How he finally met the mother (Season 9)

I don't know why cable shows tend to plot out their seasons better, but they typically do. I remember how stunned I was when I learned 24 started with a pilot and a sketch to get to episode 13, but mostly they wrote the show as they went along - and that explained a lot.

 

The problem with Ted and Robin ending up together is that it changes the meaning behind all of their previous breakups.
Before, I could tolerate the back-and-forths and the mind-changing and the fights and the BS because I knew, deep down, they weren't meant to be together. The premise of the show was essentially "This guy is going to go through a bunch of bad relationships and make bad decisions but, ultimately, it will be worth it because he'll meet the love of his life."
It was never "He'll go threw countless stories about failure and heartbreak and then get a little time with his soulmate before we rip her from him too and he ends up saying, to hell with it, let me date that girl I banged on again and off again for years."
How can Ted end up happy after this finale? He and Robin NEVER worked. Ever. And now it's going to? Really?
Unless the point here is "Well, at least Ted won't die alone," I don't see why the creators needed to go past that last umbrella scene.

 

I never watched the show that much so I'm having a hard time understanding the "future ted talking to present Ted" concepts. I mean, I get the framing device "future ted telling the story to his kids, sort of like Wonder Years" but how does all this "future ted" talks to "present Tracy" go down? "I'll meet you in 45 days," etc. Surely they aren't time travelers

 

Future Ted is narrating the story so when he's saying "I'll meet you in 45 days," what he is saying is that "At this point in the story, Present Ted is 45 days away from meeting you for the first time."

 

Oh. And do they present that to the viewer by having the characters interact? Or is it pure narration? (just trying to get a feel for the format)

 

Ted & the mother don't actually interact in the "present" timeline until the final few minutes of the last episode but there are some flashforwards to what their time together was like so you get to see him propose, you see them on dates, etc. The writers took a lot of liberties with going forward and backward with their timeline but it was usually pretty clear if you were watching where the show was at a given moment.

 

I think I'll try to find a few episodes and check it out but I have no desire to watch nine seasons' worth

 

The first few seasons are up there with the best sitcoms I've ever seen. The middle seasons were hit or miss but, more often than not, hit and hit well. Seasons 7 & 8 were largely inconsistent. Season 9, apart from scenes involving the mother, were apparently a gigantic waste of time.

 

I enjoyed the finale. As someone else noted, we saw people wonder how the series could end without Robin and Ted getting together and, then, when they did, people hate that ending.

I thought the finale stayed true to what came before it and it struck some brilliant notes. Barney meeting his daughter was truly touching and I thought Lily was great throughout, particularly the scene with Robin at the Halloween party.

As others have noted, they crammed a lot into the episode, so I get where the criticism of it feeling a little choppy comes from. I would have preferred they stretch the plots of this episode into two or three episodes and dropped some of the crappier episodes from early in the season.

Overall, though, I thought it was a fitting finale, and one of the better finales I've seen.

 

The "people said this, then people said that" thing befuddles me. You do realize that those are probably *different* people, right?

 

Also, I would challenge anyone to use the search function and dig through the archives and find anyone on this site insisting Robin and Ted had to be together in the end, at any point over the last five years. I don't believe those posts exist.

 

Insisting, no. Predicting, you betcha. Left and right. But inasmuch as I don't feel like chasing down those posts, I suspect that will be taken with a grain of salt.