How he finally met the mother (Season 9)

As Rhody said, I don't think there was any significance beyond her being the 31st woman Barney had sex with during his perfect month.

I should say, there were some moments I liked. Robin explaining to Lily why she couldn't hang out with the group any more was one. Barney with the baby wasn't bad, but when he explains that if he couldn't settle down with Robin, he couldn't be with anyone. Honestly, the entire episode was uneven, with good and weak moments. Unfortunately, they crashed on the dismount and that kinda ruins the entire routine.

 

It got really dusty in here during that scene too. And the stuff about friends growing apart felt too damn close to home at times.

I'm conflicted about the whole finale. It just feels like a cop out ending to have thrown a curveball that broke that hard. I'd have preferred if it had just ended with the mom's death. Let us speculate from there about Ted's future.

 

True story: when my cousin was 20, he fathered a child from a one-night stand. The girl failed to tell him until the kid was 6 months old (by which point, there was no doubt that he was this boy's father because there was such a striking resemblance). Now, they're married and they have a second kid. So Barney's story of being really wild and going out and not accepting fatherhood until he looked at his baby and then he got it rings very true to me because of that.

 

Like many of you, I am very torn on the whole episode.

A part of me really wishes it had just ended under the umbrella. That 30 second conversation in a ton of ways pulled from the entire series, pulled together all these little things they wove in years ago and showed why Ted and Mother were perfect for each other, perfect dorks.

At the same time, the Ted-Robin thing was so obvious for so long it feels dumb to complain about how that's what happened. It was obvious from the first episode to the penultimate episode. That ending, too, pulled from the entirety of the series, just different parts than the umbrella scene. And we feel a bit robbed because that wasn't the story we thought they were telling us (except for H.L. Mencken, obviously.)

I don't know. I loved the series. I liked the episode but I don't think the final twist hit the way the writers expected. They were so good throughout with the big moments. When Lily leaves Marshall at the end of season 1, when Ted and Robin finally hook up, when Barney and Robin get engaged, when Marshall's dad dies, those hit me like a ton of bricks. They left me in awe. The finale had very several very powerful moments, but the final scene, the most important one in the series, didn't hit me like those other scenes. If that was the story they were telling, the search for the mother was too distracting, too big of a red herring for it to hit that hard, and that's a shame.

 

I guess I'll be the weirdo as I liked the finale

Yes it was messy and yes it was imperfect but it worked because it felt real in the way this show has made sitcom life real before.

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 shit, has it really been that long?

The other thing the finale did and curse those motherfuckers to hell, is it created an out.

At some point in your life you fell in love and it didn't work out. Then you went mopey. Then you fucked around. Then you dated. Then you met someone. Then you fell back in love and settled down.

But some part of you thinks like Ted. And if you ever got an out, you'd make that call and do what Ted did.

I don't think it was a case of the writers getting a clever idea and not changing it.

It didn't stick the landing but I kind of like how it pulled everything off.

 

Beat ya to it, H.L. I called this in 2012.

Looking back on my old post, I was right about two things: The dead mother theory, and the existence of a Lost-style letdown.

Turns out it wasn't much of a curveball since they foreshadowed the shit out of it in "Vesuvius," and after seeing the execution of it all, I hate, hate, hated it.

Just felt really icky to have Penny the Daughter call out dear old Dad for having the hots for Aunt Robin all along and it really did make the entire series feel like "How I Met My Silver Medal."

 

Having watched the pilot and the closing line about how he met "Aunt Robin" was a nice curve. But only because it eventually seemed to be critical to meeting the mother. So they worked it out well - but yeah, kind of a bummer.
Newhart - It was all a dream
The Fugitive - He stops running.
How I Met Your Mother - She's Dead!

It actually would have worked if Ted explained that he knew what he was looking for - and found and treasured it - and eventually lost it. But that doesn't mean the "journey" wasn't worth it.

 

Even if you liked this ending -- and I did not, despite my prediction -- it needed a few beats (hell, episodes even) between:

1. Mom is dead
2. Can I bangz Robin now, plz?

We spent and entire season watching a single weekend unfold, and then spent one episode watching 16 years unfold. Tonally, it just didn't work. The transition was much too abrupt. I've never been anti-Ted&Robin. I actually thought, unlike many, that Robin and Barney didn't actually work, and so stuff like the proposal on the rooftop or anything to do with their wedding never resonated with me. But having Ted mourn off screen for six years (and make those years pass essentially in six seconds of real time) makes that finale scene seem really cold. Sure, in theory Ted has waited all this time since Tracy died. Longer than she waited after her fiance died, I guess. But as a viewer, you don't get those years. You're thrust right along into the next scene, and that was a total fucking miscalculation by Bays and Thomas. You're telling a story that the *viewer* has to emotionally deal with, not just the characters.

Plus, with all that's played out over the last few years, wouldn't Ted and Robin's coupling just be kind of weird? Like, all the rest of their days, they'd know they were each other's consolation prize. What happens when Robin goes off to Argentina for a week and Ted is all mopey, trying to sew the kids prom outfits and she's not around and has no time to Skype? What happens when Ted is banging Robin (I said a bang, bang, bangitty bang) and she's thinking in her own head "God, Barney was so much better at banging me. Too bad he was such a douche."

Anyway, I grew up in a small(ish) town where all my college and high school classmates played sexual musical chairs with one another. I feel, in retrospect, like I really erred in not pouring all this material into writing sitcoms.

 

Not sure if we touched base on this yet, but Ted sounded nothing like Bob Saget when he was speaking to his kids!

 

The part with the kids at the end did crack me up, when they totally threw the bullshit back in Ted's face. Because they're teenagers and that's what they would do in this situation.

 

I'll pick up on the theme sounded in the (mainly positive) A.V. Cub review - at the end, is Ted Mosby happy?

If you think the answer is yes, or if you see a path there for him, then the endgame works,

It sure was a mess getting there, but it's growing on me.

 

I couldn't help but feel this was the 2010s version of the Dallas shower scene where everything we thought was true was thrown on its ear. The first five minutes had me excited and almost gitty at how he would finally meet mother and they'd fall sickeningly in love. But after the wedding and when they got into the awkward flash forward sequences, it lost something. Barney's daughter was so sweet and Robin explaining why she needed to leave was touching, but so much got lost in the in between and beyond. It looked like they painted themselves into a corner at the show's inception and had an "ah crap" moment when they knew they had to circle back around and ditch the lovely ending they were actually building toward. It felt forced and tried way too hard and as a result, they went out with a dying wimper instead of the beautiful swan song that, say, House got. That show got the ending right. This instead will go down like Seinfeld as a flop.