<p>^^ Well, that was the kids’ take. They said something like “This wasn’t a story about you and Mom. This was a story about you and Aunt Robin.” That’s true, but season 9 was also about how The Mother was so much better for Ted than Robin was. If only she hadn’t been so adorable. :-(</p>
<p>I had to look up the exact quote:
“You made us sit down and listen to the story about how you met mom? But mom is hardly in the story. No, this is a story about how you’re totally in love with Aunt Robin, and you’re thinking about asking her out and you want to know if we’re OK with it.”</p>
<p>To me, that was really just heartbreaking. As a child, it would signal to me that “Aunt Robin” was always the love of my dad’s life, not my mom. Mom was just kind of like a footnote.
I don’t know why, it just really, really rubbed me the wrong way. </p>
<p>I watched almost every episode the first few seasons, sporadically through the next few and hardly at all for the last two. It’s still on my DVR and everytime this season I started tow watch, I thought ‘they’re still at the freakin’ wedding!"</p>
<p>At any rate, I decided to watch the finale and didn’t enjoy it at all—except for the Barney/daughter scene and Ted meeting the mom in the rainstorm under the umbrella. I think the creators painted themselves into a corner with the first episode and as the show became more popular and extended its run, had to put in a lot of filler stories (such as the Barney/Robin coupling and uncoupling) which made the ending ultimately unsatisfying.</p>
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<p>Agreed. But to me, Barney-Robin were too contrived, which left me with the opinion that Robin is odd-person out, or she gets back to Ted somehow. Thus, the Mother was gonna be a filler.</p>
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<p>Definitely awkward… </p>
<p>While I was watching I thought it was fine. I don’t mind Robin. But my three kids (23, 22 & 18) all separately texted that were very upset about the ending. They HATE Robin. Then when I thought about it more, all along I thought that Ted and Robin belonged together. But then they showed us how happy Ted could be and I realized that Ted deserved more and that they didn’t belong together. And then bam, they are together. I did not expect to love the mom, but I really did. And I really loved her relationship with Ted. I wish they had done more with their life, her illness, maybe her funeral, but now with the ending I get that it was, as they said, not a story about the mother, but a story about Robin. </p>
<p>I don’t think you have to dislike Robin to think the ending was wrong. I’ve always been a big Robin fan, but The Mother was the one for Ted. </p>
<p>There was an episode some years ago which Robin narrates. At first we think she’s talking to her own kids, but at the end we learn that the kids are imaginary and that she’s childless and sad. How does that fit with the ending? I got the impression she was alone.Would she have been speaking sometime after she and Barney divorced but before The Mother died?</p>
<p>
@smdur1970, revisiting shticks was one of the elements that made the show so special. But since you didn’t watch the whole series, I can see why this approach didn’t give you the same satisfaction it gave to loyal fans. Time to go back and watch all the episodes you missed!</p>
<p>I second everything that @fireandrain said. The ending would have resonated better had it come two years earlier and the Barney/Robin debacle had never happened. But that aside, I actually think the idea of Robin and Ted finding their way back to each other in middle age, when their lives have brought them to a point where they fit together perfectly, is terribly romantic. I also like the idea that Ted will be making new “stories” instead of living off his old ones, which Tracy fretted about after her diagnosis.</p>
<p>Didn’t watch many episodes this past year (due to scheduling conflicts), so the whole premise that it was all taking place in one weekend was completely lost on me. While I was aware of The Mother and agree that there was a fantastic chemistry between the actor who played her and the rest of the cast, I had little investment in her as a character (I also can’t help thinking what a boost this is going to be for her career!) If it’s true that Carter Bay and Craig Thomas had much of this already in the can nine years ago, then hats off to them. That had to be one of the best kept secrets in the history of Hollywood. Manipulative? Certainly. OTOH, it makes the syndication version even more interesting as an entire cottage industry develops around trying to find clues to the finale in the early episodes. </p>
<p>Here’s what I liked:
- Finally finding out the name- Tracy McConnell
- The Farhampton Scene
- The whole gang trying to be there for all of the big moments
- Barney and his daughter
- The kids finally talked</p>
<p>Here’s what I didn’t like:
- Barney & Robin divorcing (too much time invested in the wedding)
- Tracy dying (It shows life has it’s up and downs but at least tell us how she died)
- There wasn’t any real surprise for Marshall (we knew he was going to be a judge)</p>
<p>Overall it was a GREAT show in showing how life has ups and downs but it’s easier when you have a group of people who support you and can help you get through it all. Their chemistry will definitely be missed.</p>
<p>After talking with my daughter, who was a big fan of the show for the first years:</p>
<ol>
<li>She didn’t like the Barney thing because that’s the only normal relationship he’s capable of having with a woman. I say that’s exactly the truth about Barney and they were true to his character.</li>
<li>All the kids’ scenes were shot in 2005. They had this planned from the start and were true to it.</li>
<li>We were both disappointed they did nothing much with Marshall and Lilly. </li>
<li>We agreed the point about the end is that it’s been 6 years and it’s time for Ted to move on, that the kids have seen him with Robin over the years and they want their dad to be happy. We both took that as a positive.</li>
<li>She thought it was awkward to have the actors not age. I thought it made the story work better. Ted at the end has to be near 50 but he looks 35. You don’t see the aging, the ravages of illness, etc., which fits with the show’s surrealist tendencies and that keeps the show at an emotional distance. I compared that to Friends, where people cared so deeply about Rachel and Ross and Monica and Chandler. </li>
</ol>
<p>^^^
Whaddya mean? You didn’t think the white baby powder they sprinkled in Josh Radnor’s hair made him look 50?
They actually should have had him morph into Bob Saget, that would’ve been legend…wait for it…
dary!</p>
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<p>See, that’s the thing–they destroyed the entire mythology of the show. The twist to HIMYM, what was supposed to make it unique, was that Robin wasn’t The Mother, but that somehow she would lead Ted to the women who was perfect for him. They showed that the two didn’t work as a couple repeatedly, showed that Robin wasn’t in love with Ted, showed that Ted finally knew he was no longer in love with Robin (at least twice!). They brought in Cristin, who played the titular mother perfectly. This was the woman we had been waiting for–and she was lovely.They had a great love story, but they used her as a renaissance-fair loving uterus whose sole purpose was to give Ted the children Robin neither had nor wanted by killing her off in a two-minute montage so that Ted’s kids can tell him to go chase after a woman who clearly and explicitly never loved him like that anyway and who he, in the end, knew he didn’t love, either. </p>
<p>The twist might have worked in season 2 or 3 or 4 or even 5, before they went to lengths they did to demonstrate, irrevocably, that Ted and Robin weren’t a match. It would have been sketchy but it might have been pulled off better early in the run. Coming when it did, it was a huge screw you to the show, the characters, the premise, and anyone with the misfortune to waste their time on this show.</p>
<p>I have seen this sentiment expressed over and over again on the net today, that Tracy was the “uterus whose sole purpose was to give Ted children.” A placeholder. I just did not see it that way at all. She wasn’t an anonymous surrogate mom – she was the love of Ted’s life, and they had 10 or so very happy years together. Do I wish we could have seen more of that – yes. I don’t know why people keep diminishing her presence and their relationship just because Ted and Robin end up with each other six years – six years! – after she died. Just because she died doesn’t mean she was irrelevant or unimportant. </p>
<p>I liked this show – it was fun to watch – but I was not anywhere as vested in it as some other shows which may explain why I’m not as furious as many of its devoted fans. This last year was agony – one of the worst concepts of any TV show ever. I was so sick of Robin and Barney’s wedding (and thought they were a horrible couple) that by the end I couldn’t care less about their marriage, which is why I didn’t care about their divorce either. I can think of a hundred ways the writers could have done things better. </p>
<p>But I think the fans, and not the show’s writers, are the ones minimizing Ted and Tracy’s relationship by calling her a placeholder and a uterus. Ted would never agree to that. </p>
<p>I remember the first show or so. He really, truly made it clear that he sincerely loved their mom. But the old romantic hook of getting back with an old love…they went with that. And it’s okay. Kinda sweet really. Most people must wonder about an old love and what if…
None of that negated his love and devotion to the childrens’ mother. And they knew that! They saw the love, they lived it. So, they were okay with him moving on and/or back to Aunt Robin.
Geez, you’d think they were real people.</p>
<p>Except we, the viewers, actual real people, never got to see that love or that grief. We didn’t even get a happy married years montage of actual scenes. We got “I finally got around to marrying your mother” -> “I loved her, and she died” -> their (lovely) meeting -> “go bang Aunt Robin, Dad.” Seriously, the mother, Ted’s supposed soulmate, got about 4 minutes in this finale, most of which were Ted a) not marrying her (even though the guy was obsessed with marriage) and b) her being killed off. We saw no grief, no montage of years alone, no funeral. It was quite literally “she’s dead; go after Aunt Robin.” That’s horrible pacing and horrible storytelling.</p>
<p>How many shows have started out with an interesting couple, the couple got married, and everyone stopped watching? HIMYM avoided this pitfall. I feel like there was too much crammed into last night’s episode - after years of being with these characters in their everyday moments, we were only given the “important moments”, one after another.</p>
<p>Psych, I cannot disagree.
The whole premise of the show is that he had a great love. How I Met Your Mother.
Not, how I met my second wife, your step mother.</p>
<p>Yes the ending seemed off with that.</p>
<p>My favorite scene of the entire 9 seasons was when The Mother sings La Vie En Rose and Ted overhears from the next balcony. (If you haven’t seen it: <a href=“- YouTube”>- YouTube; Watch to the end.) </p>
<p>It was such a perfect moment, and a perfect setup for their happy-ever-after. The Mother had just said goodbye in her heart to her long-dead boyfriend. So she was ready for a new love. The next morning, Ted would say goodbye to Robin, I think prompted partly by hearing The Mother sing. So he was ready for a new love. The rest of us already know that they’re kindred spirits, though they haven’t met yet. The pieces were finally almost in place. I was ready to savor the happy ending. I feel blindsided.</p>
<p>I’ve been humming that song all day with a lump in my throat. (Stupid; it’s just a sitcom.)</p>
<p>I would have bet $$ that Barney and Robin’s wedding never came off. The reason they were “in love” was that they were “Bros”, and that relationship could never have lasted forever. I didn’t see the ending as a downer. Spouses die; people remarry. Are they any less happy than the first time? The Mother lost her first love, and then found happiness with Ted. I’m sure that when Max died, she never thought she could be happy again. My absolute favorite moment in the finale (and it really was a terrible show, though not quite as awful as the Seinfeld) was when they are under the umbrella at the train station, and they realize that they’ve missed out on each other all these years. Does anyone remember who was on the porch in the old episode? We were trying to remember–don’t recall Robin or Barney. The fact that the Mother wasn’t there was probably a clue I missed.</p>