I always thought How I Met Your Mother would have a bittersweet ending. Ted, the hopeless romantic would have told that story to his kids with the love of his life by his side if she were alive. I took that as foreshadowing. I thought she would die. But I knew It was realistic. Death can take your greatest love from you in the blink of an eye and you have no choice but to carry on. The ending should have been about Ted learning to carry on,choosing to love his children and cherish her memory. It still would have shattered our hearts. It would be a painful ending but an example of great writing. The mother's death did not make the ending of this show unwatchable. Ted ending up with Robin did. Robin and Ted were never compatible with each other. Ted stealing the horn to go back to Robin felt like watching a train wreck happen for the hundredth time and not being able to do anything about it. It felt like a relapse. It was a great show with a poorly written ending.
I've heard that argument before, and while it's true that it would have been a better ending than the one we got, it would have still been a poor one. Here's the issue: the writers shot themselves, not in the foot, but in the freaking liver in the first 5 seconds of the freaking pilot. The attitude of Ted's children alone makes the ending totally impractical. Basically, Ted is about to tell them a very intimate story about their beloved mother, who according with the timeline, died when they were very young... And their first reaction is, and I quote: "Are we being punished for something?" and "Is this gonna take a while?". An attitude that they keep for as long as they could record footage of the children before the actors aged out of the role. The whole "it's been 6 years since Mom died" kind of works for the idea of his children encouraging his father to find love again (only on paper, mind you), but it sure as hell doesn't work for THAT. I understand they did it for the sake of misdirection, but seriously, it's just terrible storytelling. The ending was doomed pretty much from the start.
Never liked the ending!! There was no point introducing the mother if they had to just kill her off at the end. They had to introduce the mother just cuz the show's name is "How I met your MOTHER".
I could see that type of story being compelling, if they went with an angle that Ted wasted more time looking for "the right one" than he spent actually improving and living, appreciating what he has while he still has it. HIMYM had so many "real" but heartfelt moment, like when Lily said there were moments she wishes she wasn't a mom. If they ended the show in this very sober way of looking at Ted and how unrealistic his chase for "the one" was. That could have provided them with the ending they aimed for. The fact that he decides after all this time, he should go ahead and waste some more of Robin's time is pretty much where they lose me
Not to mention how Barney and Robin helped each other grow and fix past issues. Having genuine chemistry. Only to be forced appart so Ted could get with her.
I detest the ending. As you said the series showed time snd time again that Ted and Robin didn't work. That Ted had his idealistic version of reality and wasn't capable to compromise.
The writers screwed themselves over with the ending in 2 ways: 1) even though we didn't see much of her, the mom was awesome and deserved better than not just what she got in the show, but better than Ted in general. More than that though is 2) Robin and Barney were much better together than Robin and Ted ever were. Robin and Barney made more sense and had more chemistry. After them, Robin and Ted no longer felt like they worked. And it felt like, to make them work, Robin almost had to be made less. Also, i buy the theory that, since it's from Ted's perspective, Ted made Barney seem worse to make himself seem better (because Ted isn't a good person)
@@OlaVerse So... as a writer, you need to plan things out in advance; if you don't, that's how you get the Star Wars sequels. Just an inconsistent, incoherent mess going nowhere. BUT you also need to remain flexible; any good writer will tell you that characters will develop a personality of their own and there are going to be times when you realize the story you have to tell isn't the story you *wanted* to tell. Obviously the HIMYM people lacked that flexibility; they had the ending they wanted and even though 9 seasons steered their story towards a different ending, they just went full steam ahead. Bummer. ALSO shout-out to the chick who played Tracy; what an impossible situation, to be dropped into a beloved sitcom 9 seasons in and be expected to have chemistry with the cast, to be able to live up to the ideal of what "The Mother" is supposed to be, and she fucked killed it. I'm still in awe thinking about how great she was.
Yes. I was so traumatised I have never watched a single episode since. I never watched the last episode only heard what from the Internet. The ending would have worked if the show only lasted 1-3 seasons but after 9 seasons it just didn't work.
Oh my gosh, you just put words to my thoughts perfectly! Especially at the end, I felt so betrayed as a viewer that they forced Robin back into a studio apartment, seemingly sad and in need of saving! Even without Barney, that was just not her! They did her dirty in order to force fit her into Ted’s dream life. I still feel so furious about this end, after years of showing why they weren’t a good fit. Lily’s vision about their future on the front porch comes to mind… So thanks for this! It’s been years, but I am still mad about it 😂
One thing I never understood: if they had the ending planed from the begining, why make it clear throughout 9 seasons that Ted and Robin will NEVER work? Also, why make the entire last season the COMPLETE OPPOSITE of the last episode?? It sounds more like that ending was improvised than planed.
I think that they showed us how the mother was so perfect for Ted that killing her off just felt cruel. There was no feeling of “she’s great, she’ll made Ted happy however something us still missing”. Also the fact that they ended up making Ted an unbearable human being; even by the societal standards back then. I remember feeling like he didn’t deserve Tracy. She was so kind and selfless. She deserved better than Ted. If they really wanted Ted and Robin to work in the end, they needed to show Robin having a voluntary change in life goals. Something along the lines of “she went after what she wanted but she realized that it didn’t make her happy like she thought it would”. Then for Ted they needed him to have a major realization that he was not up to the standards to deserve the type of woman that he was looking for…. Or even better, to have him STOP LOOKING! Let him be single for a while and stop trying to compete with his best friends. Now that I think about it, that still wouldn’t work because Barney was perfect for Robin. Ted. Ted is the problem. He sucks and he needs therapy (or some psychic stranger on the subway to tell him what he needs to hear and have it actually stick in his head and then for him to gradually make the necessary changes) As the audience, we stopped rooting for him. We stopped caring about his happiness because he was just so exhausting. He became a typical “nice guy”.
The show was good. Which is part of the problem. HIMYM did a good job of telling these characters stories, allowing them to grow with time that by the time we got to the end that they had to record in 2005 so the kids looked the same age, that ending no longer matched the characters we knew. Robin and Ted were not good together. It wasn't a matter of right person/wrong time. They were just wrong people, and the show showed us again and again why they weren't compatible. By the time we got to the final season Ted and Robin no longer made sense and we were waiting for Ted to catch up so that he could be with Tracy. Robin had moved on to a person who was better suited to her and they were getting married. Robin and Barney made sense, and they made sense because the character kind of naturally progressed in that direction. So the ending felt like a betrayal because it didn't fit the character we, as an audience came to know over 9 seasons. It changed the reason that we were being told the story from, this is what made Ted into the right person for Tracy to I am going to share my history so that you can see that it is and on some level always has been Robin. This ending still makes me mad.
I loved the mother as a character, she was awesome and probably too good for Ted. I would be very sad but fine with the ending of just Tracy’s death. What made me most angry was that her children casually saying that their Dad was in love with Robin all along. Such disrecpect both for their mother and for us who believed in their love. As for Ted, I would not be surprised with anything he does because it seems like he has no idea how to be happy 🤷🏻♀️ I 100% agree with you about Barney
omg yes, the kids reaction to it was very weird. like, even if they thought that their dad starting to date robin would be cool, I think they would have changed their minds after listening to Ted talk obsessively about her for so long :/
I agree. I contemplated about adding something about how the whole last season was off, but didn't have the time lol it would have taken me an whole second video to discuss this
I’ve been telling people since the original aired about my version of the finale. We do the Meet Cute and the TMs, even the super speed run death if the network still wanted that, then we fade in on old man Ted standing in front of a grave holding the hands of a little boy and girl. The grave is Tracie’s. The people around Ted are his family. And as they turn to leave the graveyard we hear Ted say “did I ever tell you about how I met your grandmother?” Fade to black. Everyone cries, those who like cyclical shows get their loop and we all move on after a really well told story. Not that hogwash we really got!
Thanks to The algorithm for leading me to your video. The reason why i hated the ending so much is because i really loved tracy but when i think about it maybe if she didn’t die I wouldn’t be attached to her character
I'm so glad you enjoyed it! The what ifs are so many indeed. I was attached to her quite fast, but like I said in the video, mostly because they wrote a great character and they cast someone fantastic to portray her.
The ending was not even the worst, the entire last season feels so disconnected from the rest of the show 😢 the jokes are so empty and everyone acts out of character
Robin wasn't in love with Ted. In the last season the show wants to make hs believe they were destined to be together, it was just a matter of timing, of Robin "surrendering herself" to this love, of patience, blah blah.. Expect that wasn't AT ALL what I gathered from their interactions: Robin didn't want to be with Ted because Robin didn't love Ted. It wasn't a question of being too different or bad timing ! Ted built an entire narrative around her to make her fit into his fantasies, without truly knowing her. It's not love, it's limerence. Robin successfully identifies that and takes her distance. And now you want to make me believe she regrets taking the smarest, healthiest decision of their friendship and suddenly decides they are soulmates ? Besided they did her dirty with her divorce with Barney. Their couple felt RIGHT, they were the true soulmates of the show. And in a sense their story was even more heartwarming because they progressed so much since the beginning of the serie. The ending is such a let down, it's basically saying: You know how we spent years developing these characters and watching them grow together so that Robin can get over her past traumas and feeling of inadequacy and Barney can get over his fear of intimacy and become a deeper, self-aware, honest version of himself ? Well, all of that was a lie, they actually never changed and this is why their relationship failed.
I had a high school friend that watched the show with me, almost religiously, and we were a bit shocked. We even joked that we'd be the backup spouse on out single at 40 pact. Then I had a girlfriend that also loved the show and our relationship mirrored the show (me being Ted and her being Robin). Once we broke off, I binged the entire thing and tried to be more understanding... But man, I'm still mad. Great video, tho.
It's very interesting that you identify your self as a Ted, very self aware. hope you find your Tracy (alive and healthy for many many many years to come!)
What made me mad and so disappointed in the series finale, was that they spent the whole 9th season making us fall in love with the mother, just to have her die off in a matter of seconds but never saw what happened. Was it cancer? What kind of cancer? Just nope, she got sick and now she’s gone. The entire last episode felt rushed. They introduce Lily and Marshall having a 3rd baby but never even elaborate after that. What’s the kids name? Boy or girl? What was the point of introducing a 3rd kid with no point to the storyline? I remember watching the last episode live and seeing there was only 20 minutes left (it’s was an hour long for the finale) and thinking “okay they need to wrap this up….” And then they bombard you with everything last minute. So many freaking commercials 🙄 Also, the fact that CBS when advertising the series finale said the pineapple 🍍 situation would be solved and it most definitely was not! Had to find it on YT a few days later from somewhere else.
The thing that makes the least logical sense is that every time Future Ted talks about the future of the gang, he mentions how close everyone still is. A few examples: Robin and Lily get together and drink wine every year. Future Ted says their "booth" is wherever they are together. He says they watch Robots vs Wrestlers together every year. Robin and Barney are close enough in the future to joke about the time they cheated on Kevin and Nora with each other, that they heard different lyrics in a song on the boat in Tick Tick Tick. To have everyone separated and miserable in the finale just doesn't match what the rest of the show has been telling us. HIMYM had always set itself up to have a happy ending, it was a fairytale. It was never about "realism" which people try to argue the ending was (and it wasn't even realistic!). They had managed to achieve their hardest task by making the mother likeable after building her up for years, the ending just had to be a happy send off for these characters, it wrote itself and it was so easy. They threw that away for a few nonsensical twists that managed to remove itself from the cultural zeitgeist as soon as it aired.
I completely agree with you. thee ending really assassinated the characters of both Robin and Barney. Robin suddenly wants what Ted wants and wishes she ended up with him and we're supposed to believe she'll be happy stepmothering two teenagers. Brney goes right back to being a jaackass upon divorcee because the writers thought after ll that character growth, we just wanna see more playbook shenanigans. the ending is a great tragedy. ted finally found the love of his life and lost her so he goes back to the person he always went back to when desperate for love. He decided he loved Robin before knowing anything about her. she wasn't the person he wanted he to be so her decided if he was persistent one day she would become who he wanted her to be. and sadly, he was right. people defend the ending by pointing out it was planned all along, as if that automatically makes it good. this being a preplanned ending that didn't fit the story just means they failed at th whole rest of the seres cause they failed to build up to the ending
They destroyed Barney's character development. They spent 8 seasons showing why Ted and Robin dont work and within one episode they f*cked all that character development. They turned Barney womanizing jerk into a caring loving character who is more than just someone looking for their conquest. And then the mother, who was just there to be Ted's incubator. Nothing in the final season made no sense if you stop watching the show at the end of s2 and then watch the final episode you would not have missed anything
sad fact: this is canonically the year Tracy dies. they never said what time of year it happened so all year I've been wondering if she's dead yet. a friend of my parents died of cancer on Easter Sunday this year.
It's awesome that this is your first video. I hope you get what you want from UA-cam. You totally inspired me and give me enough courage to open my own UA-cam channel. I hope we see you more. I love it. 😍
I stopped watching the show as soon as Barney and Robin became a couple, I believed the show died right there, and they just ran it into the ground. After seeing the ending, it just confirmed my belief.
the GOT ending was so bad, it was unreal. But it think my ending, maybe even though it might have been better, would still be a bad ending lol at least for that show. hopefully once G.R.R.Martin will finish the books, it'll give some much needed closure.
@@OlaVerse agreed. I’ve lost almost all hope he will ever finish because they keep pumping out these spin offs for him to get distracted by unfortunately. Best case scenario he finishes winds but I just can’t see him finishing a 7th book at this rate. I used to be angry but now I’m just empty about it haha.
Somehow I made it years after the show ended without knowing the ending. All I knew was that all my friends were mad. When I finally finished the show I was mad too. I also realised in those final seasons that I really didn't like Ted. He's not a good person or romantic partner in my opinion. So... One viewing is fine for me. I only even watched it because of Alyson Hannigan. I was obsessed with Buffy and even got Willow's season 4 haircut a few times. Great video! Edit: I loved Barney and Robin.
I can understand that with all the foreshadowing already given in the previous seasons that they would have to kill off Tracey. But HOW they did it was wrong. Season 9 should have given us the Ted and Tracey romance we had waited for. The ending with him talking to his children could have been after her funeral. Him reminiscing and saying how special she was. How she didn't compare to the others and what a healthy love is actually like. Oh it still would have broken our hearts but it would have at least been bitter sweet and in keeping with the plot through line of the entire show.
The show could've been titled "Robin isn't right for Ted". The entire premise of the show seemed to be "Ted wants to be with Robin but she doesn't like him that way, they're not right for each other"... only for the ending to be like "ah, fuck it, let's give it another shot." It won't work. We know because we've been shown for 9 seasons that they just want different things.
6:11 "When you think about it, I can understand why the creators thought that we would be more invested in Ted and Robin than Ted and The Mother; we spent so much more time with Ted and Robin, we knew how they were together." Yup... that's EXACTLY why them ending up together at the end was so terrible and left all of us feeling cold. Because we knew *exactly* how they worked together romantically: they didn't.
I think in a lot of ways the ending was so terrible because it betrayed the promise of what the show seemed to be until that point. You thought the story was about unseeable destiny and all of the trials leading you to what will truly make you happy? Psych. Ted actually ends up exactly where he started-- obsessed with Robin. You think Robin's story was about a career woman accomplishing her goals and living the life she chose despite societal pressure? Psych. She actually regrets it and wishes she could take Tracy's place. You thought Barney's story was about overcoming his rampant insecurities and daddy issues to become a decent enough human to earn the love he was too afraid to ask for? Psych. He didn't really change at all. Even if you just look at the last season, the same season of the finale, they failed to properly set up any of the ideas of the finale. They even set up the complete opposite in some cases. The only thing they did set up to some degree was Tracy's death, but that doesn't erase the demolition of three characters storylines.
I think I understand both sides of the argument…this show was always about real life, and I liked its reality angle. One of my favorite moments in that regard is when they have to deal with Marshall getting over Lily and Marshall promises he’ll be better “from now on” after the conflict of the episode, then the voiceover immediately said that he wasn’t because “that’s just not how life works”. Even though like you said Robin and Barney kept getting worried about not being marriage material and eventually deciding they’d make it work, they used that so many times in the last season it almost made it seem like they would perpetually have that argument forever until it eventually broke them up. I do hate a lot of the way it was handled in general, especially with the mother and Barney being done so dirty. But I also understand why they did the whole going back to robin thing. It makes it feel more grounded in reality to me. Another thing that’s important about the ending is that they didn’t only care about solving the romance arcs, but also making them into better people and giving us closure on how the rest of their lives went; keep in mind Marshall becomes a supreme court justice, Robin goes worldwide on the news, Barney’s plan goes off without a hitch in terms of his work, and Ted is the youngest person to ever design a built building or whatever. They still do get that overly happy sitcom ending, just not in their love lives in particular. That all being said, I do very much prefer the alternate ending though.
I feel like it might be almost impossible to pull off a "realistic" ish ending to a sitcom. not completely impossible, but just almost. and I don't think they handled it all that well. happy ever after doesn't happen to everyone and that's ok, but after listening to one love story for 9 years you would kinda hope it does lol
@@OlaVerse totally fair lol. I definitely wasn’t a fan of the ending, but I appreciate what they tried to do, is all I’m saying. It just grew to be bigger than what they ever would have initially expected
Saw this on my recommendations, great video! I would say that the final season was rushed and forced. While there was an alternate ending that was made for the Season 9 DVD after controversial backlash (it's on UA-cam). If I finish re-binging it, I'll just go with the alternate ending. And I would love to see an actual director's cut of the series finale to get released, there's a few deleted scenes that were on the DVD release and some of them were considered "lost media" including Tracy's funeral (that was never been released to the public) but hopefully that happens for the 20th anniversary next year. And one more thing, Ted Mosby is literally his version of Tom Hansen from 500 Days of Summer.
This was SO excellent! You’ve really highlighted all the qualms - building Barney’s character only to destroy him at the end, making Barney and Robin make the most sense and then betraying them at the end, and worst of all Tracy. They accomplished the goal and then they took her from us before we truly got to savor her character. Even having one full season where she’s probably immersed in the group and watching their relationship unfold would’ve been better than “this is the chick Ted knocked up! Don’t worry she’s perfect for him!” And glad you addressed how dreadfully Barney’s character has aged. He was always troubling but looking back on REAL actions he’s cited to have taken, Barney is a dangerous megalomaniac! I wanted so much more for this show and instead I mourn the direction they took us in. A real bait and switch.
I wasn't traumatized, but I was really disappointed. I thought we got to a point with 3 perfect couples and then they destroyed one and killed the other. I'm not against the idea of Ted and Robin getting together after his wife dies. Thought there was something beautiful about it. BUT am really disappointed that they are ruining Barney... Thought Barney and Robin were such a perfect couple that just fit together. And honestly, Barney doesn't like to travel? Maybe he wasn't the one who badmouthed them to Philadelphia? ("Phily!") No, it's honestly a disappointing ending, although I can see how it would have worked if Robin and Barney weren't so perfect together.
The cynical interpretation you mentioned is why I hate the ending. I really felt the Mother ended up being a placeholder baby incubator so Ted could have the kids he wanted. Then the writers killed off the Mother plot device in 5 minutes so Ted could have Robin. I hate this ending and have never rewatched the show which I use to love.
Ted’s kids weren’t twins. They show Penny as a toddler when Tracy is in labour with Luke. Great video, though. It baffles me to this day that they decided back in season two that Ted would end up with Robin, then spent the rest of the show beating us over the head with the fact that the two of them don’t work, not to mention spend the last two seasons telling us to focus on Robin and Barney. My own personal theory is that they thought they would please both T&R + B&R shippers, giving B&R the build-up and the wedding, and then ultimately ending ob T&R. That, or they realized B&R was the by far more popular ship and decided to bait the audience to stick around for seasons 8 & 9. I fully subscribe to the theory that Barney was nowhere near as crazy and unpleasant towards women as Ted claims, and that’s he’s being an unreliable narrator hoping to convince his kids that he ”deserves” Robin more than Barney does. Barney’s sudden 180 after his daughter is born would be how Ted explains the discrepency between the Barney the kids know and the Barney he’s telling them about. I also think Marshall and Barney weren’t constantly arguing over who is Ted’ best friend. More likely they considered each other their best friend and Ted was jealous.
i had a roommate who tried to get me into this show. i said during ep one "Watch the mother be dead. shes not any of these people." he got mad :P but i was seriously guessing due to my real life cynicism since my mother had died when i was young.
@@OlaVerse im somewhat perceptive of human behavior now and I write in my spare time, it just seemed obvious to me :) sorry to hear about your mom too. It's never easy when it happens
When I watched the series, I actually enjoyed the story (in spite of barney and Ted), I was way younger and even then, having no relationship experiences whatsoever, I knew Ted + Robin was a no go. I'm sure the writers always expected us to root for the pair, but lost touch with their initial plans for them. Introducing Barney + Robin as endgame only made the original pair look worse by comparison. I have never revisited the show because of how much I hated the ending. And Tracy was a great character, her episode was so adorable and I actually like that actress a lot.
I didn't cry, I was in rage. They ruined my favourite show. The last season was awful with a few great scenes mainly with the mother. The moment Ted and Tracy meet at the train station was the best scene in the history of movies and tv shows. Ok I am exaggerating but it was chef kiss. And I can see the whole story being Ted recalling how he became worthy for the love of Tracy. But not what was actually - Ted telling the story of how he loved their mother but need to get back to Robin because she is in a low enough place in her life to accept him. I am raging again. Fun story- ny husband was watching the finale with me and saw how engry I was ao whenever he wants to annoy me he just says at least Ted is with Robin at the end😅
i'll never forget what i felt the day the last episode came out. Me and my boyfriend waited to download it (we are not from the us, so we had to kinda illegally watch it because we couldnt wait any longer), finally sat down to watch it, and throught the whole thing we were absolutely in shock at what we were watching. it was a parade of character assassination. the moment ted and tracy's wedding started to show up as small clips leading up to the scene that they were at the hospital, i started crying so much that we had to pause the episode and we watched until the end crying our eyes out. that was absolutely the most cruel thing they could do after waiting for so long for her. I know ted must have spent years grieving (off camera), but we didnt even got a moment to process that sudden death. it felt like a real death of a person we got attached so quickly (because she was THAT awesome). i hated that last season, and the last episode with a burning fury. i've never felt so betrayed by a tv show in my whole life. i never rewatched it ever again since then. now, a little bit older, and after watching a lot of youtubers talking about the series, i made my peace with ted getting back together with robin. i have heard stories of real people that were once in love in their youth and after years, they met again and got together for the rest of their lives. so i kind of am okay with that, i can understand that perspective now. but everything else is fucking ridiculous. specially barney, oh my god dude. we all hated him because he was so cringey, and as the seasons passed by, we got to truly know him, we saw the soft side of him, and his traumas, and slowly getting better at things in life and becoming a better person. only to be at square one at the last episode. sorry about the long post, to sum up, what i feel will never change about this series. could have been the series of my life (as im sure as well to a lot of people), but i never want to feel like that ever again. it changed forever the way i consume shows nowadays.
As a concept, I like and appreciate the intent around the ending being about how the children would feel about their widowed parent dating again. From a production standpoint, it was smart of the crew to prerecord the scenes with the kids so that by the time the show reaches its end, it can maintain the idea that the entire 9 season show was all a story told without too much time passing in the future present day. However, while I can understand the reason for Ted wanting to explain his intent of moving forward with his life, why does Ted have to do so by getting back together with Robin? Episodes like “Sunrise” and "The End of the Aisle" in season 9 were about Ted overcoming his internalized fear of losing his loved ones should he let them go and by letting Robin go, they are both free to move on in both their romantic endeavors and their future path in life. What I especially loved about “The End of the Aisle” was that Ted was given another chance to be with Robin when she suggests they run away together, but Ted rejects the idea because he knows that Robin is only trying to find an excuse to bail on her wedding because she is scared. Ted understood that they weren’t the same people who dated all those years ago and sees that Robin and Barney loved each other dearly and refused to ruin the wedding because of his feelings for Robin. The fact that he tries again with Robin, despite the entire show giving points and examples as to why they have different futures in mind for one another, contradicts a lot of Ted's emotional growth in the season.
To add to the discussion about Barney, I don't think he's necessarily a character that didn't age well. In fact, I see it as the exact opposite. He aged too well. There was a video I watched a while ago that referenced a satire of flat Earthers to show how time, changes in society, and view points can make satire less obvious. The original vid didn't go out of its way to say how ridiculous those views were bc it was already widely agreed that they were. Now that conspiracy theories are on the rise, flat Earthers watch that same vid thinking that it agrees with them bc in their mind they don't hold the same obvious truths. Back then the idea of 'guy who's so insecure that he wraps his whole identity around sex, toxic masculinity, and misogyny' was a reference to one or two fringe weirdos who everyone laughed at. Now it's a whole subculture that a lot of young men have fallen into. That means that we look at it today and it's harder to see the joke-- that Barneys way of approaching the world is a fundamentally broken one based on his own insecurities and fear of rejection. Or the fact that he will talk constantly about how easy women with daddy issues are and completely misses the obvious fact that he has giant daddy issues. If they didn't completely mess up his character arc in the last few EPS and desperately try to piece it back together in some sort of weird Frankenstein creature then I'm sure that would have been more obvious. I think the fact that he was a fan favorite character and his quippy catchphrases kind of obscures it in a way too. We look at season 1 and say 'man he was the worst. Why did we ever like him?'. But, we forget that his entire purpose was to be so terrible that it's funny. And, whenever Ted did have those big moments of 'oh shit I need to get my life together' it was almost always shown by him acting more like Barney. Like sure we liked him bc one of his functions was to bring us joy, but that doesn't mean he was ever meant to be agreed with. It's just that now that joy is harder to access bc he has posthumously become too real in an uncomfortable way.
I've said it time and time again but I really wouldn't have been this upset with just the mother dying. It could've been a beautiful kind of "hey I miss your mother and this story was so long because telling it this way let me pretend she's still here" kind of thing, and ended with ted and his friends getting a drink at mclarens or something, for old times' sake and that would've been nice. I was mad because of the fact that they had robin and barney get divorced and had ted and robin get back together because What was the point-
Totally agree with you. I watched the ending once, never watched it again. I mean, I still watch the series but stop when Ted met Tracy at the end of season 8.
One of the reasons I didn't like the ending was actually Ted himself. I didn't like him by the end of the show and I grew to like Barney for his growth, so seeing Barney and Robin not staying together and Ted starting the whole thing again was just annoying.
this is an amazing first video! well read and well edited, slay! there’s sentiment that season 9 was bad, i disagree, i love season 9, the idea of it all happening over a weekend is really good i think. but the execution for the story they intended to tell, was horrible. they told this story of robin and barney being perfect for each other, even ending the Ted and Robin story with her not even symbolically floating away, but literally. All this character growth is essentially written to be erased within only a few episodes by Ted and Robin getting together in the end. It feels incredibly rushed and disingenuous to the story they’ve been telling. Tracy dying is brushed over in one line, “when your mother got sick”. They write Tracy as this insanely charming girl, it’s hard to not love her, so to not see Teds grief is really strange. You mean to say he’s told this story to his kids in excruciating detail, but doesn’t shed a tear, and neither do his kids? There should have been another season or a succession of specials portraying Tracy and Teds relationship, and then her getting ill and how Ted deals with the grief of it all. There’s a deleted scene of Ted and Robin in a coffee shop when they’re older, and Robin seems so sad that she and Ted didn’t work out, but Ted is so happy because he finally met the woman of his dreams. Robin is done with travelling for work, and finished putting career first because she finally wants to settle down after her and Barney didn’t work out. It way more naturally portrays the changing of the tides. If they had more time, it could have worked, but the format they chose for the final season killed any chance of natural progression. Barney and Robin are way more natural of a fit, as shown by the show, but I think it could have been more satisfying if they showed more of Barney being a dad, giving him something to be that makes sense for the end game of his character. Barney gets to be the dad he never had, and Ted and Robin finally have the means to make a romance work for them.
I kinda thought they were gonna pull a u turn and Robin was the mother except she wasn’t the same person anymore. Be like episode one Robin? That’s not your mother, your mother is someone else. A doppelgänger version that she needed to become through all we went through. So we had to go through all this for me to meet her.
Maybe Ted ending with Robin wasn't so bad, the thing is how the creators did it. In my opinion the whole last season was awful (except for the Tracy moments). I think they should have done the last season getting to know Tracy, actually "meeting" her. With that, the twist would have felt even more, we would have already fall in love even more with Tracy. By taking a better tempo in the episodes, as they were doing during the whole show, the story as a whole would have been better. And while telling the story between Ted and Tracy, showing us the hardships in the (amazing) couple of Robin and Barney. Because not everything is a happy ending, but at least, it would have make much more sense. I don't know, I haven't watched the show in a while (because I remember the ending). I really liked your video, I could see your passing while talking!
I'm so glad you enjoyed the video! and thank you :) I think I would still be traumatized if there were to prolong our time with Tracy and then killing her off, but that would have been because of my personal life (my mom dying), and not due to the writing. I would have hate-love it, instead of just hate-hate it lol thank you for mentioning my passion lol i had a lot of pent up emotion with this one
I thought of it as somber. Ted finds the one, lives with her; she passes and he raises the kids. Then goes back to the woman he always loved near the end of his life, because they could never have lived their lives together
To me, the best defense of the choice to kill off the mother and get Ted with Robin was this: Tracy's original "soul mate" died. In a way, Ted was to Tracy as Robin eventually is to Ted in the sense that it is the relationship which follows the death of their previous one. The only reason Tracy and Ted were able to work was because Tracy moved on from a past relationship which she thought was perfect. Then Ted gets with Robin, he is sort of doing the same, and I kind of like this theme of moving on to not necessarily better things, but for whatever the next best thing for you is. In this case, Ted was Tracy's "next step" (and from it we got our "perfect relationship" Ted & Tracy, which would not have happened if Tracy had not moved on from her's) and Robin was Ted's. However it falls flat when you think about it for two seconds because Tracy moving on from her dead boyfriend was a huge character arc for her throughout the episode which centered on her backstory. Ted seemed more than eager to get with Robin finally. Also, with all of the other elements that you talked about - Ted and Robin's failed relationship, Barney and Robin's better relationship, and Tracy being totally awesome, it just felt wrong. Upon multiple rewatches of the final season, I can see this tiny theme which I use to sort of justify the official ending, although I've only seen the actual finale twice and always watch the edited alternate version when I watch through the show.
This is like poetry. So well said and completely agree. Cristin Millioti was perfect and at least now we know her. I have watched all her stuff, Palm Springs movie was awesome. Absolutely love her. The fans of this show rode it out for 10 years and for that?!
I’m not even that upset about the mom dying. I loved her and it’s sad, but “even though I waited so long for her, and then our time was cut short. But it was still worth it.” Can be a great story. The problem is over and over they established that Ted was in love with the idea of Robin, and Barney was in love with the person Robin. Remember that episode where Ted was upset that he couldn’t be the quintessential male protector of Robin, and Barney said if Robin wanted to be the one to defend them against home intruders that was fine with him? The writers hope we don’t.
The last season felt so incredibly forced. Here we were after watching this long buildup of all these characters, not just ted and robin and yet the entire season practically took place during robin and barneys wedding only for them to get divorced in an episode and it felt played for laughs. We watched ted fall in and out of love, we watched directly and saw why he and robin didnt work yet made fantastic friends. So to watch this show for years on end only to find out that this mysterious woman who was his perfect match in every way, passes away without us really getting to see much of her. I think had they given us a full season with her, not just the wedding episodes and glimpses into her life before ted, they could have built up to this fact that we would be grieving her soon. Watching only to find out that she passed away felt like having the carpet ripped from beneath our feet. Besides those two, i felt the rest of the characters became shadows of themselves in the last couple of seasons. Marshall was finally a lawyer at a company he yearned to be apart of before ever completing his bar exam and yet it was flopping.barney had this huge character growth with letting himself fall in love only to go back to his original flawed self until he knocked a mystery girl up and became the perfect dad. Lily, who we saw loved being a teacher suddenly couldnt stand the idea, mind you i understand she has the art background, but it felt like she was disregarding marshalls feelings alot. I understood her only because i felt like she was dealing with undiagnosed post partum depression but still the switch around to them going to rome felt weird and forced. Finally robin, she was always chasing the dream of being a world renowned news anchor but there was this weird feeling that she was ready to drop her friendships to make it happen. Like she loved barney, enough to marry him and yet instead of trying to make things work and getting a more solid schedule, they divorced right away. It made no sense and really diminished both of them in the process. In the perfect final season, i would have loved to see the gang back together again. Despite all of their lives taking them in different directions, watching marshall and lily help barney be the best dad he could be, watching ted and his wife fall in love and start their family, robin being an award winning newscaster, or maybe even a sports broadcaster, and all of them together again. Cut the wedding bottle season and instead limit it to like 3 episodes and just give us time with these characters. Even if they kept in that teds wife would pass away, let us see these characters grieve with him and them helping him with the kids. Robin could have even taken the time off work to come and watch over ted and maybe in that grief after a long, appropriate amount of time they could have fallen back in love, instead of the weird 20 year crush thing. Sorry rant over, apparently i had a lot of feelings 😅 love the video though Edit: sorry just wanted to add that i didnt necessarily like ted and robin together, i think her and barney were endgame for sure. Im just saying in my head, the perfect emding with the least fussback would be them getting back together after spending time together because by all means, the ending seemed like maybe they saw each other a few times after his wife passed but by all accounts they didnt have that same friendship or relationship dynamic anymore. In my head barney and robin staying together, adopting or fostering a child and ted getting haplily ever after would be the best
I have a lot of complains and criticism about the last season. I agree with you on a lot. especially Lily and Marshall, and as I said, everything they did with Robin. and never be sorry about a rant! I love them ^_^
@@OlaVerse hi I actually just subscribed and looked at your channel, and imagine my surprise that this was your first video! I'm looking forward to seeing what's next
Many people make the argument that Ted and Robin don’t work and fair enough but I put forth the argument that neither did Barney and Robin. We saw why in season 5. Robin likely should have never married anyone. Her career was her first priority after all.
honestly, yes. I loved Barney and Robin, but if the writers didn't want them together, they really should have kept Robin alone then - or literally with someone else.
The writers didn't care enough about the fans to realize how much they were invisted in Robin and Barney's relationship. They were never great writers. i mean, they stole a lot from other sitcoms, but they at least should have given their loyal fans something other than that crap of an ending. I can't even watch the reruns because what is the point.
They might not be great writers but in their defense nothing is original and writers steal ideas from other writers all the time. That ending was awful though
I don't mind Tracy dying. I think it would have been a good kick off for the show, because that's why Ted was reminiscing about his life and how his wife ended up changing everything. BUT we should have had more scenes like the one where Ted and Tracy talk at a lighthouse or something. Where they are already together, we don't know how they met, but we know they had this great relationship. We could have expanded on what Tracy's life was before meeting Ted too. Or how she interacted with the other members of their friend group after they had already met. All of that to finally wrap up the series with how none of that would have happened if the stars hadn't aligned for Ted to meet her, and end on that sweet moment where they finally meet at the train station. And Ted could have been telling his kids this story in memory of their mother, to explain to them how she changed his life and how love is worth pursuing and waiting for. But no... In the end, the show was about how to never give up on a girl that was never right for you, and how once your wife dies you're free to go back and chase her again. Yuk.
It honestly felt like we got lied to right from the beginning. from episode one the first fact we knew about the mother was that it WASNT ROBIN! Every moment of Ted and Robin in a relationship I was completely checked out because they told me from day one it isn't happening. then to just be smacked across the face with "This isn't about how you met mom, its about how you love aunt Robin" I watched as the show laughed in my face at how stupid i was to believe a word they told me. I never felt so angry about the ending of any show before or since.
I like to think about the ending the way barney sees the ending of his mariege with Robin: "it was a happy marieage that happens to last only 3 years". I believe the creators wanr more than a beautiful story, they want to teach us a lesson, and thats "happy endings dosent have to exist" we shoundnt look for the perfect life and whatever you want for future, we should embrace our present, thats the real beauty of it. How i met your mother is not about the mother, is not about the ending, its about the Journey, its about the path you had to pass so everithing makes sense. Life is unpredictable and most of the times will not make sense and be good wrote. For me Himym is the most real sitcom because of that, because its a real life there, and sometimes you will make decisions that you will look back and think "ok, myself in the past wouldnt do that" By the way i would have changed a lot that final episode, maybe another season would have made it better. Really apreciate if someone read it here, sorry my not so good english lol, love the vídeo ❤
I was actually fine with the mother dying, I think that was the most predictable ending because it makes complete sense, they did set it up. But what I cannot stand is Ted and Robin getting back together 5 minutes later, I know in universe years had passed but in screen time it was mere moments, it felt like such a betrayal of Tracy, maybe I am more cynical than you because to me it seems exactly like the writers just wanted to give Ted kids but couldn’t with Robin so needed Tracy for that then could kill her off and he could go back to Robin even though they didn’t work at all as a couple
Maybe they should have introduced her in the 7th season and build her character more in season 8. That way it wouldn't be so rush in the 9th. Also remove that awful ending and write a new one thats in line with tje progression of the show. Even if Barney and Robin weren't together at the end, don't destroy both their character development.
I think the only thing I Haven’t heard from you is the idea that if Tracy was the endgame it shouldn’t be the end of the world when the end game has surprising finale. You can always be happy again and love again. Also it isn’t important if your love is like yellow umbrella or blue French horn - it could be the end game if you would like that. But I agree with your opinion about messing the screen script by writers
I still can't believe that they managed to deliver on a character that lived up to the awesomeness we were set to expect from Tracy....only to throw her out immediately. The odds of writing, casting, and presenting a character that could not only live up to the hype, but surpass it were so low, and they did it!! And then they completely wasted that victory. Which honestly made it all so much worse.
Finally someone mentions that not wanting children includes step children, if you really don't want to be a parent don't date parents cause there's no way you won't be involved in their kids lives
And I think you misunderstand, Robin and Ted did not fit at the start of the show but 16 or so years later they both got the things they wanted in their youth. Ted found his true love and got children, Robin got her career. And after getting those things, which they couldn't have given each other before, what was left was both their wish and both of their ability to give and receive honest love. Death, divorce, accidents and second happy ends if you don't give up are what happens and are among the only realistic aspects of the entire shows storyline. It's not nice with a bow on top, it's how things are.
So maybe this is a hot take but I was okay with Tracy dying and I was okay with the divorce. It felt like both fit the darker theme of the show. However I was NOT okay with the ending and I hate it even more now.
I know most people didn´t like the finale, but for me I think was one of the best ideas a sitcom ever had, the main problem is that it was really really bad executed, I liked the idea of the series going with a more dramatic ending that anything else, but there is a lot they could make so the ending felt more natural and correct, for exemple, dont divorce her and Barney in just a scene and no just after 3 freaking years of marry. The whole series is very creative honestly, I can´t recall a sitcom doing this kind of thing, we shouldn´t be that hard with the series, was 9 seasons, not even the X Files could kept a coherent main plot after 11 seasons
While watching the finale I started crying out of anger and loudly repeating "No. NO. OH FUCK NO!" They achieved the almost impossible - the mother delivered so well and they basically run her over with a garbage truck.
Robin and Barney matched better than robin and Ted .This is one of my favourite shows though I think the show should have ended with Ted meeting the mother .
They did such a great job with Tracy as a character and she fit in story organically. Barney and Robin fit together better. I get the ending being predetermined, but they failed in delivering that story. They gave us a different story and forced that ending.
it actually honestly makes me sick how people defend and romanticize ted and robin reuniting…. like no i actually don’t find it sweet and romantic that they “found their way back” i think ted wasted a good woman’s life while he pined over his ex
I actually enjoyed the ending on my first watching. I binged the entire series in a month or two but I thought the whole point of the show was how Ted kept falling for Robin. How he kept trying to make it work (I don’t know if it’s because I binged it all and that may have caused this perception). After this video, I lean more into it’s a bad ending because of how the other characters were written and evolved. I do think the mother’s death was foreshadowed well enough especially with the 45 days speech. I think that the theme there is no perfect love but the best romantic love comes from people we have known for years reflects best in the ending. I think the deleted scene with Ted and Robin getting lunch together shows some much needed context to the ending. And I do like the theory that Ted was telling the story of how he became the person he needed to be to meet the mom and through that story remembered how much Robin was a part of his life and his kids took the wrong message from the story and convinced him otherwise. But most of that is external stuff that came from others not the original show. I think you’ve done a great job at providing good evidence as to why the ending doesn’t work and you’ve thoroughly convinced me. Team bad ending all the way. Thank you for that!! /g
They really should've made 9th season less focused on the wedding and more focused on the mother. We could've had like 5 episodes of the most important bits from the wedding (robin and barney being scared of marriage, tracy meeting the gang one by one and ted etc.) and the rest could've just been ted and tracy slowly falling in love and their love story, 1 season would be enough for the viewers to be attached to the mother - given how lovable the actress was as tracy. They really fucked up because of that first season plan of "robin and ted will end up together". 😒
This is one of the hot takes I have in all of cinema but I found the ending satisfying. There were so many signs it was going to end with Ted going back to Robin. The only issue I had is the same as everyone which is they should have given us at least half a season with Ted and Tracy.
The ending was amazing honestly ! I have watched HIMYM more than 10 times so I know this show in and out. Im gonna explain with 3 points: 1) People hate the finale because people love the classic perfect ending where everyone is happy. BUT this show is supposed to be real. It deals with important issues people have (Parents death, Breakups, Obsession) so it's only normal that the ending is more raw and real. 2) To me watching ted go back to robin doesn't mean anything. We see ted fall in love 200 times in the show. Just because tracy was the one that doesn't mean he has no right to love after her death. Put yourself in that situation. Tracy did not die so that ted and robin could be together. Ted and robin can be together because she died. So it's more of a problem of why they killed her off. Everyone seems to believe they did that so that ted would end up with robin but I disagree, they probably wanted an alternate and very brutal ending that highlights the hard reality of life and death etc. 3) Ted loves tracy more than he will love anyone else but in the whole show we see a recurring theme. Life continues. When lily came back from SF, Marshall tried dating other women. Why doesn't anyone criticise the show for that? If that's true love how did he do that? Anyways my point is watch the show as if you are in those situations, or even better if you are in a situation like that you will understand it 10 x better. p.s watch the last season again with an open mind and I think you will understand!
The show put themselves into a box by taping the finale scene with the kids at the. End of season 1 or 2 so the characters did not fit the finale by the time it came because they changed so much but they were stuck to do the finale the way they did
Ted should be telling this story right before/after his wives funeral. That way they can all gather. Barnie and Robin should have asopted showing they could both love a kid bettrt than their parents.
Omg, let me tell ya. I was a senior in high school bought to graduate and one of my underclassman classmate/friend wouldn't shut up to me about this show so I finally binge watched all of it over the summer and when I finally finished it one day at 2am, I had sent my friend the longest and I mean THE LONGEST text message saying how fucking stupid this ending was and how bad I felt. And she got a kick out of that lol.
As flawed as this show is, it's still my favorite. Loved the song metaphor because this song always rings in my heart; despite how terrible the ending is. I guess we can only appreciate how beautiful the beginning can be.
I wouldn't have minded if it was just that the mother had died. I think it would've made a very beautiful bittersweet ending but it would've felt natural. What didn't was the breakup of Robin and Barney.. I stil hate that Ted and Robin get back together after spending 9 years of telling us that they don't work together. But mostly I hate how they did Barney sooo dirty. It doesn't make sense in the storyline and his character arc. It's the worst
I agree with your video 100% except for 1 small little detail you kept repeating that was Inaccurate, Ted's kids were not twins. In the final season while we're getting to see Flash forward to Ted and the mother's life together, We know that the daughter was born first. Doesn't change anything about the video and I still completely agree With you
The writers really screwed themselves because they basically spent 7 years telling the audience here's why Ted and Robin shouldn't be together
Tracy was basically a "rent an uterus" character. They did her dirty...
completely. and she was just a great character otherwise.
I always thought How I Met Your Mother would have a bittersweet ending. Ted, the hopeless romantic would have told that story to his kids with the love of his life by his side if she were alive. I took that as foreshadowing. I thought she would die. But I knew It was realistic. Death can take your greatest love from you in the blink of an eye and you have no choice but to carry on. The ending should have been about Ted learning to carry on,choosing to love his children and cherish her memory. It still would have shattered our hearts. It would be a painful ending but an example of great writing. The mother's death did not make the ending of this show unwatchable. Ted ending up with Robin did. Robin and Ted were never compatible with each other. Ted stealing the horn to go back to Robin felt like watching a train wreck happen for the hundredth time and not being able to do anything about it. It felt like a relapse. It was a great show with a poorly written ending.
omg, "relapse" is the perfect way to put it. yes.
I've heard that argument before, and while it's true that it would have been a better ending than the one we got, it would have still been a poor one.
Here's the issue: the writers shot themselves, not in the foot, but in the freaking liver in the first 5 seconds of the freaking pilot.
The attitude of Ted's children alone makes the ending totally impractical. Basically, Ted is about to tell them a very intimate story about their beloved mother, who according with the timeline, died when they were very young... And their first reaction is, and I quote: "Are we being punished for something?" and "Is this gonna take a while?". An attitude that they keep for as long as they could record footage of the children before the actors aged out of the role. The whole "it's been 6 years since Mom died" kind of works for the idea of his children encouraging his father to find love again (only on paper, mind you), but it sure as hell doesn't work for THAT.
I understand they did it for the sake of misdirection, but seriously, it's just terrible storytelling. The ending was doomed pretty much from the start.
Never liked the ending!! There was no point introducing the mother if they had to just kill her off at the end. They had to introduce the mother just cuz the show's name is "How I met your MOTHER".
now that I think about it, the title was just their click bait!
I could see that type of story being compelling, if they went with an angle that Ted wasted more time looking for "the right one" than he spent actually improving and living, appreciating what he has while he still has it.
HIMYM had so many "real" but heartfelt moment, like when Lily said there were moments she wishes she wasn't a mom. If they ended the show in this very sober way of looking at Ted and how unrealistic his chase for "the one" was. That could have provided them with the ending they aimed for. The fact that he decides after all this time, he should go ahead and waste some more of Robin's time is pretty much where they lose me
Not to mention how Barney and Robin helped each other grow and fix past issues. Having genuine chemistry.
Only to be forced appart so Ted could get with her.
I detest the ending. As you said the series showed time snd time again that Ted and Robin didn't work. That Ted had his idealistic version of reality and wasn't capable to compromise.
totally.
they were the WORST couple
I think Barney and robin connected better than Ted and robin .
The writers screwed themselves over with the ending in 2 ways: 1) even though we didn't see much of her, the mom was awesome and deserved better than not just what she got in the show, but better than Ted in general. More than that though is 2) Robin and Barney were much better together than Robin and Ted ever were. Robin and Barney made more sense and had more chemistry. After them, Robin and Ted no longer felt like they worked. And it felt like, to make them work, Robin almost had to be made less.
Also, i buy the theory that, since it's from Ted's perspective, Ted made Barney seem worse to make himself seem better (because Ted isn't a good person)
Ohhhhhhhh!!!!! I LOVE that theory! never heard it! yes, Ted is totally an unreliable narrator, that actually makes a lot of sense.
@@OlaVerse I stumbled across it online after a rewatch of the series a year or two ago and it just made sense
@@OlaVerse So... as a writer, you need to plan things out in advance; if you don't, that's how you get the Star Wars sequels. Just an inconsistent, incoherent mess going nowhere. BUT you also need to remain flexible; any good writer will tell you that characters will develop a personality of their own and there are going to be times when you realize the story you have to tell isn't the story you *wanted* to tell.
Obviously the HIMYM people lacked that flexibility; they had the ending they wanted and even though 9 seasons steered their story towards a different ending, they just went full steam ahead. Bummer.
ALSO shout-out to the chick who played Tracy; what an impossible situation, to be dropped into a beloved sitcom 9 seasons in and be expected to have chemistry with the cast, to be able to live up to the ideal of what "The Mother" is supposed to be, and she fucked killed it. I'm still in awe thinking about how great she was.
@@SchulzEricT She really was amazing.
OMG I LITERALLY ALWAYS SAY THAT ROBIN AND BARNEY ARE THE BEST
THEY ARE
Yes. I was so traumatised I have never watched a single episode since. I never watched the last episode only heard what from the Internet. The ending would have worked if the show only lasted 1-3 seasons but after 9 seasons it just didn't work.
and it's such a shame because the mom is so wonderful in funny in those episodes!
Oh my gosh, you just put words to my thoughts perfectly! Especially at the end, I felt so betrayed as a viewer that they forced Robin back into a studio apartment, seemingly sad and in need of saving! Even without Barney, that was just not her! They did her dirty in order to force fit her into Ted’s dream life. I still feel so furious about this end, after years of showing why they weren’t a good fit. Lily’s vision about their future on the front porch comes to mind… So thanks for this! It’s been years, but I am still mad about it 😂
I'm so glad to know I'm not the only one still mad about it, years later!
One thing I never understood: if they had the ending planed from the begining, why make it clear throughout 9 seasons that Ted and Robin will NEVER work? Also, why make the entire last season the COMPLETE OPPOSITE of the last episode?? It sounds more like that ending was improvised than planed.
I think that they showed us how the mother was so perfect for Ted that killing her off just felt cruel. There was no feeling of “she’s great, she’ll made Ted happy however something us still missing”.
Also the fact that they ended up making Ted an unbearable human being; even by the societal standards back then. I remember feeling like he didn’t deserve Tracy. She was so kind and selfless. She deserved better than Ted.
If they really wanted Ted and Robin to work in the end, they needed to show Robin having a voluntary change in life goals. Something along the lines of “she went after what she wanted but she realized that it didn’t make her happy like she thought it would”. Then for Ted they needed him to have a major realization that he was not up to the standards to deserve the type of woman that he was looking for…. Or even better, to have him STOP LOOKING! Let him be single for a while and stop trying to compete with his best friends.
Now that I think about it, that still wouldn’t work because Barney was perfect for Robin.
Ted. Ted is the problem. He sucks and he needs therapy (or some psychic stranger on the subway to tell him what he needs to hear and have it actually stick in his head and then for him to gradually make the necessary changes) As the audience, we stopped rooting for him. We stopped caring about his happiness because he was just so exhausting. He became a typical “nice guy”.
The show was good. Which is part of the problem. HIMYM did a good job of telling these characters stories, allowing them to grow with time that by the time we got to the end that they had to record in 2005 so the kids looked the same age, that ending no longer matched the characters we knew. Robin and Ted were not good together. It wasn't a matter of right person/wrong time. They were just wrong people, and the show showed us again and again why they weren't compatible. By the time we got to the final season Ted and Robin no longer made sense and we were waiting for Ted to catch up so that he could be with Tracy. Robin had moved on to a person who was better suited to her and they were getting married. Robin and Barney made sense, and they made sense because the character kind of naturally progressed in that direction. So the ending felt like a betrayal because it didn't fit the character we, as an audience came to know over 9 seasons. It changed the reason that we were being told the story from, this is what made Ted into the right person for Tracy to I am going to share my history so that you can see that it is and on some level always has been Robin. This ending still makes me mad.
EXACTLY
I loved the mother as a character, she was awesome and probably too good for Ted. I would be very sad but fine with the ending of just Tracy’s death.
What made me most angry was that her children casually saying that their Dad was in love with Robin all along. Such disrecpect both for their mother and for us who believed in their love.
As for Ted, I would not be surprised with anything he does because it seems like he has no idea how to be happy 🤷🏻♀️
I 100% agree with you about Barney
omg yes, the kids reaction to it was very weird. like, even if they thought that their dad starting to date robin would be cool, I think they would have changed their minds after listening to Ted talk obsessively about her for so long :/
I didn't like season 9 as a whole. I just watched it to know how it all ends and was relieved it was finally over.
I agree. I contemplated about adding something about how the whole last season was off, but didn't have the time lol it would have taken me an whole second video to discuss this
I’ve been telling people since the original aired about my version of the finale.
We do the Meet Cute and the TMs, even the super speed run death if the network still wanted that, then we fade in on old man Ted standing in front of a grave holding the hands of a little boy and girl.
The grave is Tracie’s. The people around Ted are his family. And as they turn to leave the graveyard we hear Ted say “did I ever tell you about how I met your grandmother?”
Fade to black.
Everyone cries, those who like cyclical shows get their loop and we all move on after a really well told story. Not that hogwash we really got!
That's a great idea
Thanks to The algorithm for leading me to your video.
The reason why i hated the ending so much is because i really loved tracy but when i think about it maybe if she didn’t die I wouldn’t be attached to her character
I'm so glad you enjoyed it! The what ifs are so many indeed. I was attached to her quite fast, but like I said in the video, mostly because they wrote a great character and they cast someone fantastic to portray her.
The ending was not even the worst, the entire last season feels so disconnected from the rest of the show 😢 the jokes are so empty and everyone acts out of character
the last season IS rough :/
This is the real problem. I honestly think the only thing that makes sense about the final season is that last episode.
Robin wasn't in love with Ted.
In the last season the show wants to make hs believe they were destined to be together, it was just a matter of timing, of Robin "surrendering herself" to this love, of patience, blah blah..
Expect that wasn't AT ALL what I gathered from their interactions: Robin didn't want to be with Ted because Robin didn't love Ted. It wasn't a question of being too different or bad timing ! Ted built an entire narrative around her to make her fit into his fantasies, without truly knowing her. It's not love, it's limerence. Robin successfully identifies that and takes her distance. And now you want to make me believe she regrets taking the smarest, healthiest decision of their friendship and suddenly decides they are soulmates ?
Besided they did her dirty with her divorce with Barney. Their couple felt RIGHT, they were the true soulmates of the show. And in a sense their story was even more heartwarming because they progressed so much since the beginning of the serie. The ending is such a let down, it's basically saying: You know how we spent years developing these characters and watching them grow together so that Robin can get over her past traumas and feeling of inadequacy and Barney can get over his fear of intimacy and become a deeper, self-aware, honest version of himself ? Well, all of that was a lie, they actually never changed and this is why their relationship failed.
you took the words out of my mouth.
I had a high school friend that watched the show with me, almost religiously, and we were a bit shocked. We even joked that we'd be the backup spouse on out single at 40 pact.
Then I had a girlfriend that also loved the show and our relationship mirrored the show (me being Ted and her being Robin). Once we broke off, I binged the entire thing and tried to be more understanding... But man, I'm still mad.
Great video, tho.
It's very interesting that you identify your self as a Ted, very self aware. hope you find your Tracy (alive and healthy for many many many years to come!)
"A walkng, talking, bass playing womb"! 😂😂😂
What made me mad and so disappointed in the series finale, was that they spent the whole 9th season making us fall in love with the mother, just to have her die off in a matter of seconds but never saw what happened. Was it cancer? What kind of cancer? Just nope, she got sick and now she’s gone. The entire last episode felt rushed. They introduce Lily and Marshall having a 3rd baby but never even elaborate after that. What’s the kids name? Boy or girl? What was the point of introducing a 3rd kid with no point to the storyline?
I remember watching the last episode live and seeing there was only 20 minutes left (it’s was an hour long for the finale) and thinking “okay they need to wrap this up….” And then they bombard you with everything last minute. So many freaking commercials 🙄
Also, the fact that CBS when advertising the series finale said the pineapple 🍍 situation would be solved and it most definitely was not! Had to find it on YT a few days later from somewhere else.
they were pineapple baiting us!
The thing that makes the least logical sense is that every time Future Ted talks about the future of the gang, he mentions how close everyone still is. A few examples: Robin and Lily get together and drink wine every year. Future Ted says their "booth" is wherever they are together. He says they watch Robots vs Wrestlers together every year. Robin and Barney are close enough in the future to joke about the time they cheated on Kevin and Nora with each other, that they heard different lyrics in a song on the boat in Tick Tick Tick. To have everyone separated and miserable in the finale just doesn't match what the rest of the show has been telling us.
HIMYM had always set itself up to have a happy ending, it was a fairytale. It was never about "realism" which people try to argue the ending was (and it wasn't even realistic!). They had managed to achieve their hardest task by making the mother likeable after building her up for years, the ending just had to be a happy send off for these characters, it wrote itself and it was so easy. They threw that away for a few nonsensical twists that managed to remove itself from the cultural zeitgeist as soon as it aired.
I completely agree with you. thee ending really assassinated the characters of both Robin and Barney. Robin suddenly wants what Ted wants and wishes she ended up with him and we're supposed to believe she'll be happy stepmothering two teenagers. Brney goes right back to being a jaackass upon divorcee because the writers thought after ll that character growth, we just wanna see more playbook shenanigans. the ending is a great tragedy. ted finally found the love of his life and lost her so he goes back to the person he always went back to when desperate for love. He decided he loved Robin before knowing anything about her. she wasn't the person he wanted he to be so her decided if he was persistent one day she would become who he wanted her to be. and sadly, he was right. people defend the ending by pointing out it was planned all along, as if that automatically makes it good. this being a preplanned ending that didn't fit the story just means they failed at th whole rest of the seres cause they failed to build up to the ending
Perfectly explained. yes.
They destroyed Barney's character development. They spent 8 seasons showing why Ted and Robin dont work and within one episode they f*cked all that character development. They turned Barney womanizing jerk into a caring loving character who is more than just someone looking for their conquest.
And then the mother, who was just there to be Ted's incubator.
Nothing in the final season made no sense if you stop watching the show at the end of s2 and then watch the final episode you would not have missed anything
The problem was they wrote they series finale at the beginning of season 1 and thty refused to change it or alter it in any way.
sad fact: this is canonically the year Tracy dies. they never said what time of year it happened so all year I've been wondering if she's dead yet. a friend of my parents died of cancer on Easter Sunday this year.
It's awesome that this is your first video. I hope you get what you want from UA-cam. You totally inspired me and give me enough courage to open my own UA-cam channel. I hope we see you more. I love it. 😍
OMG thank you 🥺😍
I stopped watching the show as soon as Barney and Robin became a couple, I believed the show died right there, and they just ran it into the ground. After seeing the ending, it just confirmed my belief.
It's like you spilled all my thoughts and frustration regarding that ending 😭
Also, I enjoyed listening to you
thank you!!! :)
Your description of the hypothetical ending of Game of Thrones sounds better than what we actually got haha
the GOT ending was so bad, it was unreal. But it think my ending, maybe even though it might have been better, would still be a bad ending lol at least for that show. hopefully once G.R.R.Martin will finish the books, it'll give some much needed closure.
@@OlaVerse agreed. I’ve lost almost all hope he will ever finish because they keep pumping out these spin offs for him to get distracted by unfortunately. Best case scenario he finishes winds but I just can’t see him finishing a 7th book at this rate. I used to be angry but now I’m just empty about it haha.
Somehow I made it years after the show ended without knowing the ending. All I knew was that all my friends were mad. When I finally finished the show I was mad too. I also realised in those final seasons that I really didn't like Ted. He's not a good person or romantic partner in my opinion. So... One viewing is fine for me. I only even watched it because of Alyson Hannigan. I was obsessed with Buffy and even got Willow's season 4 haircut a few times.
Great video!
Edit: I loved Barney and Robin.
Ted is really not a goof guy by the end of it. thanks!! :)
I can understand that with all the foreshadowing already given in the previous seasons that they would have to kill off Tracey. But HOW they did it was wrong. Season 9 should have given us the Ted and Tracey romance we had waited for.
The ending with him talking to his children could have been after her funeral. Him reminiscing and saying how special she was. How she didn't compare to the others and what a healthy love is actually like. Oh it still would have broken our hearts but it would have at least been bitter sweet and in keeping with the plot through line of the entire show.
that would have also broken my heart, but it a tragedy way, not in a questionable writing way.
The show could've been titled "Robin isn't right for Ted". The entire premise of the show seemed to be "Ted wants to be with Robin but she doesn't like him that way, they're not right for each other"... only for the ending to be like "ah, fuck it, let's give it another shot."
It won't work. We know because we've been shown for 9 seasons that they just want different things.
6:11 "When you think about it, I can understand why the creators thought that we would be more invested in Ted and Robin than Ted and The Mother; we spent so much more time with Ted and Robin, we knew how they were together."
Yup... that's EXACTLY why them ending up together at the end was so terrible and left all of us feeling cold. Because we knew *exactly* how they worked together romantically: they didn't.
I think in a lot of ways the ending was so terrible because it betrayed the promise of what the show seemed to be until that point. You thought the story was about unseeable destiny and all of the trials leading you to what will truly make you happy? Psych. Ted actually ends up exactly where he started-- obsessed with Robin. You think Robin's story was about a career woman accomplishing her goals and living the life she chose despite societal pressure? Psych. She actually regrets it and wishes she could take Tracy's place. You thought Barney's story was about overcoming his rampant insecurities and daddy issues to become a decent enough human to earn the love he was too afraid to ask for? Psych. He didn't really change at all. Even if you just look at the last season, the same season of the finale, they failed to properly set up any of the ideas of the finale. They even set up the complete opposite in some cases. The only thing they did set up to some degree was Tracy's death, but that doesn't erase the demolition of three characters storylines.
I think I understand both sides of the argument…this show was always about real life, and I liked its reality angle. One of my favorite moments in that regard is when they have to deal with Marshall getting over Lily and Marshall promises he’ll be better “from now on” after the conflict of the episode, then the voiceover immediately said that he wasn’t because “that’s just not how life works”. Even though like you said Robin and Barney kept getting worried about not being marriage material and eventually deciding they’d make it work, they used that so many times in the last season it almost made it seem like they would perpetually have that argument forever until it eventually broke them up. I do hate a lot of the way it was handled in general, especially with the mother and Barney being done so dirty. But I also understand why they did the whole going back to robin thing. It makes it feel more grounded in reality to me. Another thing that’s important about the ending is that they didn’t only care about solving the romance arcs, but also making them into better people and giving us closure on how the rest of their lives went; keep in mind Marshall becomes a supreme court justice, Robin goes worldwide on the news, Barney’s plan goes off without a hitch in terms of his work, and Ted is the youngest person to ever design a built building or whatever. They still do get that overly happy sitcom ending, just not in their love lives in particular. That all being said, I do very much prefer the alternate ending though.
I feel like it might be almost impossible to pull off a "realistic" ish ending to a sitcom. not completely impossible, but just almost. and I don't think they handled it all that well. happy ever after doesn't happen to everyone and that's ok, but after listening to one love story for 9 years you would kinda hope it does lol
@@OlaVerse totally fair lol. I definitely wasn’t a fan of the ending, but I appreciate what they tried to do, is all I’m saying. It just grew to be bigger than what they ever would have initially expected
Saw this on my recommendations, great video!
I would say that the final season was rushed and forced. While there was an alternate ending that was made for the Season 9 DVD after controversial backlash (it's on UA-cam). If I finish re-binging it, I'll just go with the alternate ending. And I would love to see an actual director's cut of the series finale to get released, there's a few deleted scenes that were on the DVD release and some of them were considered "lost media" including Tracy's funeral (that was never been released to the public) but hopefully that happens for the 20th anniversary next year.
And one more thing, Ted Mosby is literally his version of Tom Hansen from 500 Days of Summer.
OMG he IS Tom Hansen!
This was SO excellent! You’ve really highlighted all the qualms - building Barney’s character only to destroy him at the end, making Barney and Robin make the most sense and then betraying them at the end, and worst of all Tracy. They accomplished the goal and then they took her from us before we truly got to savor her character. Even having one full season where she’s probably immersed in the group and watching their relationship unfold would’ve been better than “this is the chick Ted knocked up! Don’t worry she’s perfect for him!”
And glad you addressed how dreadfully Barney’s character has aged. He was always troubling but looking back on REAL actions he’s cited to have taken, Barney is a dangerous megalomaniac! I wanted so much more for this show and instead I mourn the direction they took us in. A real bait and switch.
I wasn't traumatized, but I was really disappointed. I thought we got to a point with 3 perfect couples and then they destroyed one and killed the other.
I'm not against the idea of Ted and Robin getting together after his wife dies. Thought there was something beautiful about it. BUT am really disappointed that they are ruining Barney...
Thought Barney and Robin were such a perfect couple that just fit together. And honestly, Barney doesn't like to travel? Maybe he wasn't the one who badmouthed them to Philadelphia? ("Phily!") No, it's honestly a disappointing ending, although I can see how it would have worked if Robin and Barney weren't so perfect together.
The cynical interpretation you mentioned is why I hate the ending. I really felt the Mother ended up being a placeholder baby incubator so Ted could have the kids he wanted. Then the writers killed off the Mother plot device in 5 minutes so Ted could have Robin. I hate this ending and have never rewatched the show which I use to love.
Ted’s kids weren’t twins. They show Penny as a toddler when Tracy is in labour with Luke. Great video, though. It baffles me to this day that they decided back in season two that Ted would end up with Robin, then spent the rest of the show beating us over the head with the fact that the two of them don’t work, not to mention spend the last two seasons telling us to focus on Robin and Barney. My own personal theory is that they thought they would please both T&R + B&R shippers, giving B&R the build-up and the wedding, and then ultimately ending ob T&R. That, or they realized B&R was the by far more popular ship and decided to bait the audience to stick around for seasons 8 & 9.
I fully subscribe to the theory that Barney was nowhere near as crazy and unpleasant towards women as Ted claims, and that’s he’s being an unreliable narrator hoping to convince his kids that he ”deserves” Robin more than Barney does. Barney’s sudden 180 after his daughter is born would be how Ted explains the discrepency between the Barney the kids know and the Barney he’s telling them about. I also think Marshall and Barney weren’t constantly arguing over who is Ted’ best friend. More likely they considered each other their best friend and Ted was jealous.
i had a roommate who tried to get me into this show. i said during ep one "Watch the mother be dead. shes not any of these people." he got mad :P but i was seriously guessing due to my real life cynicism since my mother had died when i was young.
first of all, so sorry to hear about your mother. I've lost mine later in life but still young.
and that's an impressive guess!
@@OlaVerse im somewhat perceptive of human behavior now and I write in my spare time, it just seemed obvious to me :) sorry to hear about your mom too. It's never easy when it happens
When I watched the series, I actually enjoyed the story (in spite of barney and Ted), I was way younger and even then, having no relationship experiences whatsoever, I knew Ted + Robin was a no go. I'm sure the writers always expected us to root for the pair, but lost touch with their initial plans for them. Introducing Barney + Robin as endgame only made the original pair look worse by comparison. I have never revisited the show because of how much I hated the ending. And Tracy was a great character, her episode was so adorable and I actually like that actress a lot.
The way I knew exactly which scene you meant before you even mentioned the basketball hoop
lol
I didn't cry, I was in rage. They ruined my favourite show. The last season was awful with a few great scenes mainly with the mother. The moment Ted and Tracy meet at the train station was the best scene in the history of movies and tv shows. Ok I am exaggerating but it was chef kiss. And I can see the whole story being Ted recalling how he became worthy for the love of Tracy. But not what was actually - Ted telling the story of how he loved their mother but need to get back to Robin because she is in a low enough place in her life to accept him. I am raging again. Fun story- ny husband was watching the finale with me and saw how engry I was ao whenever he wants to annoy me he just says at least Ted is with Robin at the end😅
lolll
This was really insightful! Excellent analysis of both Barney and Robin and i completely agree
i'll never forget what i felt the day the last episode came out. Me and my boyfriend waited to download it (we are not from the us, so we had to kinda illegally watch it because we couldnt wait any longer), finally sat down to watch it, and throught the whole thing we were absolutely in shock at what we were watching. it was a parade of character assassination. the moment ted and tracy's wedding started to show up as small clips leading up to the scene that they were at the hospital, i started crying so much that we had to pause the episode and we watched until the end crying our eyes out. that was absolutely the most cruel thing they could do after waiting for so long for her. I know ted must have spent years grieving (off camera), but we didnt even got a moment to process that sudden death. it felt like a real death of a person we got attached so quickly (because she was THAT awesome).
i hated that last season, and the last episode with a burning fury. i've never felt so betrayed by a tv show in my whole life. i never rewatched it ever again since then.
now, a little bit older, and after watching a lot of youtubers talking about the series, i made my peace with ted getting back together with robin. i have heard stories of real people that were once in love in their youth and after years, they met again and got together for the rest of their lives. so i kind of am okay with that, i can understand that perspective now.
but everything else is fucking ridiculous. specially barney, oh my god dude. we all hated him because he was so cringey, and as the seasons passed by, we got to truly know him, we saw the soft side of him, and his traumas, and slowly getting better at things in life and becoming a better person. only to be at square one at the last episode.
sorry about the long post, to sum up, what i feel will never change about this series. could have been the series of my life (as im sure as well to a lot of people), but i never want to feel like that ever again. it changed forever the way i consume shows nowadays.
The only ending worse than Game of Thrones.
lol yeah
As a concept, I like and appreciate the intent around the ending being about how the children would feel about their widowed parent dating again. From a production standpoint, it was smart of the crew to prerecord the scenes with the kids so that by the time the show reaches its end, it can maintain the idea that the entire 9 season show was all a story told without too much time passing in the future present day. However, while I can understand the reason for Ted wanting to explain his intent of moving forward with his life, why does Ted have to do so by getting back together with Robin? Episodes like “Sunrise” and "The End of the Aisle" in season 9 were about Ted overcoming his internalized fear of losing his loved ones should he let them go and by letting Robin go, they are both free to move on in both their romantic endeavors and their future path in life. What I especially loved about “The End of the Aisle” was that Ted was given another chance to be with Robin when she suggests they run away together, but Ted rejects the idea because he knows that Robin is only trying to find an excuse to bail on her wedding because she is scared. Ted understood that they weren’t the same people who dated all those years ago and sees that Robin and Barney loved each other dearly and refused to ruin the wedding because of his feelings for Robin. The fact that he tries again with Robin, despite the entire show giving points and examples as to why they have different futures in mind for one another, contradicts a lot of Ted's emotional growth in the season.
To add to the discussion about Barney, I don't think he's necessarily a character that didn't age well. In fact, I see it as the exact opposite. He aged too well. There was a video I watched a while ago that referenced a satire of flat Earthers to show how time, changes in society, and view points can make satire less obvious. The original vid didn't go out of its way to say how ridiculous those views were bc it was already widely agreed that they were. Now that conspiracy theories are on the rise, flat Earthers watch that same vid thinking that it agrees with them bc in their mind they don't hold the same obvious truths. Back then the idea of 'guy who's so insecure that he wraps his whole identity around sex, toxic masculinity, and misogyny' was a reference to one or two fringe weirdos who everyone laughed at. Now it's a whole subculture that a lot of young men have fallen into. That means that we look at it today and it's harder to see the joke-- that Barneys way of approaching the world is a fundamentally broken one based on his own insecurities and fear of rejection. Or the fact that he will talk constantly about how easy women with daddy issues are and completely misses the obvious fact that he has giant daddy issues. If they didn't completely mess up his character arc in the last few EPS and desperately try to piece it back together in some sort of weird Frankenstein creature then I'm sure that would have been more obvious. I think the fact that he was a fan favorite character and his quippy catchphrases kind of obscures it in a way too. We look at season 1 and say 'man he was the worst. Why did we ever like him?'. But, we forget that his entire purpose was to be so terrible that it's funny. And, whenever Ted did have those big moments of 'oh shit I need to get my life together' it was almost always shown by him acting more like Barney. Like sure we liked him bc one of his functions was to bring us joy, but that doesn't mean he was ever meant to be agreed with. It's just that now that joy is harder to access bc he has posthumously become too real in an uncomfortable way.
The Jaime Lannister reference made me feel like you were in my walls how did u know I was just watching a Jaime character analysis
Because I WAS
lol
I've said it time and time again but I really wouldn't have been this upset with just the mother dying. It could've been a beautiful kind of "hey I miss your mother and this story was so long because telling it this way let me pretend she's still here" kind of thing, and ended with ted and his friends getting a drink at mclarens or something, for old times' sake and that would've been nice. I was mad because of the fact that they had robin and barney get divorced and had ted and robin get back together because What was the point-
Exactly
The kids saying “it is not about mom, but Aunt Robin” is off to me.
Totally agree with you. I watched the ending once, never watched it again. I mean, I still watch the series but stop when Ted met Tracy at the end of season 8.
One of the reasons I didn't like the ending was actually Ted himself. I didn't like him by the end of the show and I grew to like Barney for his growth, so seeing Barney and Robin not staying together and Ted starting the whole thing again was just annoying.
this is an amazing first video! well read and well edited, slay! there’s sentiment that season 9 was bad, i disagree, i love season 9, the idea of it all happening over a weekend is really good i think. but the execution for the story they intended to tell, was horrible. they told this story of robin and barney being perfect for each other, even ending the Ted and Robin story with her not even symbolically floating away, but literally. All this character growth is essentially written to be erased within only a few episodes by Ted and Robin getting together in the end. It feels incredibly rushed and disingenuous to the story they’ve been telling. Tracy dying is brushed over in one line, “when your mother got sick”. They write Tracy as this insanely charming girl, it’s hard to not love her, so to not see Teds grief is really strange. You mean to say he’s told this story to his kids in excruciating detail, but doesn’t shed a tear, and neither do his kids? There should have been another season or a succession of specials portraying Tracy and Teds relationship, and then her getting ill and how Ted deals with the grief of it all. There’s a deleted scene of Ted and Robin in a coffee shop when they’re older, and Robin seems so sad that she and Ted didn’t work out, but Ted is so happy because he finally met the woman of his dreams. Robin is done with travelling for work, and finished putting career first because she finally wants to settle down after her and Barney didn’t work out. It way more naturally portrays the changing of the tides. If they had more time, it could have worked, but the format they chose for the final season killed any chance of natural progression. Barney and Robin are way more natural of a fit, as shown by the show, but I think it could have been more satisfying if they showed more of Barney being a dad, giving him something to be that makes sense for the end game of his character. Barney gets to be the dad he never had, and Ted and Robin finally have the means to make a romance work for them.
I kinda thought they were gonna pull a u turn and Robin was the mother except she wasn’t the same person anymore. Be like episode one Robin? That’s not your mother, your mother is someone else. A doppelgänger version that she needed to become through all we went through. So we had to go through all this for me to meet her.
Maybe Ted ending with Robin wasn't so bad, the thing is how the creators did it.
In my opinion the whole last season was awful (except for the Tracy moments).
I think they should have done the last season getting to know Tracy, actually "meeting" her.
With that, the twist would have felt even more, we would have already fall in love even more with Tracy. By taking a better tempo in the episodes, as they were doing during the whole show, the story as a whole would have been better.
And while telling the story between Ted and Tracy, showing us the hardships in the (amazing) couple of Robin and Barney.
Because not everything is a happy ending, but at least, it would have make much more sense.
I don't know, I haven't watched the show in a while (because I remember the ending).
I really liked your video, I could see your passing while talking!
I'm so glad you enjoyed the video! and thank you :)
I think I would still be traumatized if there were to prolong our time with Tracy and then killing her off, but that would have been because of my personal life (my mom dying), and not due to the writing. I would have hate-love it, instead of just hate-hate it lol
thank you for mentioning my passion lol i had a lot of pent up emotion with this one
@@OlaVerse oh, that would have been so devastating!
Definitely the passion can be felt through the screen.
Thanks for answering!
I thought of it as somber. Ted finds the one, lives with her; she passes and he raises the kids. Then goes back to the woman he always loved near the end of his life, because they could never have lived their lives together
To me, the best defense of the choice to kill off the mother and get Ted with Robin was this:
Tracy's original "soul mate" died. In a way, Ted was to Tracy as Robin eventually is to Ted in the sense that it is the relationship which follows the death of their previous one. The only reason Tracy and Ted were able to work was because Tracy moved on from a past relationship which she thought was perfect. Then Ted gets with Robin, he is sort of doing the same, and I kind of like this theme of moving on to not necessarily better things, but for whatever the next best thing for you is. In this case, Ted was Tracy's "next step" (and from it we got our "perfect relationship" Ted & Tracy, which would not have happened if Tracy had not moved on from her's) and Robin was Ted's.
However it falls flat when you think about it for two seconds because Tracy moving on from her dead boyfriend was a huge character arc for her throughout the episode which centered on her backstory. Ted seemed more than eager to get with Robin finally. Also, with all of the other elements that you talked about - Ted and Robin's failed relationship, Barney and Robin's better relationship, and Tracy being totally awesome, it just felt wrong.
Upon multiple rewatches of the final season, I can see this tiny theme which I use to sort of justify the official ending, although I've only seen the actual finale twice and always watch the edited alternate version when I watch through the show.
I enjoyed this analysis. Subscribed!
😍
This is like poetry. So well said and completely agree. Cristin Millioti was perfect and at least now we know her. I have watched all her stuff, Palm Springs movie was awesome. Absolutely love her. The fans of this show rode it out for 10 years and for that?!
Palm Springs is one of my favourite movies! I thought to give a shout out to the movie while talking about her but forgot.
I’m not even that upset about the mom dying. I loved her and it’s sad, but “even though I waited so long for her, and then our time was cut short. But it was still worth it.” Can be a great story.
The problem is over and over they established that Ted was in love with the idea of Robin, and Barney was in love with the person Robin. Remember that episode where Ted was upset that he couldn’t be the quintessential male protector of Robin, and Barney said if Robin wanted to be the one to defend them against home intruders that was fine with him? The writers hope we don’t.
The last season felt so incredibly forced. Here we were after watching this long buildup of all these characters, not just ted and robin and yet the entire season practically took place during robin and barneys wedding only for them to get divorced in an episode and it felt played for laughs. We watched ted fall in and out of love, we watched directly and saw why he and robin didnt work yet made fantastic friends. So to watch this show for years on end only to find out that this mysterious woman who was his perfect match in every way, passes away without us really getting to see much of her. I think had they given us a full season with her, not just the wedding episodes and glimpses into her life before ted, they could have built up to this fact that we would be grieving her soon. Watching only to find out that she passed away felt like having the carpet ripped from beneath our feet. Besides those two, i felt the rest of the characters became shadows of themselves in the last couple of seasons. Marshall was finally a lawyer at a company he yearned to be apart of before ever completing his bar exam and yet it was flopping.barney had this huge character growth with letting himself fall in love only to go back to his original flawed self until he knocked a mystery girl up and became the perfect dad. Lily, who we saw loved being a teacher suddenly couldnt stand the idea, mind you i understand she has the art background, but it felt like she was disregarding marshalls feelings alot. I understood her only because i felt like she was dealing with undiagnosed post partum depression but still the switch around to them going to rome felt weird and forced. Finally robin, she was always chasing the dream of being a world renowned news anchor but there was this weird feeling that she was ready to drop her friendships to make it happen. Like she loved barney, enough to marry him and yet instead of trying to make things work and getting a more solid schedule, they divorced right away. It made no sense and really diminished both of them in the process. In the perfect final season, i would have loved to see the gang back together again. Despite all of their lives taking them in different directions, watching marshall and lily help barney be the best dad he could be, watching ted and his wife fall in love and start their family, robin being an award winning newscaster, or maybe even a sports broadcaster, and all of them together again. Cut the wedding bottle season and instead limit it to like 3 episodes and just give us time with these characters. Even if they kept in that teds wife would pass away, let us see these characters grieve with him and them helping him with the kids. Robin could have even taken the time off work to come and watch over ted and maybe in that grief after a long, appropriate amount of time they could have fallen back in love, instead of the weird 20 year crush thing. Sorry rant over, apparently i had a lot of feelings 😅 love the video though
Edit: sorry just wanted to add that i didnt necessarily like ted and robin together, i think her and barney were endgame for sure. Im just saying in my head, the perfect emding with the least fussback would be them getting back together after spending time together because by all means, the ending seemed like maybe they saw each other a few times after his wife passed but by all accounts they didnt have that same friendship or relationship dynamic anymore. In my head barney and robin staying together, adopting or fostering a child and ted getting haplily ever after would be the best
I have a lot of complains and criticism about the last season. I agree with you on a lot. especially Lily and Marshall, and as I said, everything they did with Robin. and never be sorry about a rant! I love them ^_^
@@OlaVerse hi I actually just subscribed and looked at your channel, and imagine my surprise that this was your first video! I'm looking forward to seeing what's next
Many people make the argument that Ted and Robin don’t work and fair enough but I put forth the argument that neither did Barney and Robin. We saw why in season 5. Robin likely should have never married anyone. Her career was her first priority after all.
honestly, yes. I loved Barney and Robin, but if the writers didn't want them together, they really should have kept Robin alone then - or literally with someone else.
The writers didn't care enough about the fans to realize how much they were invisted in Robin and Barney's relationship. They were never great writers. i mean, they stole a lot from other sitcoms, but they at least should have given their loyal fans something other than that crap of an ending. I can't even watch the reruns because what is the point.
They might not be great writers but in their defense nothing is original and writers steal ideas from other writers all the time. That ending was awful though
I don't mind Tracy dying. I think it would have been a good kick off for the show, because that's why Ted was reminiscing about his life and how his wife ended up changing everything. BUT we should have had more scenes like the one where Ted and Tracy talk at a lighthouse or something. Where they are already together, we don't know how they met, but we know they had this great relationship. We could have expanded on what Tracy's life was before meeting Ted too. Or how she interacted with the other members of their friend group after they had already met. All of that to finally wrap up the series with how none of that would have happened if the stars hadn't aligned for Ted to meet her, and end on that sweet moment where they finally meet at the train station. And Ted could have been telling his kids this story in memory of their mother, to explain to them how she changed his life and how love is worth pursuing and waiting for. But no... In the end, the show was about how to never give up on a girl that was never right for you, and how once your wife dies you're free to go back and chase her again. Yuk.
Never watched the series, but your video is very captivating.
omg thank you 🙏
Sometimes I wonder if the writers saw
No issue with divorcing Barney and Robin because Divorce is so commonplace is Hollywood
It honestly felt like we got lied to right from the beginning. from episode one the first fact we knew about the mother was that it WASNT ROBIN! Every moment of Ted and Robin in a relationship I was completely checked out because they told me from day one it isn't happening. then to just be smacked across the face with "This isn't about how you met mom, its about how you love aunt Robin" I watched as the show laughed in my face at how stupid i was to believe a word they told me. I never felt so angry about the ending of any show before or since.
I like to think about the ending the way barney sees the ending of his mariege with Robin: "it was a happy marieage that happens to last only 3 years". I believe the creators wanr more than a beautiful story, they want to teach us a lesson, and thats "happy endings dosent have to exist" we shoundnt look for the perfect life and whatever you want for future, we should embrace our present, thats the real beauty of it. How i met your mother is not about the mother, is not about the ending, its about the Journey, its about the path you had to pass so everithing makes sense. Life is unpredictable and most of the times will not make sense and be good wrote. For me Himym is the most real sitcom because of that, because its a real life there, and sometimes you will make decisions that you will look back and think "ok, myself in the past wouldnt do that"
By the way i would have changed a lot that final episode, maybe another season would have made it better.
Really apreciate if someone read it here, sorry my not so good english lol, love the vídeo ❤
I was actually fine with the mother dying, I think that was the most predictable ending because it makes complete sense, they did set it up. But what I cannot stand is Ted and Robin getting back together 5 minutes later, I know in universe years had passed but in screen time it was mere moments, it felt like such a betrayal of Tracy, maybe I am more cynical than you because to me it seems exactly like the writers just wanted to give Ted kids but couldn’t with Robin so needed Tracy for that then could kill her off and he could go back to Robin even though they didn’t work at all as a couple
Maybe they should have introduced her in the 7th season and build her character more in season 8. That way it wouldn't be so rush in the 9th. Also remove that awful ending and write a new one thats in line with tje progression of the show. Even if Barney and Robin weren't together at the end, don't destroy both their character development.
you're right. they've completely destroyed their characters.
Traumatized me in that I found it hard to watch show’s after this. I didn’t want to invest years of my time for such a disappointing ending.
I think the only thing I Haven’t heard from you is the idea that if Tracy was the endgame it shouldn’t be the end of the world when the end game has surprising finale. You can always be happy again and love again. Also it isn’t important if your love is like yellow umbrella or blue French horn - it could be the end game if you would like that. But I agree with your opinion about messing the screen script by writers
I still can't believe that they managed to deliver on a character that lived up to the awesomeness we were set to expect from Tracy....only to throw her out immediately. The odds of writing, casting, and presenting a character that could not only live up to the hype, but surpass it were so low, and they did it!! And then they completely wasted that victory. Which honestly made it all so much worse.
Finally someone mentions that not wanting children includes step children, if you really don't want to be a parent don't date parents cause there's no way you won't be involved in their kids lives
Literally the whole last season is Barney and robins wedding!!!! How DARE THEY break them upppp!!!! Awful!
And I think you misunderstand, Robin and Ted did not fit at the start of the show but 16 or so years later they both got the things they wanted in their youth. Ted found his true love and got children, Robin got her career.
And after getting those things, which they couldn't have given each other before, what was left was both their wish and both of their ability to give and receive honest love.
Death, divorce, accidents and second happy ends if you don't give up are what happens and are among the only realistic aspects of the entire shows storyline. It's not nice with a bow on top, it's how things are.
So maybe this is a hot take but I was okay with Tracy dying and I was okay with the divorce. It felt like both fit the darker theme of the show.
However I was NOT okay with the ending and I hate it even more now.
I know most people didn´t like the finale, but for me I think was one of the best ideas a sitcom ever had, the main problem is that it was really really bad executed, I liked the idea of the series going with a more dramatic ending that anything else, but there is a lot they could make so the ending felt more natural and correct, for exemple, dont divorce her and Barney in just a scene and no just after 3 freaking years of marry. The whole series is very creative honestly, I can´t recall a sitcom doing this kind of thing, we shouldn´t be that hard with the series, was 9 seasons, not even the X Files could kept a coherent main plot after 11 seasons
While watching the finale I started crying out of anger and loudly repeating "No. NO. OH FUCK NO!" They achieved the almost impossible - the mother delivered so well and they basically run her over with a garbage truck.
Robin and Barney matched better than robin and Ted .This is one of my favourite shows though I think the show should have ended with Ted meeting the mother .
They did such a great job with Tracy as a character and she fit in story organically. Barney and Robin fit together better. I get the ending being predetermined, but they failed in delivering that story. They gave us a different story and forced that ending.
it actually honestly makes me sick how people defend and romanticize ted and robin reuniting…. like no i actually don’t find it sweet and romantic that they “found their way back” i think ted wasted a good woman’s life while he pined over his ex
exactly!
Girl you did a great job on this
I actually enjoyed the ending on my first watching. I binged the entire series in a month or two but I thought the whole point of the show was how Ted kept falling for Robin. How he kept trying to make it work (I don’t know if it’s because I binged it all and that may have caused this perception). After this video, I lean more into it’s a bad ending because of how the other characters were written and evolved. I do think the mother’s death was foreshadowed well enough especially with the 45 days speech. I think that the theme there is no perfect love but the best romantic love comes from people we have known for years reflects best in the ending. I think the deleted scene with Ted and Robin getting lunch together shows some much needed context to the ending. And I do like the theory that Ted was telling the story of how he became the person he needed to be to meet the mom and through that story remembered how much Robin was a part of his life and his kids took the wrong message from the story and convinced him otherwise. But most of that is external stuff that came from others not the original show. I think you’ve done a great job at providing good evidence as to why the ending doesn’t work and you’ve thoroughly convinced me. Team bad ending all the way. Thank you for that!! /g
They really should've made 9th season less focused on the wedding and more focused on the mother. We could've had like 5 episodes of the most important bits from the wedding (robin and barney being scared of marriage, tracy meeting the gang one by one and ted etc.) and the rest could've just been ted and tracy slowly falling in love and their love story, 1 season would be enough for the viewers to be attached to the mother - given how lovable the actress was as tracy.
They really fucked up because of that first season plan of "robin and ted will end up together". 😒
This is one of the hot takes I have in all of cinema but I found the ending satisfying. There were so many signs it was going to end with Ted going back to Robin. The only issue I had is the same as everyone which is they should have given us at least half a season with Ted and Tracy.
The ending was amazing honestly ! I have watched HIMYM more than 10 times so I know this show in and out.
Im gonna explain with 3 points:
1) People hate the finale because people love the classic perfect ending where everyone is happy. BUT this show is supposed to be real. It deals with important issues people have (Parents death, Breakups, Obsession) so it's only normal that the ending is more raw and real.
2) To me watching ted go back to robin doesn't mean anything. We see ted fall in love 200 times in the show. Just because tracy was the one that doesn't mean he has no right to love after her death. Put yourself in that situation. Tracy did not die so that ted and robin could be together. Ted and robin can be together because she died. So it's more of a problem of why they killed her off. Everyone seems to believe they did that so that ted would end up with robin but I disagree, they probably wanted an alternate and very brutal ending that highlights the hard reality of life and death etc.
3) Ted loves tracy more than he will love anyone else but in the whole show we see a recurring theme. Life continues. When lily came back from SF, Marshall tried dating other women. Why doesn't anyone criticise the show for that? If that's true love how did he do that? Anyways my point is watch the show as if you are in those situations, or even better if you are in a situation like that you will understand it 10 x better.
p.s watch the last season again with an open mind and I think you will understand!
also read the alchemist by Paulo Coelho
(It will give you insight on the HIMYM ending)
The show put themselves into a box by taping the finale scene with the kids at the. End of season 1 or 2 so the characters did not fit the finale by the time it came because they changed so much but they were stuck to do the finale the way they did
Ted should be telling this story right before/after his wives funeral. That way they can all gather.
Barnie and Robin should have asopted showing they could both love a kid bettrt than their parents.
I honestly never liked Robin as a character but if I had to pick her with someone Barney always made the most sense. I hated the ending completely
when i saw the finale, i couldn't think... i just thought that the path that took us until here was great and enjoyable and didn't much about it
Omg, let me tell ya. I was a senior in high school bought to graduate and one of my underclassman classmate/friend wouldn't shut up to me about this show so I finally binge watched all of it over the summer and when I finally finished it one day at 2am, I had sent my friend the longest and I mean THE LONGEST text message saying how fucking stupid this ending was and how bad I felt. And she got a kick out of that lol.
As flawed as this show is, it's still my favorite. Loved the song metaphor because this song always rings in my heart; despite how terrible the ending is. I guess we can only appreciate how beautiful the beginning can be.
Loved the ending. Figured the mother was dead before the last episode. They gave hints. Pretty blatant in the end.
I think the death of the mother made sense and was properly foreshadowed
Agree. I have rewatched the show once or twice and just stop before the last season, or in the first couple episodes of it.
I wouldn't have minded if it was just that the mother had died. I think it would've made a very beautiful bittersweet ending but it would've felt natural. What didn't was the breakup of Robin and Barney.. I stil hate that Ted and Robin get back together after spending 9 years of telling us that they don't work together. But mostly I hate how they did Barney sooo dirty. It doesn't make sense in the storyline and his character arc. It's the worst
I agree with your video 100% except for 1 small little detail you kept repeating that was Inaccurate, Ted's kids were not twins. In the final season while we're getting to see Flash forward to Ted and the mother's life together, We know that the daughter was born first. Doesn't change anything about the video and I still completely agree With you