Goat3001

That is much better. And if they wanted to throw in a twist that explains why Robin was such a big part of Ted's story... it could have been revealed that it was Robin that had recently died.

dex14

Amazing...as far as I'm concerned... that is the ending.

movieking

Based on what Ted says, I wonder if the mother had some underlying illness the whole time, since he felt he had to love her as much as he could as long as he could. I know there wouldn't be a definite answer, but it would fit.

To me, as I posted after the show ended, the ending makes sense based on what it was. It's all about perspective. If Ted was telling this story to the kids with his wife, or after his wife died while he was still in mourning, then it would end after they meet at the train station, like the video above. But since it's been 6 years and he obviously has feelings for Robin again (or still, depending on how you view it), then this ending makes sense. Just because you get married, it doesn't mean that all the feelings that you have for others die. You can have feelings for more than one person at the same time, and obviously, with Robin married to Barney, Ted knew that he couldn't be with her, so he met and fell in love with the mother, even while still having these feelings. Depending on the situation, they can lie dormant for years and never resurface, or since Ted and Robin are now single, they can come back. Apparently, it's not what most people wanted, but in the scope of things, to me, it works perfectly.

RichC2

That alternate ending is a cop out unless you ignore most of last season, and I know most of you have no problem with that

Also offers no conclusion with the kids. But that was a good scene.

Coral

I do like that alternate ending, although I agree that it would need a scene with the kids since that's the point of the whole show - father telling his kids the story.

I agree that people can still have tiny lingering feelings for their ex... even years after being with them, and after being married to someone else who appears to be your soul-mate. However, the writers made it feel like Ted still had strong feelings for Robin even while married. Ted bringing over the blue french-horn symbolizes this IMO. Can't remember if he still had the blue french horn, or he just grabbed another one - but the gesture feels like he's saying "nothing has changed from our first date - it's always been you". And while I'm not sure it's a coincidence or not, but the song they chose seems to hint at that with these lyrics:

Our children will always hear
Romantic tales of distant years
Our guilty age may come and go
Our crooked dreams will always flow

Stick with me
Oh you're my best friend
All of my life
You've always been

I would've much preferred if the kids were just telling Ted to "get back up the horse" and start dating again, and NOT doing so by going after Robin. IMO, the Robin angle diminishes his marriage to "the one" and makes Robin feel like she's "the one".

dex14

Talking With Josh Radnor About How I Met Your Mother’s Finale, the Backlash, and Keeping the Blue French Horn: http://www.vulture.com/2014/04/inter...er-finale.html

Raul3

Yes, the alternate ending is perfect.

The creators basically had an ending when they started, and at the end, they decided to go with it. They choose wrong. In the interview with Radnor, he even asked them again in this season, if they were going to kill the mother, because everyone loved her.

Everyone says that they don't care, but they do care about internet backslash. Not sure if they thought, well, this was our plan all along, they can't say that we were making it along the way, or something like that. But again, that was a terrible mistake.

I'm sure no one in group expected this much backslash. Yes, people were tired of the show, and they were complaining, but the people that's complaining the most after the finale is the defenders of the show, the ones that loved it until the end.

My wife stopped watching the show 3 years ago or so. And she watched the finale with me. She liked it. I hated that last scene. And the episode made me hate Robin. I never hated Skyler, but I think now I now how some people felt about her.

stingermck

This is an important take away. I think this scene was needed:

madcougar

First that alternate ending someone put together would have been PERFECT. The same way the story apparently wasn't about the mother, it certainly wasn't about the kids either, so no pressing need to feature them in the end.

Second, I think it was vanity that led the creators to keep the ending. They'd put together this very clever show and they were going to show just how clever they really were by using an ending they put together years ago. Again, I think their failing was not realizing that the story became an organic thing that changed along the way. They were way to focused on the end point and not how they got there.

madcougar

Reading this interview made me really sad (and I'm a dude!). I realize how much I really loved this show and how I just won't be able to bring myself to watch it again.

Raul3

Yep, at the end, one of the things that we fans liked more about the show, that attention to detail, all throwbacks, was the thing that doomed the show.

DRG

Yeah, this just illustrates how frustrating the finale, and this season in general, turned out to be.

It's disappointing in a different way than Dexter's finale was. After Dexter ended, I immediately regretted watching that entire season, and to some degree the last few preceding it. In retrospect I could see that the whole thing was pointless, one long voyage down a terrible path that lead to nothing worthwhile.

But HIMYM was different because this season and finale had some really great things in it. Mostly concerning Tracy, but I liked some of the other aspects as well. In this case they were going down a great path, but turned at the last minute.

Canis Firebrand

That was my take away from it. For a story about meeting the mother, it spent very little time in that regard. I, obviously, didn't see or speculate that this would be the outcome in the first few seasons. However, the more I think about it the more it makes sense. Its a situation that is very real and probably happens a fair bit. A couple meet and get married, probably have kids. One of them dies and after a period of mourning the surviving spouse begins to consider dating but are worried what the children will think. Here we see the children react and give their blessing to Ted to date their "aunt" Robin. While I did love the mother character and her scenes with Ted and the others in the gang, I don't think that it negates her part in the story or the years that her and Ted were together.

There were clues in the episode that it was going to end the way it did. The mother not being present at some of the group gatherings. Robin standing in the empty apartment with Lily saying basically that she made a mistake and probably should have stayed with Ted when they were together. However, I think if that had happened it would have turned out differently. It's like they both had to undergo a journey that changed them and set them up to finally be together. While its not the same as the way Friends happened, it kind of does mirror the Rachel/Ross pairing in the whole "will they/won't they" end up together.

PenguinJoe

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dex14

^^^ Did you even look through the thread?

Draven

These are my feelings exactly.

To me, the whole thing answered the common complaint of "this story is not about the mother!" This story is about telling the kids about his friends and specifically his relationship with Robin, so that they'd be okay with him reconnecting with her.

I LOVED the mother character. I would have gladly watched a show with her as a bigger part for years. But it was never about her...it was about this group of 5 friends.

And to those that say that Barney didn't change...I couldn't disagree more. The point was that it wasn't marriage that changed who he was...it was having a kid that did it. Now he's sending girls home from the bar to call their parents. And I don't think this past season was a waste because their marriage didn't last. Again, it's not about the marriage...it's about what happened to that group over this crazy weekend that yes, happened to end with a marriage. But life didn't stop for them there, and I liked that they moved ahead through the future, addressed how hard it is to keep those friendships going after marriages, moves and kids and ultimately came full circle to the pilot. That's impressive to me and I really left the show satisfied with the results.

Goat3001

I think Josh Radnor put it best in his Vulture interview: The viewer isn't on the same emotional plane as Ted and the kids are.

For Ted, he found the love of his life. He married her. He had children. He loved her. She died and 6 years later he's telling this story to the kids because in a way he's ready to move on. Objectively, that's completely fair.

For the viewer, we JUST got to know the mother. We didn't even really get a taste of how she really was Ted's 'ONE'. So to us, everything with the mother seemed like it was tossed aside for Robin.

So while I understand the other perspective, I think the show should have done a better job of showing us how important Trish was to Ted before showing us that he was ready to move on with Robin.

Having the mother be dead and him moving on with Robin does make a lot of sense. Makes more sense than Ted telling his kids how much he loved Robin while his wife was in the next room fixing dinner.

superdeluxe

I love when we have to make new endings up because the real ending sucks to some. Reminds me of the Indoctrination ending made up for Mass Effect 3.

Noonan

Just caught this. I would of had a big issue with the ending if not for the scene with the kids. Knowing they had planned this years back makes it OK in my book. I do agree with the majority that the should have spent less time on the wedding and more on what happened here but that may have been hard to do without spoiling what was coming.

albert_m

How they end it on paper and on tv are two different things.

This was a mess. An entire season dedicaated to one weekend (with a lot of filler), then the wedding and quickly a divorce. Even if you years passed, it doesn't set in as years passing, when they had just got married as the same episode started.

It's fine that they got divorced and that the mother dies, but when you rush through all that to ultimately force a cliche ending... of Robin and Ted, who had little chemistry.... it's just ridiculous and a wasted opportunity to close out the show based on its premise.

Draven

For all the issues (and there were many), I actually liked the "season over a weekend" idea. Otherwise it would have been another season of just sitting at the bar, sitting in the apartment, etc. Instead they still did those things but framed them in such a way that it felt different overall. I appreciated the effort.

Jackskeleton

Isn't a bigger cop out to ignore 20+ episodes of character growth and change in Barney, Ted and Robin?

I mean, I lost count how many times Ted "let go" of Robin and was ready to meet the mother. Since we didn't see much of his "the one" with Tracy and were given Costco sized taste of it, it really didn't make it seem like Tracy was anything more than a break. On a side note, was it me or was all the scenes post wedding with Ted hanging out with the group just him looking miserable? Either extremely tired or something. Really didn't help in selling that he was really happy with his choice.

For Barney, this was the biggest cop out to have him go through all that change and then have the season long built up wedding end ten minutes (in our time) into the next episode just so you can have ol' whacky Barney at the bar. I half expected him to just go full Milhouse's dad with him
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Cause really, the saddest thing was him in his 40's still with a playbook.



Side note, them not being in the bar or at the apartment for much of the season really did defuse that moment when Lily was in an empty apartment. Cause we're already use to it not being there anyway. The concept was great, but if you're going to take apart what all that time was spent for so quickly after, it really makes you wonder why we went through all that to begin with.

RichC2

Not really, because Robin's comment in the next-to-last episode was pretty much right on. And they made it really obvious that Ted and Robin was the angle they were going for. And honestly I found everything with Barney after the divorce to be pretty sad and desperate, especially considering the gang pretty much disbanded by that point. Both him and Robin seemed pretty miserable.

I didn't have a problem with the story, but the time jumps and overall execution of the last 20 minutes of the episode were definitely lacking. I didn't care that the entire last season took place at Barney and Robin's wedding, because it didn't seem to really focus on them as a couple so much as just overcoming things, and using it as a framing device. It doesn't hurt that I never bought them as a couple.

Canis Firebrand

Throughout some of the episodes leading up to the final ones, you could def see that was where the story was going to end up. You had one episode with Robin's mother describing her father and why that marriage failed and every description described Barney. Robin realized then that Ted was always there for her and always had her interests in sight. I mean Ted went on a whirlwind trip to find a locket that Robin buried/lost and tried to give Barney the credit to have Barney tell Robin that Ted found the locket.

I get why people dislike the final episodes and way the show wrapped up but at the same time I think there were some expectations that the show was just never going to deliver. For 8+ years, we watched a story about Ted leading up to the reveal that he met, married and had children with "the one." The mother then, for whatever reason, gets sick and passes away. That explains why her part in this story was so small. It's like Ted was trying to sell to his kids why Robin was so great and why he was/is so in love with her. Luckily for him, the kids had already came to that conclusion and gave their blessing. I don't think it diminishes the memory of their mother or the time that she had with Ted. It's something that will probably be cherished, but they (for the most part) lived it and it would explain why it wasn't discussed much in the story.

I'm ok with the ending and still feel it was within the spirit of the show and worked. I liked the mothers scenes. She had a great presence on screen and I agree with others that I'd love her to land a series of her own where she's a main character.

Draven

Tracy and Ted were together for years and seemed very happy. Which the kids would have some memory of, so it makes sense to not recap it. Just because we didn't see it doesn't mean it was meaningless.

Wasn't that addressed when he knocked up one of those girls and gave all of that lifestyle up to be a father? As I said before...it wasn't the marriage that changed him. It was the birth of his daughter.

After 8 years in that apartment, I didn't need to see it every episode for the 9th for it to be effective. And we saw both locations plenty this season.

These seem like strange criticisms to me.