How he finally met the mother (Season 9)

Agreed. Or at least spend the entire final season on their relationship.

 

It's been a little over a year and I still can't believe how furious I remain about this ending. The ending to this show is the worst ending I have ever seen for any TV show. Ever.
While I was pissed off with the ending to Lost and felt that was horrible, HIMYM managed to remove nine years of positive feelings with a simple stroke of the pen.
I still wish nothing but horrible things for the creators of this show and will never, ever, ever watch another product they put out. They're dead to me.

 

Like, all they had to do was stop here:

That's all. That's all they had to do. But NOOOO. No. They had to go and ruin it all.
F**k them. F**k them hard.

 

I've always been interested in the dilemma writers face with finales like this. Do they give the audience what it wants or do they finish they show the way they want? I'm one of the few people I know who actually likes the Seinfeld finale because it was so Seinfeld-esque. No learning. No crying. No hugging. Just slowly panning back, out of these characters' lives. Almost the exact opposite of Parks and Rec (which I recently watched).

In the case of HIMYM, it seems like they were trying to give the audience what they thought it wanted (Ted and Robin) and were completely off. I can't imagine the writers wanted to end it this way. Unless they were just getting off on completely throwing a twist in a show as milquetoast as this.

 

If the writers are to be believed, they did plan for that ending all along. That is why they had that footage of the kids, which was shot when the show started. Their dialogue also explains the logic, that he claimed it was the story of how he met their mother, but it was really an explanation of why he wanted to pursue Robin again.

I would have preferred going with the alternate ending and leaving him with the mother. Barring that, the entire final season should have been their relationship. Maybe they just didn't realize how well her character would work, so they had to keep her role limited. Based on fan reaction, it was the wrong call.

 

The finale was the result of the writers deciding to be too cute for their own good with a premise that, while original and definitely a draw early on, wore more like a burden than a badge of honor in the final few years.
I've said this before but I'll say it again. You can't be bothered to show the relationship between Ted and the mother grow because you "don't have time" but you have time for an entire f**king episode of rhymes?
No. No. A thousand times no.
Contrast this with the final season and ending of Breaking Bad and it's like these shows exist in two completely different mediums.

 

Seinfeld finale was awful because it was an unfunny rehash of every character who appeared on the show. It was a glorified clips episode. The sole purpose of each character's appearance was to get the viewer to say, "Oh, I remember that episode!" and remind us of the funny moments of the show, rather than actually providing any new funny moments to remember.

 

I can certainly understand that viewpoint. It definitely wasn't what I expected, and I'll say there weren't many laugh-out-loud moments from that finale (which, I know, is kind of the point of a sitcom). But I have just always loved the idea of the past nine seasons of selfish behavior coming back to bite these characters on the ass. And I really loved that it ends with them in prison. I don't have any substantial reason for that. I just liked it.

And as I mentioned above, the Seinfeld finale felt like the kind of finale the writers wanted to do. But I know from reading interviews with Larry David that he thought the audience would like it, too.

 

Has there been a show with a finale so universally hated as much as HIMYM's? I don't think I've seen one person who said "That was a great ending to the show!"
The only positives I've ever seen since it aired was "Well, it wasn't as bad as people said."

 

I didn't hate the ending.

donna bowman, who wrote about the show for the av club, didn't hate the finale either.

The show runners got into a jam because they wanted to end a season earlier but cbs wanted it to keep going.

So the entire season of meeting the mother wasn't originally supposed to happen. Then she turned into a character who people liked and enjoyed. And it burn a ton of good will when they then turned around and killed her off so ted could end up with robin.

It is one thing to like a show and imagine how it should go. It is something else to be the EP and not have creative control or how long your show is going to run because of what the network wants.

At least in this case the show runners got the finale they wanted from the start.

But much like Lost, you could cut out a season's worth of shows over the run and have a much better final product.

 

I never watched the show when it was on just bust whipped through the whole season on Netflix.

I am surprised how much it bothered some of you guys. I didn't mind that she died and I didn't mind that Ted ended up with Robin. I would have liked a little more development of the end of tr Robin-Barney, the marriage and sickness of Tracy and Ted-Robin rekindled.

It was like they realized "oh crap we only have 5 minutes of show left!"

 

After wasting 80-85 percent of the final season on irrelevant, unfunny piffle.

I don't want to rehash the whole thing, but that was the most annoying part for me.