Confession: I was one of the brave souls (suckers?) who watched How I Met Your Mother nearly all the way through its 9 season run. Admittedly, there were times during the near train-wreck Season 8 and again during the Season 9’s longest-wedding-weekend-ever storyline that I sincerely considered cutting bait.
Yet, like a committed partner in a yo-yo relationship, I stayed right through Monday’s much-beloved/much-hated finale, and have spent the last day-and-a-half trying to figure out what I actually think about the way Craig Thomas and Carter Bays ultimately decided to end the series.
A few thoughts:
- Right off the bat, I’ll admit that I hate the idea of the series ending with Robin and Ted getting together. They made a big show, mid-season, of Ted letting go of Robin (in, what was, I’d say, one of the worst uses of cheap special effects in television network history). That they would spend an entire season (really, the better part of 2) getting Barney and Robin together, then married, just to divorce them 25 minutes into the finale was both cheap and lazy.
- I get the feeling that, had CBS come to the creators sometime in Season 4 and said ‘Okay guys, this has been fun, but we’re going to finish Season 4 and give you 13-ep spring run for Season 5 to wrap it up and get enough in the can for a good syndication run’ we wouldn’t have seen them kill off the mother and stick us with Ted and Robin Volume Infinity.
- I saw a fair amount of ‘Ted didn’t deserve to be happy-he was such a whiny so-and-so.’ Shut up. You know Marshall (Jason Segel)? The character everyone loved almost always? If he doesn’t have Lily (and remember when he didn’t?), you know what he is? Ted. The idea that Marshall is awesome because he has love and monogamy and is committed to it, and Ted is lame because he wants that but doesn’t have it? Shut up, Internet.
- I thought that poor Cristin Milioti was woefully underused during the season that she was a part of the cast. She did the best she could with a lot of dropped-in appearances in flashbacks, and actually did a pretty credible job building chemistry with a cast that’s been together for 9 seasons. Her reward? Yeah, dead.
- It was almost as if they had no idea of how to redeem Barney, so they gave him an accidental kid. Neil Patrick Harris was as stellar as he’s been at any point in this series, but, really? A kid out of wedlock from a one-night stand where we never see who the mother is? Okay……
- For the long time watchers of the show, there’s a poignant part of the first season where old Ted tells his kids ‘And, anytime we go to Aunt Robin’s…’. Wait-isn’t Robin constantly on the road for her job? For a show that did so much heavy lifting to bring old jokes around and maintain continuity, this felt like a major miss.
- Also, too, if we’re going for accuracy, the whole thing should have been called How I Met Your Mother, and, After She Died, I Went Back to the Emotionally-Dead Narcissist I’ve Loved All Along.
Ultimately, I was pretty angry with the way the whole thing ended. It was almost as if they had decided along the way that the only logical end was for Ted and Robin to end up together. They didn’t need 9 seasons of build up for that finale. I’m curious to hear what the rest of you thought.
Image: Wikimedia Commons
