I just don’t think it worked now. </p>
<p>The show has felt mechanical for a long time but the last episode and much of this one rose above that. I thought it was sad but they can choose to the show as they want. </p>
<p>Here’s one problem I have with the ending. Ted and Robin couldn’t make it work the first time, despite their feelings for each other, because of her career on the road and his being a homebody. In 2030 her career hasn’t changed; in the last scene, she’s just getting home from a trip. We’re not told what Ted is doing; can we assume he’s a successful architect? One of them is going to have to give up a career and lifestyle they love. Can they make that work this time? </p>
<p>I loved the scene when Barney met his baby daughter. </p>
<p>really liked the finale, but then I haven’t liked the show in awhile – ever since Barney and Robyn got together. That relationship just made no sense, and their chemistry was not great. Given Barney’s history, it just was not believable.</p>
<p>This year was just awful. The weekend concept was stupid.</p>
<p>I thought the finale was fine and was surprised at the disgust on the TWOP boards and even in Alan Sepinwall’s review. I assumed that Robin’s traveling days were over–hence the numerous dogs–and that she was just returning from walking them. I think we’re meant to believe that she and Ted are both past the obstacles that were in their path in the past. She wanted a high profile career and no kids; he wanted a conventional family life. Now Robin has achieved fame as a foreign correspondent but is 50-ish and ready to give up that demanding lifestyle. Ted’s kids are older and will soon be out of the house. Their time has come. (The only element of the finale that had me shaking my head was the six year delay in Ted and Tracy’s wedding. That’s not the Ted we’ve known!) My favorite scene was Ted standing under Robin’s window brandishing the blue French horn (which he kept throughout his marriage–yikes)–an exact replay of the scene in the pilot.</p>
<p>Yes, the blue French horn was a great touch. Full circle. </p>
<p>That was a huge middle finger to the fans, the premise, the mythology, and how wonderfully Cristin played the mother. Heck, it was a huge middle finger to the actual meeting of Ted and Tracy, which was beautiful. </p>
<p>It was, I think, the worst finale they could have written, because it retroactively ruined everything from the pilot onwards.</p>
<p>Yes, it was messy and yes it was imperfect; it worked because it felt real in the way this show has made sitcom life real before. </p>
<p>Yes, at some point in our late 20s or early 30s we make a group of friends and they become more then friends they become family. And at some point in our late 30s or early 40s we watch this show and realize that a person you would call one of your closest friends, you haven’t been in the same room with in, oh gosh, has it really been that long? </p>
<p>The other thing the finale did, is it created an out. </p>
<p>At some point in your life you fell in love and it didn’t work out. Then you went mopey. Then you messed around. Then you dated. Then you met someone. Then you fell back in love and settled down. </p>
<p>Some part of us thinks like Ted. And if you ever got an out, you’d make that call and do what Ted did. </p>
<p>I don’t think it was a case of the writers getting a clever idea and not changing it. </p>
<p>It didn’t stick the landing but I kind of like how it pulled everything off.</p>
<p>See, I DON’T think this ending was “realistic.” The show spent 8 years (their time) and 9 seasons (our time) showing us in painstaking detail why Ted and Robin did not work as a couple, with the reassurance that Ted would find someone he just loved and clicked with on every level. And then they threw that out the window because they were hellbent on using footage that they shot back in Season 2, when it might have actually worked.</p>
<p>I’m not at all averse to “less than perfect endings.” Heck, my favorite fictional love story (of the “I could watch this a million times and my heart would still melt” variety") ends with the very heavy implication that in a few months one of them will die and the other will commit suicide, but the endings have to make sense for the characters and the relationships. HIMYM’s did not, at all.</p>
<p>Also, I may be alone in this, but the whole message of “nobody ever really stays friends with their friends” also sat poorly with me, as my mom and her best friend have been best friends for almost 40 years and still talk almost every day. Plus, many of my parent’s other friends from college are people we grew up around and still see regularly. Granted, you don’t stay in touch with everyone, but the core five weren’t just drinking buddies–they spent pretty much every day together for 10-15 years. So, no, I don’t think that was necessarily “brave realism,” either.</p>
<p>I missed it. Could someone give me a brief outline of how it ended? </p>
<p>Can’t really believe I am even going here, but for me it made the last few seasons acceptable. This was considerably more realistic than a guy like Barney actually settling down with a girl like Robin. Probably one of the best overall written series in my television experience. From the beginning to the end they tied the whole story up well.</p>
<p>As for Ted and Robin not working…as we mature (Robin) we begin to realize that life is not always the wild ride we had when we were young. Robin’s character was always into Ted, she just did not want to settle down. At 40+ her priorities changed…seems pretty realistic to me. I guess I identify too well with Ted. I had many girlfriends who were not that into me at 20 who I have since reconnected with who have flat out told me that they should have been.</p>
<p>I liked Ted and Robin getting together. It makes sense to me. It’s like finding your old favorite pair of jeans pulling them on and they feel perfect. Each little wrinkle and tear familiar. They are comfortable…perfectly comfortable.</p>
<p>I used to love this show. But it did the “It’s Robin and Ted! No wait, it’s Robin and Barney! No wait, it’s Ted! No, we mean Barney!” for just too long. The show itself stopped feeling authentic to me back around season 6, so I stopped watching except occasionally.</p>
<p>I thought the finale was a cheat. It counted on the affection the audience had for the actors to carry the, for want of a better word, plot. And I haven’t read anything about this, but if the young actors playing the kids referred to their mother being gone, doesn’t that mean that the intention always was (since whenever the scene was filmed, obviously long ago because the actors have not aged one bit) to have Ted eventually wind up with Robin? Even after we’re told she’s not the mother at the end of the first episode. That just seems like sheer manipulation to give the audience a happy ending they were set up not to expect - not a legitimate twist.</p>
<p>I did love the scene with Barney and the baby. Also Alyson Hannigan in her Halloween costume! </p>
<p>I think the show was around for about 2 seasons too long. Everyone involved couldn’t bring themselves to cut the plug on a moneymaker even though from a creative standpoint it needed to end sooner. So they went with the Robin and Barney thing and the not Robin and Ted thing just to keep going. </p>
<p>I loved the glimpses we had of Ted and Tracey and wish we could have had more of them (which is what I would have done in this last season). I think they were very very happy with each other – he really did find his true love. Ending up with Robin doesn’t diminish the relationship he had with his wife, or make their love mean any less. That’s what the kids were suggesting at the end, too.</p>
<p>The last two scenes suggested that Robin’s life had changed. The kids talked about how she came over to their house often for dinner, something she couldn’t do when she was traveling all over the world. And in the very end, she was coming home from walking the dogs, not from a business trip.</p>
<p>I’ve been watching regularly only for the last 2 or 3 seasons for something to watch on Monday night (DD, while in college, would ask us to watch with her when she was home) and was pretty disappointed with how much the finale relied on shticks developed across all the seasons. It did have its moments–cycling back to the last episode of last season when we first saw the Mother with her yellow umbrella at the station; Barney with the baby; and Robin with her dogs among them. It was tragic to have the Mother die, but that’s when it was clear that Ted would get together with Robin. I like Ted but not Robin, so she gets to be the winner.</p>
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<p>To me it was just the opposite. Eight years showing that they could not find anyone else to be happy with. They kept trying relationships, none of which worked out, bcos the new fling did not have that comfort level of best friends that Ted and Robin gave each other.</p>