How he finally met the mother (Season 9)

In fairness, they had to rush everything last night. They just didn't have time to flesh out those 16 years in anything more than an hour. After all, we had to have an entire episode centered on rhyming, you know.

 

Most of the people who wondered how the series could end without Ted and Robin together didn't wonder it because that was their preferred ending. They wondered how the show was going to get out of the awful corner it painted itself into and still make the mother meaningful.

In other words, the people who worried that Ted and Robin would be a horrific ending were completely vindicated.

 

I wouldn't argue that. But they were predicting it.

 

I wonder if they considered devoting a few more episodes to their post-Barney-Robin wedding world?

Also, I'm curious if the porch scene was the last one they shot.

 

Predicting it? Maybe. Saying they wanted to see it happen? Absolutely not.

I will say I was wrong in one criticism. I didn't think they would be able to make the mother seem like anything but a silver medal that Ted settled for because he couldn't have Robin. They did a great job showing how Ted had to move past Robin and that Tracy really was the right woman for him.

Then they pissed all over that in the final few minutes of the finale.

 

Dead lady ain't gonna care.

Also I would imagine if we are playing this out as real life, one powerful thought she would have left him with is that he shouldn't give up on love the way she did for 10 years after her true love died.

 

The season finale for a half-hour sitcom was an hour-long, meaning it was in essence, two episodes long. How many more episodes did you want them to stretch it out?

 

True. I mean, they were only covering 16 years of Ted's life. It's not like they could've stretched that out over more than one episode. Lord knows they'd never be able to fit the other 22 episodes covering a meaningless 22-hour period in that way.

 

Was it that long? I thought it was less, but I'm not sure.

From everything we were shown with Ted, he would have cared very much about doing what the mother would want him to do and she did encourage him to get on with live after she was gone. That said, I'm not sure going back to Robin would have been what she had in mind.

Others mentioned Ted waiting seven years and two kids to marry Tracy as odd. I agree. It just doesn't fit the character and I don't see why they would go that route with the story.

 

The problem was they made it very hard to buy anyone but Robin ending up with Ted, but also did an exquisite job, right from the beginning, of showing why they were awful together.

 

Two more idle thoughts now that I've had 24 hours to digest what we all saw:

1. Do I have this right? Ted, who professed to have loved Tracy "as much as I can for as long as I can," kept the goddamned blue French horn in his possession for 25 years? Not that I'm comparing myself to Ted in the slightest, but I can honestly say I don't have any mementos of that significance from any of my past relationships.

2. Saying he loved Tracy "as much as I can for as long as I can" sort of sounds like one of those bullshit faux-loyalty phrases college coaches spit out when other schools try to hire them. There's a coach I once covered who said he'd stay at his school "for as long as they'll have me" -- which, of course, was code for "until the AD decides to quit kowtowing to my every whim and desire for an extension/raise/new facilities/happy endings from masseusses."

 

No, he returned it to the restaurant after Robin left it in the apartment when she moved out. Then in another episode a couple of year ago, Ted took her back to the same restaurant and it was shown chained up on the wall. In the episode where they go to the Globetrotters game and cheer for the Generals, Ted mentioned it.