I hated it. HATED IT. Character development? Thrown out. Continuity errors? In spades (Ted wearing a wedding ring with newborn Penny watching Star Wars, eg). Shoot the shaggy dog storytelling? Woof. Terrible acting by some in some scenes, and the killing of the one consistently good thing in the last year.
And if that wasn’t enough? It wasn’t funny. There were a couple of mildly humorous bits, but it was just drama and whine after more drama and whine and wangst. This was the problem all season, and a good chunk of the previous seasons too. If your show got popular by being funny, how about you stick with that instead of trying to bum everyone the fuck out week in and week out?
HATED it. I could have maybe been accepting of what happened if they hadn’t spent years telling us how wrong Robin and Ted were and how right Robin and Barney were, if it had been funny, if it had been well written and well acted and well edited (Ted with the kids looks like something I’d whip up in 10 minutes in iMovie). Going in a direction I didn’t like wasn’t a deal-breaker, but if the WHOLE POINT of the series was the journey, not the destination, make sure the journey isn’t a fucking mess or I’ll hate the crappy destination even more.
On the other hand, it seems like Robin had “the one that got away” notions not long after her marriage with Barney broke up (and probably looked back to the morning of the wedding and started to wonder, what if). That sort of unrequited love for that many years may have led to a yearning that is close to what Ted feels for her.
I saw an interview tonight with the actor who played the son. He said they taped the scene nine years ago and he’s known how the series would end all that time. And they did have to sign a NDA.
I think what a lot of people are missing in assessing the finale is that the one thing that was not in the original plan was having Tracy around for a full season. The way the original story would have played out, the finale would have been our only introduction to her, and she might have appeared only in the scene on the train platform. Then we would have jumped to older Ted, and the comment from his daughter about the mother barely being in the story would have been even more appropriate. It would have been obvious that the story was a setup to put Ted with Robin, and no one would really have cared about Tracy at all. It’s unfortunate for the story that the way it played out, people were more invested in Tracy than was intended.
That said, I wasn’t thrilled with the finale because it was too sad, and because I had been rooting all along for Barney and Robin, so it hurt to have them split up. But I thought that everything from the moment Ted met Tracy was brilliant, and I loved seeing that the show really did have a plan in mind for the ending. I just think it would have worked better without us knowing Tracy as much as we did.
I also think they could have done a better job of showing that the true love of Barney’s life was his daughter. They needed to give him a daughter in a way that made it clear that Barney would be the one raising her and that he would devote his life to her. There was too much ambiguity in the way that storyline ended.
In my universe, the show ended with Ted and Tracy’s wedding.
[ul]
[li]Ted and Tracy live happily ever after[/li][li]Marshall and Lily live happily ever after, and Marshall gets on the State Supreme Court[/li][li]Barney is a changed man, being a great single dad for his new kid[/li][li]Robin is a successful anchorwoman, has drifted away from the gang, but drops in occasionally, especially for the big moments.[/li][/ul]
Anyone someone who lost a parent young will tell you is that they remember a lot of things about the death in absolute VIVID detail. Ted say, to his kids, “When your mother got sick…” is all they need to hear. Their memories of the event fill in the rest. That might be frustrating for we the audience, but that’s the story Ted was telling and I found it real.
This is an excellent point, while it might have been satisfying for the viewers it would have been horribly cruel for Ted to spend a lot of time reviewing their mother’s illness and death with his children. They clearly remember it all on their own.
Nope. Completely wrong. Vasectomies are routine, outpatient procedures and are extremely easy to get. I’m getting one, and virtually all of my friends have already had them done. A half million men per year get vasectomies in the US. The procedure is not irreversible, they’re successfully reversed every single day via an outpatient procedure.
Face it, your entire post was wrong from beginning to end, and you have no earthly idea what you’re talking about. I have no idea where you even got such a notion.
I think Ted was in love with Robin the whole time, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t love Tracy just as much or more. I doubt Robin really loved either Ted or Barney as much as Ted loved her, nor did Barney love Robin as much as Ted did. Robin and Barney are/were/will be the kind of self-centered people who could not experience love in the same way Ted does. That’s why Barney could only truly love his daughter, someone he would consider part of himself. In the future the relationship between Ted and Robin will never be as mutually strong as the one he had with Tracy. If Ted and Robin had stayed together initially she wouldn’t readily accept motherhood over her ambitions, and the title would be ‘Why Your Mother Isn’t Here Anymore’.
Another oddity is Ted using the ‘sandwich’ euphemism to talk about smoking pot at a time when it will be legal in every state except Alabama.
That episode was on last night and it was the first time I had seen it. Barney was really upset about Ted and Robin getting it on. He’d go out back of the bar and break a tv everytime the boinking got brought up. It got to the point where he was buying tvs just to break them. It really showed how Barney loved Robin and he even went to admit it to Ted at the end but Ted wasn’t there but Robin was so he doesn’t say it.
It gave me insight into the last several episodes. It was a nice coincidence.
Yeah, several large cities, and mine is thinking about it, are already banning, (to the extent they ban cigarettes), e-cigs because the anti-smokers are so anti-smoking.
It’s okay for you to go ahead and admit that you misunderstood my post, you know. You can even continue blathering about how it was my fault you didn’t understand it.
What did I misunderstand?
Nothing. Because nothing you said is true. I’ve clearly demonstrated that, with no confusion. Your post was entirely wrong, with no room for any doubt.