How he finally met the mother (Season 9)

The ending was safe and sappily satisfying, but the fail of the finale really started with the beginning of the last season. They spent an entire year at a wedding where Ted meets the mother, only to have that wedding mean nothing in five minutes into the finale and Ted only get a little while with the mother.

The creators should have spent just a few episodes on the wedding, then have the rest of the season with the mother and have mother die and Ted end up with Robin (if that's how they wanted to go). That way we see Ted with the mother, we get emotional when the mother passes and we see Ted reluctantly going back to Robin with the blessing of his kids and it isn't a Mortal Kombat fatality move at the end.

Five minutes of an alternate that cuts out the kick in the nuts the writers gave us doesn't make up for the giant dump they laid on us for that entire hour-long finale.

 

The floating thing was a trite way to end a great episode.

As far as the original ending, I mostly liked it but don't care to argue about it any more.

 

"People would have complained about either ending" has become such a cop out in criticism.

How many people? Three? Sixty? Six million? We'll never know.

It's a nonsensical statement that absolves everyone of the consequences of every artistic choice.

 

Agreed. I wouldn't have loved the alternate, but I certainly wouldn't have been so pissed that I never want to watch anything those assholes create ever again, which is how I feel now.

 

We've been watching it on Nick at Nite. Ted is meeting Victoria right now.

 

In the months since the finale aired, I've been a bit surprised at how this show completely vanished from the CBS airwaves -- no final-season reruns at all on the network. (Cheers, Seinfeld, The Office all aired summer reruns after their finales aired on NBC.)

I'm sure the plan all along was for CBS to try to build some viewership for the other piece of shit replacement shows (Friends With Better Lives, anyone?) but after the deserved backlash about the finale, it also had the feeling of CBS washing its hands of this show and almost pretending it never existed.

 

Yeah, I'd never want to watch another show from the people who gave me at least five seasons of great material while deftly handling CBS's comedy-ruining demands in ways no other show has managed over the past decade! Those assholes!

 

The show just went on too long. Given that only 3 of the 5 main cast could be single and able to have romantic entanglements, they had to play both the Robin-Ted card and the Robin-Barney card. But they went back to the well so often with Robin-Ted that it numbed the audience.

 

The finale, and really the final three seasons, ruined everything that came before it for me.

I don't have a lot of time to watch TV, so I get extra angry when I realize I've wasted that time.

So, fuck them. I'm sure they'll find a way to go on living without my viewership.

 

I disliked the final immensely, but I don't hate the show and don't feel like it was ruined for me. I hated the LOST finale too, and I still enjoyed much of the journey. If I saw The Constant on TV, I don't know that I'd be like "oh fuck this show." In fact, many of the flaws of the two shows were similar, right down to a pointless final season that could have been erased entirely and actually improved the pacing and dramatic conclusion of the show.

 

The issue is what the issue had been for three or four seasons: Those watching because they wanted a conclusion weren't enjoying the ride.

 

I tried to rewatch LOST at one point after the finale. I got to the first time Walt is shown as "special," and then I remembered what Lindelof said after the show was finished: "Why is Walt special? Because he just is." That still pisses me off and is one of the main reasons why I won't watch it ever again. It's the reason I won't watch "The Leftovers," either.

Also, Verse, to your "enjoy the ride" comment: "The ride" was very implicitly supposed to take us to a very specific place, and there was a lot of anticipation in arriving at that very specific place. Once you arrive, you spend five minutes there until mother dies and Ted reacts with, "Thank God, now I can bang Robin again." It takes the piss out of the whole thing.

It's like sitting on a plane for 14 hours flying to Hawaii, but when you get there, they give you five minutes at the airport before making you switch planes and go to Sacramento, where you had a fun yet completely average vacation a decade earlier.