Okay, I’ve got a little bit of suppressed rage that I need to get out of my system first. And yes, I’m perfectly aware that it’s probably silly to get so worked up over the fictional ending to some fictional characters, but the beauty of art – especially television – is that, when done correctly, you can get attached to characters you know aren’t real. You can feel their pain and their happiness, their prides and joys as if they really did exist, as if they were friends that you actually caught up with for half an hour each week. That’s the magic of art, and How I Met Your Mother was one of the most magical television series I’ve ever had the pleasure of watching. It’s one of my favourite television shows of all time and my feelings about the finale do not change that. I shall continue to re-watch How I Met Your Mother with the same love that I always have.
That said…
TED AND ROBIN SHOULDN’T HAVE ENDED UP TOGETHER. EVER. IN ANY SORT OF WAY. THE SHOW SPENT NINE YEARS TELLING US THAT THEY DEFINITELY, REALLY, WITHOUT A DOUBT DIDN’T BELONG TOGETHER ONLY TO GET THEM TOGETHER IN THE LAST THIRTY SECONDS. THEY KILLED OFF THE INCREDIBLY CHARMING AND WONDERFUL CRISTIN MILIOTI JUST TO SHOEHORN A DEAD, WORTHLESS RELATIONSHIP TOGETHER, COMPLETELY RUINING THE IDEA OF THE MOTHER.
…
I probably could have expressed that a little better, and I intend to (Disclaimer: I may or may not have expressed myself better, this is a bit of an unedited mess, but bear with me…), but… Yeah… That pretty much sums it up.
It’s no secret that I’m not the biggest fan of the ‘Will-They/Won’t-They’ trope – it’s overdone and boring and when a show gets too caught up in it, it just gets stagnant. The main times in which I would criticise HIMYM was whenever they brought back the ‘Ted/Robin’ pairing that they had shot down so many times. (Which they did… every time they brought up the idea of Ted and Robin getting back together, they ended it by coming the realisation that they weren’t good for each other – again). And they brought Robin and Barney together so well, and everything seemed to fit – Lily and Marshall had each other from the beginning, Robin and Barney stumbled into each other in the middle and Ted and The Mother (her real name is Tracy, which I think fits her quite well) brings things to a close. That would have worked perfectly.
Then they brought in Cristin Milioti, who was absolutely astounding in her role. Within seconds, we’d fallen in love with her as if we were Ted. In the disjointed ninth season, Milioti was perfect every moment she appeared on screen. So, everyone was totally on board with Ted and Tracy getting together and having their happy ending.
Then… after a sentence, we were expected to be completely okay with Tracy getting sick and dying and her loving, devoted husband and ridiculously patient children being okay with it, to the point of the kids encouraging their father to run into the arms of their Aunt Robin. He holds up the blue French-horn to her as she looks down from her window, they smile and roll credits.
No. No, no, no. No, no, no, no. You can’t do this to me, Ted. No, no, no, no. No.
Ted and Robin had their run, and it was amazing. The episodes of their relationship were some of the greatest of the show’s run, but that wasn’t just because Ted and Robin were together. But then it ended, and we were devastated, but we moved on because we realised that Ted and Robin were not meant to be, and that some other shining star would be the mother of Ted’s children. We moved on, but the show didn’t, and I returned to groaning every time Ted confessed that he had feelings for Robin again.
Until the final season, funnily enough. Ted’s feelings for Robin threatening his relationship with her and Barney so much that he has to move was an interesting storyline, and it only highlighted the necessity for Tracy’s appearance; that she would be the thing that finally allowed him to move past the one that got away and he could get the happy ending he really deserved. Throughout the ninth season, we saw Ted fighting to get over Robin, to completely tear all ties that they could be together, to the point where I was so friggen’ certain that it had been put to bed for good. But… apparently not.
Here are my main issues: if Ted and Robin were always going to end up together, why hype up the Mother at all? Why spend an entire season allowing us to fall in love with her, only for them to snatch her away and literally kill her with a line of dialogue?
If Barney and Robin were always going to get divorced, why allow us to get so attached to their relationship? Or why did they allow the couple to be married for about seven minutes of screen time before pulling the plug? Why did they make such a big deal about their wedding if it all came to naught?
There’s a part of me that can’t fathom how badly Carter Bay and Craig Thomas missed with this finale. In fact, it’s not even the whole finale – there were parts of it that were actually, literally perfect. Barney’s immediate devotion to his newborn child was beautifully played out, even if the Mother of his child was only ‘Number 31’; Marshall and Lily’s lives seemed pretty much how we all expected them to be, and that was lovely; Ted and Tracy actually meeting each other was exactly what we waited nine years for, not to mention all the pitch-perfect snapshots of their lives together that we did get.
But did they really need to get Ted and Robin back together? Was it just for one more twist? One more swerve that people didn’t see coming (except a loud group of people did see it coming, and have seen it since the very first episode…)?
If they needed a twist, you know what I would have done?
I would have killed Robin instead of the Mother.
I thought of this earlier today and thought ‘This had to be it’.
Why did Ted start the story of how he met Tracy with the night he met Robin? Because she died. Because she was a huge part in his children’s lives and then she was gone; and since he eventually met Tracy because Robin was marrying Barney, the stories tied together. She was a huge part of his life; it only makes sense that he’d want to convey that to his children, who’d just lost their Aunt.
The finale, as it stands, just tasted wrong. Not bad, wrong. Like I said before, the parts that were good were practically perfect, but some of it was just wrong. And I realise that I’m not expressing myself particularly well and I probably could do a better job writing this in a couple of days, but I just feel that I need to get this out there now. Maybe I’ll come back to it, maybe not. But for now, wrong is the only word I can think of.
I think the worst part of it, for me, was how convinced I was that they were going to absolutely nail the finale. Say what you want about How I Met Your Mother, but they always made the moments that mattered matter, so all throughout the shaky ninth season, I was telling myself ‘They’re going to do it. They’re going to succeed beyond all doubt.’
What makes it worse was that they’ve planned this ending since the beginning, but it feels like the exact opposite. It feels like they’ve worked their way towards one ending for so long, and changed their mind at the last minute, but that’s the exact opposite of what actually happened.
I almost can’t comprehend that they screwed this up…
I actually can’t…
Crazy is Perfect 