My main problem was that they got us so invested in Barney’s growth only for it to be somewhat abandoned for Ted and robin to get back together again. If Barney ended up taking those lessons and being in a committed relationship with someone else I wouldn’t have taken the ending so hard as at least the journey we went with Barney romantically would have meant something.
I never got why they made the whole season about Robin and Barney the could have just made Barney and Quinn endgame and everything would have been fine
It wasn’t that Barney needed to be in a committed relationship, he needed someone he felt would never leave him. After his father abandoning him and the situation with Shannon in the late 90s that sent him down the path of one night stands for years to fill that hole in his heart, he always had abandonment issues. With Robin, things were better, but he also felt that Robin was putting her career before him and he probably didn’t like that. It’s fucked to think like that, but Barney does have those issues. However, with his daughter, he was able to find someone that would never leave him and that he can care for for the rest of his life. Robin and Barney weren’t a failure because he probably wouldn’t have reached that point without being in a marriage with Robin, but his love of his life was his daughter and for him to be the best father he can be for her.
Even though the entirety of season 9 dropped, not hints, but atom bombs as to why Barney and Robin wouldn’t work, and why his “development” took a backslide once the marriage ended. People typically don’t look further, which is why we have people like you and countless others.
Yeah it was so stupid. That’s not how stories work, it’s impossible to give us a satisfying ending when you do that. Especially since the whole point of the last season was Ted finally learning to let Robin go and then the next episode “lol jk the characters actually went through no character development”
@@drpigglesnuudelworte5209 Yeah that is my biggest gripe with the ending. The "twist" that Ted is still in love with Robin is done during season 9 with the locket story and it concludes with Ted literally letting go of Robin in probably one of the best episodes of the show. The show concludes their arc there but then goes back to the point it had already made to give it an alternate ending and it just doesn't make sense and invalidates all the powerful scenes in S9.
Absolutely this. The evaluation in this video would be very accurate if I didn’t feel the writers worked so hard to get him to move on. It was emotional and fulfilling and then torn away with a “you still love Robin.” If the show was a Robin/Ted love story this part was poorly handled. Either skip it or show how the love happens again, don’t just jerk it away a few episodes later. Same with Barney and Robin’s development. It was well done and fulfilling and then in a little cut just undone.
My problem with HIMYM is not Robin, my problem with this show is the DRAMA in the last seasons. We didn't need ANY of that. Drama is not why most of us got into "how I met your mother".
Hard agree. Robin was the worst in the whole last half of the series, and I can't agree enough that they got him to move on SO WELL and then the final scene, after all of that, is him with the blue french horn :( absolute garbage
It did mean something. If you experience this in your life, then you’ll understand. You can let go and still love someone for the rest of your life even if your not with them. Plus it wasn’t as if Ted rushed over after his wife dies, he waited 6 years!
The ending was already filmed when the first season aired, since the kids couldn’t age 9 years from start to finish. I feel like this might have held the writers back in writing a suitable ending. After like 5 seasons, the ending might have worked. But we went through so much character development (especially Barney’s) only to have it all basically thrown away because ted and robin had to end up together since it was decided from the beginning. We were led to believe Barney and robin were a good couple that complimented each other, and ted and robin wouldn’t work out, only for it to completely change in the last 10 mins of the series
My 2 cents on this would be that the kids’ aging is a very insignificant part of the show, like I appreciate the continuity but i’d much rather have them show different kids at the end than have a shitty ending. Also, I feel like a little bit of editing is enough to cut out the robin scene and give it a proper ending.
Just cast different similar looking kids. I know the internet would have produced video after video, meme after meme, but doing that and having a better ending, alongside explaining why the same kids as were there in the beginning weren't used in the scene at the end would have been much better than using a scene that wasn't fit for purpose in the finale. I'm not actually against the ending that happened it was that it will happened in one episode after methodically going through years and years of events. There needed to be more time with the mother, more time with Robin and Barney falling out to cause the divorce, and then it would have all been ok. The pacing was just all wrong and left you thinking - wait, what!!! Not good storytelling or TV either for that matter.
I would be fine with the ending if they would have not wasted the entire season making us believe Barney and Robin are meant to be together, only for them to get divorced in 15 mins of the last two episode. And then for Barney to get back to his old trick to get laid, undoing his whole character development. They did Robin dirty. They showed Robin as this strong, independent woman who finally gave love a chance, only for her to be lovelorn girl who gets jealous of Ted and Tracy, not because she likes Ted, but because she hates the fact that is sth she could have had. Then using the mother's death as a plot device to get Ted and Robin together. Its not that I hate that the mother died. Its fine, its life, I know it happens! But at least lead us to that death, I know the foreshadowing was done. But she just dies, like that in the last episode, without a fair warning. Maybe have the 10 episodes about Barney and Robin's wedding, then the latter episode leading to Ted and Tracy's relation and showing cracks of Barney and Robin and maybe showing why we should cheer for Ted and Robin, when the whole last season, they showed us that they weren't good for each other. So, why should we believe that they will be fine together even at the end?
Why? The children would've known the story better, and having just made peace with their mother's death, would've preferred not to linger on it. Ted and Robin were already close in 2030, and Robin had likely made peace with who she was and her interests considering how goofy she became by that point, so their getting together seems a natural conclusion. Barney and Robin very clearly did not work, unless you've forgotten that her career only really picked up around the time they got married, and neither of them was truly looking for yet another relationship to define who they were as people. Barney needed stability and a healthy relationship, which he actually got with his daughter, while Robin needed to be at peace with herself and stop caring what others thought of her, which is why she connected with Ted's kids while being whatever she wanted to be (she stopped trying to be cool or put up an unnecessary front).
@@voluntaryismistheanswer yes, especially when you make the viewer spend 440 minutes watching their wedding day and why they work. The ending basically cheats you out of 7 hours of your time
@@danielf1833 You must have seen a different 440 minutes than I did. In that same 440 minutes I saw that there were two people who wanted to make it work, but clearly were not equipped to do so. Did you miss that Mama Scherbasky telling Robin that Barney was too much like Papa Scherbasky? Did you miss that Barney's doubts were keeping him from getting dressed? Did you miss that Mam Scherbasky asks Robin, point blank, "do you have someone who will always put your needs ahead of himself" and Robin is clearly not thinking of Barney when she says "yes"? One wants to believe it will all work out. One turns a blind-eye to the extant problems. I've spent a "weekend in Farhampton." I watched two dear friends get married, and they got more than three years out of their marriage, but it still went bust. And in hindsight, the deal-breaker was a trait they both knew about before they ever dated. That's how life can be. And in a show which dealt with the parents divorcing, parents dying, parents never really even being together, and the female romantic lead learning she's infertile, how life can be should never be discounted.
I'm fine with the mother dying but it's Ted going back to Robin that I have a problem with. We spent the last seven seasons reinforcing that those two in the end do not work together romantically long term
Because their goals at that point in their lives did not align. Ted truly loved Tracy. Tracy passed away. Ted was able to have the family he always wanted with a woman he truly loved. Robin was able to pursue her career and get to the heights she had always dreamed. Both Robin and Ted were in a place (16 years after) where they didn't have their "thing" holding them back from committing to each other. This is a real story - not a fairy tale TV ending.
I think that's why he's saying it's a different show when you watch it again. I think the biggest misstep in the final episode is Barney not being in a committed relationship after he an Robin separate. You guys are saying it undoes character development, but I would say otherwise. Robin and Ted's relationship grows to the point that they could be in a long term romantic relationship together in the last episode, that's their character growth. Barney in the end gets no growth, he's right back where he started.
My biggest problem was how fast they went through the final parts 1.they skip all of robin and barney's marriage only showing the bad part 2. We only get to see Tracy for a phew episodes and then she just dies 3. We don't get to see the mosby family just being happy no they skip to robin and ted
Yeah. I think it would've been good if the wedding arc was shorter and the last two episodes be like half that season, or better yet, have a tenth season, maybe shorter, showing Ted and Tracy being happy and Robin and Barney's marriage being successful and then showing cracks which leads to divorce. Then Tracy gets sick and we have a couple of episodes after she dies showing us what could only be described as the worst of times, having Ted be supported by the gang and slowly through many episodes, him and Robin starting to get close again
Especially considering how long they take with much less interesting parts of the story. It would be better to have had a real love story with the mom, real loss, then a kind of rediscovery of his history with Robin and the same with Robin and Barney…
I think it would've been impossible to portray Ted & Tracy's love story as anything other than boring and cheesy. The few short clips of them getting together were already almost too much. The show was leading up to the big moment they finally meet, there's really not much left to tell after that. The ending was very rushed, no argument there, I think the last 10 minutes should've been spread out into about 2 episodes. But not much more than that.
I’ve always believed that the Barney and robin wedding season should have been season 8. Season 9 should have been developing how Ted finally moves on from Tobin and meets Tracy. We have a whole show where the girls that Ted meets are developed throughout the whole show but Tracy was basically the last couple episodes only for her to die
thy focused a whole season for barney and robin wedding with fillers only for them to divorce the next ep, and they showed so little of tracy and she didnt even lived through the end
I think they should have developed the ending over the course of entire season or two. The last season felt rushed just to provide a "twist" ending. In doing so, they undermined a lot of character development in many of the main characters.
@@MichaelAnthonyPresents not really because she had her own personal arc about learning that it was okay to genuinely love again and that she deserved to be in love
@@drpigglesnuudelworte5209 So did Ted, his arc was actually a lot longer, and they based an entire TV show on it... 'How I Met Your Mother', maybe you've heard of it?
The biggest problem I have with this ending is that it COULD have worked if they'd given it more time. Maybe shorten the wedding to a few episodes and have Ted and Tracy's love story, have the whole arc of Barney and Robin's marriage not ending up like they expected, have Ted and Tracy and Lily and Marshall with their families, have Barney for once unhappy with just picking up 20 year olds at the bar and maybe show him learning how to be a dad and going to Ted and Marshall for advice after his baby is born, have Robin feel SO left out and just not knowing what to do with herself other than focusing on her work and her dogs, maybe throw a little something extra in her arc, show Tracy's sickness and how hard it hit Ted and their kids, show Ted learning how to take care of his kids on his own and wanting to go back to the dating scene but being too scared about hurting his family by doing so.
The ending makes sense when you’re watching the first two seasons and not much after. Let’s break it this way, from the perspective of Robin’s love life: Season 1: Ted’s in love with Robin Season 2: Ted dates and breaks up with Robin Season 3: Barney sleeps with and falls in love with Robin Season 4: Barney is in love with Robin Season 5: Barney and Robin date but fail as they are both not mature enough for commitment at this point Season 6: Robin dates Don prompting Barney and Ted to drunkenly chase after her Season 7: Robin is now in love with Barney but let’s him go for Nora and she dates Kevin, before Barney and Robin sleep together and contemplate getting back together, but Robin backs out. Ted out of the blue confesses his love to Robin and is rejected by her. He moves on to Victoria. Season 8: It is hinted from the beginning that while Barney and Robin are in a relationship with other people, they still have feelings for each other. A cat and mouse chase later begins where they end up getting engaged. Ted thinks Robin “should” be with him even though she has no feelings for him. Season 9: The entire season is just Barney and Robin’s wedding weekend. Ted lets Robin finally go. The finale: Barney and Robin immediately divorce, which is okay despite the build-up, and Ted finds true love and happiness. He marries the “one” and spends over a decade with her, having two kids, and then she passes away, which would explain why Ted is telling the heartfelt story to begin with. It’s sad and touching to hear of how they met and how they were separated by fate after many happy years. 30 seconds after that heartfelt moment we hear the kids dismissing the story as him just being in love with Robin, despite him being in love only at the beginning and near the end, and then bam they do the French horn thing despite no explanation as to why Ted wants Robin now, except that they’re both old and single so why not. This is not a good ending for so many reasons, but the main one is the stupid tone shift from telling us the mother tragically died young to Ted getting Robin back all within a minute. We should have felt sorrow for the mother’s death but instead it just felt like she was killed off to get Ted and Robin back together.
"We should have felt sorrow for the mothers death" Yes. This. Maybe find some way of weaving in the foreshadowing scenes from earlier in the show, before switching the game up. While the overall story might have everything one might have wanted, the ending was a narrative/emotional curveball. These kinda twists worked so well in earlier episodes, I don't know why the actual ending of the series was so loose with its emotional impact
The mother's death is theorised to have occurred a few years before Ted tells the story, and the story itself isn't supposed to have taken all that long to tell, meaning that the children naturally questioned all the build-up. I think anyone can tell from the pilot episode that Robin is one of the key focuses of the story, and you have to follow through on something so integral to the show, which I think they did. I've explained it at length in another reply.
@@RP-mp4ow Are you insane? There was so much build-up about the way Ted was heartbroken about losing Tracy, and how that forced him to reflect on himself as a person and all the stupid stuff he did in the past, and the person he had to become in order to be a good partner to her. There's a good chance that Ted told his kids this story after they had made peace with the Mother's death, and were reminiscent of her, with Ted verbalising his emotions so that he could finally let go. That's why the kids moved on from the story, they KNOW he loved her and would ALWAYS do so, just like she loved Max but still moved on and lived her life as best as she could. People always forget about the Max thing, maybe because they don't analyse the nuance of Tracy as they should to actually get her character and arc. The emotional impact felt rushed for sure, but Ted probably rushed things from there because he had already gotten to the point where he met their mother, and they likely knew a majority of what had happened from then on. He covered the key points as he saw them after the whole reflection, of course the Barney-Robin divorce felt rushed to him, he barely saw them after the wedding! You cannot cherry-pick when the central framing device of the whole story is important or not, it always should be, or it just isn't. Robin being a different person is also established from the onset, about how much she came to care for Ted's kids and naturally formed a relationship with them over time, meaning they likely looked to her for comfort and formed a bond after their mother's demise. I'd argue that Barney and Robin's relationship was never meant to be, not because they didn't care for one another, but simply because they couldn't find what they actually needed in that relationship. Robin didn't need Barney's approval, because he loved her entirely and she needed to find it within herself, which I doubt she could do so quickly if her father remained the way he did, but her growth from a person so concerned with how others thought of her to a goofball Aunt who could care about her own interests and her loved ones finally gave her some peace. Barney didn't get the stability he desired from a relationship with Robin, or with any of the women in his life besides his friends and relatives, so he gave himself to his daughter because that bond gave him the bedrock that he desired. He could be a father, even if he didn't actually marry someone and remained a bachelor, that is his choice and doesn't affect his growth as a person. I wish the deleted scenes were added to the finale, they create so much context for the story, and the show ends very appropriately with Marshall singing another benign but annoyingly catchy song.
They could have done it better and still had it end the same. The kids: "we get it dad you love Robin". Tearful Ted: "No I don't, I thought I did but I never truly loved anyone the way I loved your mother, the way I love you two. I started this to explain why I feel up for dating again and why I think Robin might be the one I feel comfortable with, but talking about your mom again I don't know". The kids: "Dad you deserve to be happy it's been 6 years." Ted through his tears: "I'll try." Cuts to Robin holding Ted on her couch with Ted saying: "You might not be my one, but I just miss her so much and you've always made me happy. I just want to be happy." Robin smiling but slightly sad says: "Ted, I love you and I want that too." Cuts to black. Not the over the top romance, that always backfired for Ted and never was Robin's thing. This shows Ted has learned to just be open and honest, which is true love and romance, not a French Horn. It shows Ted truly loved Tracy. And you see two of your favorite characters together trying to make each other happy. Also for this to work they need to improve the Barney Robin divorce somehow so it doesn't ruin Barney's growth.
@@danielbrhel8344 It didn’t, his growth is what led to a divorce and no extramarital affairs. Also, Ted wouldn’t ask Robin to be his ‘backup wife’ in earnest, because that’s messed up. People move on, just like Tracy did from Max, not because he wanted to but because humans adapt and Ted’s romanticism and his closeness with Robin makes the whole thing make sense. Robin does care for Romance, just not like Ted does, Ted romanticises romance, while Robin just appreciates direct gestures, with the French horn (‘Orchestra’ line makes me cry every time) being a critical component of this. If Ted had an arc, it was finding out that Love is what gives you happiness, which he found in Tracy when he let Robin go, and then later found in Robin when he had to let Tracy go. That’s how it ended, and it was amazing, especially after you start catching all the little things here and there. I think we need to get over the ending, because unlike more recent shows, this ending won’t piss us off the more we think about it (GOT, Star Wars EPISODE 9: Rise of Skywalker.)
My main complaint about the ending is is that Ted had actually let go of Robin in the final season and the entire final season shows us how Robin and Barney work, only for it to get flipped in the final moments. I get the mother dying , its sad but it has been foreshadowed several times during the show. (For example In the time travelers episode)
i cry everytime i see that episode, my gf didnt see the ending yet so she was wondering why i found that scene so sad. it hurts way more when you know the ending
@@Pan666 Basically Ted goes back in time and goes to the apartment where the mother lives and says "we are going to meet in 45 days and i want to spend every last one with you" or something like that
I just hate how the children look so damn happy saying that this is not a story about their mother but a story of how much Ted loved Robin. Robin messed up Ted's heart so many times that it is hard for me to feel happy they ended up together. I know life sucks and people die and we have to move on, but we invested so many hours figuring out who the mother was, just for the last episode having the kids saying "get over mom, go after aunt Robin... AGAIN!" It was so ridiculous and unnecesary.
@@pp-vf8ls It's only done in editing, there isn't a live audience or awkward pauses, which allows the writers and actors to actually think about how funny the lines and delivery are.
So for their laugh tracks they played the episode to people after to catch their laughs. Probably recorded them and used them at different points they didn't get a good enough laugh that filled an awkward void.
The issue with the whole “unreliable narrator” thing is that, if you expand that idea to the entire series, then you can’t trust ANY of it. THAT is one of my biggest problems.
One way to overbroaden the point. Ted is still very reliable. He didnt always paint himself in the greatest light. And he loved his ppl so he portrays these zany lovable ppl as accurately as he remembers them as they are still in his life.
The problem with this is several things though 1. The series showed multiple times why Ted and Robin aren’t compatible 2. Introducing the mother and then turning her into a macguffin for the entire series is just insulting to the audience 3. Saying Ted is an unreliable narrator doesn’t make the ending any less lazy
So, I agree tons with your stuff on perspective, but there were a lotta flaws here too. 1. the whole marriage of ted and the mom feels cheap cuz he still had that thing for robin. 2. you spend a whole season on the wedding building barney and robin up. 3. you kinda screw up barney's character development 4. how would ted and robin work out if they hadn't worked out for soo long.
5. Spending an entire season for Ted moving on from Robin, only for him to chase her back. Hell, at least make HER do the work and have her bring the blue french horn to him, so it doesnt break the rest of the season that much (although, Barney would still be ruined).
my only problem is that his voice changes from Bob Saget to Ted Mosby... other than that, I actually think that the finale was brilliant and didnt get enough credit for continuity. Although i would have loved for TED and ROBINS pact to get married at 40 if they were both single.. if they made it 50, maybe a little more serendipitous
It doesn't matter what to motive was in telling the story, Tracy was nothing but an incubator for teds kids so he could have his cake and eat it to. She was not even human at the end just a place holder for robin keeping the seat warm for her as it were.
I get why they went the way that they went. I understand that the story was meant to be a portrayal of how Ted isn't really over Robin. I'm fine with that. But what really irked me about the ending is just how unsatisfying Barney's storyline was. Yes he does find a way to truly love a girl but it's only through his daughter, which he accidentally has due to a binge after he relapses from his much healthier lifestyle. It just feels like barney got thrown to the wayside to make way for Ted and Robin. I would have been much more accepting of the ending had they really explained why Barney and Robin didn't work, and then shown how being in a loving relationship, even if it didn't work out in the end, changed him for the better. The way they did it basically just killed his arc in less than 20 minutes without a proper conclusion. Plus, just going to put it out there that Tracey was such a fun and compelling character, yet we only got to experience her for such a short time and couldn't see how she really fit into the group as a whole. Those are the reasons I was dissatisfied with the ending. Because the writers had a one track mind on how to get Ted and Robin together in the end, the other characters didn't have any sort of proper conclusion. While this show is just as much a story about Ted meeting Tracey and Ted not being over Robin, It's also about the gang, the group of goofballs who always sat at the same booth in McLaren's pub.
Ted was over Robin for years, but because life got in the way, it opened the door for him to maybe reconnect with someone who he’s still close with. Tracy moved on from Max with Ted, but no one says that Ted is just her consolation prize, so I don’t get why they make Ted out like he thinks Tracy is a consolation prize. Ted loved Tracy more than words can describe, just look at the Time Travelers episode, he wouldn’t of had that monologue about how much he wishes he could spend just 45 seconds longer with her. Time went by and he decided to date again, just like many others after their significant other passes away. It’s not super common you’ll find someone who has their significant other die at a young age and you never date again, Ted waited 6 years and even though he’s back together with Robin, he will never stop loving Tracy.
@@MichaelAnthonyPresents THANK YOU SO MUCH! Finally, someone actually mentions Max, who perfectly parallels Ted and Tracy's story! People don't think about how close Robin and Ted's family were described to be from the very first season, and how she was a goofy fun aunt who probably became a motherly figure for the kids and formed a bond with them after their mother died. The Barney and Robin pairing was atrocious from the beginning, but the writing and acting were so effective that people stopped seeing that, and even then the writing was only trying to show why the two even got together while still highlighting all the issues. People just see what they want to see, and it pisses me off to see random people on the internet off-handedly calling the ending sh*t when they've barely glanced over the synopsis and the rhetoric. Meanwhile, I've seen the show about twenty times in the last year, and it has become deeply important to me in how it has resonated with me. Seeing half-baked dipsh*ts dog on it pisses me off so much. Sorry for the outburst, it just gets so annoying, but I am grateful for your comment.
thats the perspective of ted tho maybe barney wasnt that bad at all but ted was seeing him as that defiled human because he was with the woman he loved and always thought he didnt deserve her
@@theperson8539 Yeah, but there's a difference. Tracy met Ted for the first time after Max died, it's not like she had met Ted before and was obsessed with him. To me, the problem is that the mother, Tracy, feels just like a way to give Ted the conventional life he wanted, get married and have kids... After he gets all that, the mother must disappear so that Ted get the one girl he had actually wanted all along but who couldn't give him that, Robin. It seemed to me that the writers loved Ted way too much. There was no way Ted couldn't get everything he wanted in the end. The mother didn't matter that much, she was there just to provide Ted with the comfortable married life he had yearned for... at least thats how I perceived when I saw how fast they wanted us to move on from Tracy's death.
@@alexxacastillo515 They wanted us to move on from the death because they couldn’t really linger for too long after Ted meets the mother, as that would kind of f*ck up the entire framework of the show. I think the issue is that you really like Tracy, but had grown indifferent of Ted over time, and that might be the reason for your distraction.
10 different ways HIMYM could've ended and it would've been better 10. Tracy is dead but Ted remains single and tells the story in memory of her 9. Tracy is alive and that's how the story ends 8. Tracy is alive but the kids can't believe the Barney/robin divorce so the show ends with the window scene but it's Barney instead. 7. Ted ends up with Barney. it would work better 6. the whole show is a script for a wedding bride spinoff 5. it's an audiobook in Marshall's car 4. Barney begins to tell his daughter his version of the story 3. Ted is dying, not Tracy, and he's telling his story to his kids 2. the gang meets at Mcclarens all these years later 1. 3 again because that sounds lie a pretty good ending
#3, Ted is dying. or, create a spin-off episode where Tracy Moseby sits the kids down to tell them her story. But they better hurry, Tracy dies this year (2024).
I liked the premise behind the ending. Tracy being dead makes sense, and him getting with Robin was a good twist. It was executed poorly. It made me feel like it Ted was just a guy longing for the “Glory Days” or something
Ok so what's the morale of the story then? "If you love her, be in her friendzone for ages and see her date millions of dudes, even let her marry the other dude, your (second) best friend, because you know that eventually, perhaps, maybe, when you're 50 she will want to be with you *(its not yet the punchline)* not even because she wants you as much, but just because she lost her competitive advantage and neither of you want to die alone? No... This ending is just a way to finish the if-youre-still-single-after-50-we'll-be-together meme. Really if feels like nothing more than just a reference. Its not the ending the characters deserve.
I would've accepted that Robin and Barney divorced after three years despite all the buildup for their wedding and the writer's clear effort in making us believe they could really work out fine... had they not undone all of Barney's growth and had they not suddenly, out of nowhere, make Robin "fall in love" with Ted. They never show us how this happened, it's just mentioned in Lily and Robin's conversation because it's all very rushed. Also, the way Lily and Marshall talk about her is just so sad, like... for some reason Robin never interacts with the gang anymore but Ted is the exception, even though the most logical thing would be for Robin to avoid him because she's in love with him now and it hurts her to see him with Tracy. Of course, Robin is unhappy because she chose to prioritize her career. Very surprising. But well, let's get to Barney's character destruction. It's not good writing to make Barney change because of her daughter. I cried when I watched that scene, but it's such a stupid decision to go back and forth and to imply that a man can only respect women if he's in love with one and on a monogamous relationship or if he's a father. That's the only way Barney could ever be a decent man, because as soon as he and Robin divorced he want back to his lying and scheming just to get laid. Another issue I have with the ending, and the show overall, is that the writers obviously love Ted so so much. I don't know if they see themselves in Ted or what, but they clearly wanted to give Ted everything he had always wanted in the end, which is a happy married life with kids and Robin. Since both weren't compatible, they had to get another woman to provide him with the first part. After that, Tracy wasn't needed anymore, because now he could be with Robin without having to give up on the traditional life he wanted. So, Tracy had to die. Again, the fact that this was all very rushed makes me think that it was not that important... the important part comes after that, Ted finally getting his dream girl, Robin. Let's not fool ourselves, Ted's feelings for Robin were never a healthy thing, he was obsessed for years. The ending tries so hard to get us to believe this is sweet... and honestly, I teared up a bit. I would've liked the ending if they had never make it seem like Robin's feelings for Ted were over for a very long time, only to bring them back to life in the last episode and if they had actually taken their time to develop this relationship again and this time, in a healthy way. It would've been okay then. Still, what happened to that whole scene of Ted "letting go" of Robin? Honestly, it's always "I'm gonna try again with Robin". Most people I've talked with aren't unhappy with the ending because "Ted didn't end up with the mother", it's because he ended up with Robin. He could've end up with another woman, or maybe just deciding to start dating again. But Robin? I always remember that whatever questionable thing Ted did that involved the possibility of getting with Robin was excused by the fact that ITS ROBIN (I can hear Ted saying "but it's ROBIN"). Also, the themes and messages the shows tried to convey are all over the place, it's like they change their mind depending on the situation and depending on wether or not it benefits Ted. Also, please let's not pretend that making something "realistic" or "similar to how life really is, messy" is a show's goal or something it should aim to be. I've watched this show four times, and I know that this story is really about Ted's undying feelings for Robin (I mean, Ted's kids themselves tell us), and it doesn't make it any better. It makes it even more infuriating... because I'm tired of this complicated stories where the guy pesters a girl until she dates him, doesn't work but he still is hung up on her. I can't get over that scene when Ted says "theres not top 5, theres only a top 1, and it's you, Robin". Because then those girls you dated and said you loved mean nothing? Even going as early as season one, he said he thought Victoria was the one, and still ditched her when he realized he could get Robin. So, to me, Victoria and Tracy aren't much different, I have no reason to believe the contrary.
Exactly thank you. And I couldn’t watch it all the way through more than once I owned all the DVDs it was my favorite show but that ending broke me and I know there’s a alternate ending on the dvd but what’s the point. Thank you for this comment it was great.
@@FreneticFolklore I liked season 9 because Cristin Milioti did such a good job. I would have preferred a season 10 with her in the cast where Ted and Tracy’s life together gets developed and we see the reasons behind Barney and Robin’s breakup. Tracy would die toward the end of the season and then Robin would be there for Ted and his children for a few episodes, establishing the reason for why their feelings for each other come back to the surface. It would also redeem Robin a bit instead of being the commitmentphobic woman who can’t decide what she wants.
@@paradoxmo I agree. In order for the ending to work, they needed another season or two to more fully develop a more reasonable ending. Life is messy. People die. The people we marry sometimes don't work out in spite of being sure they will. Pretty much any ending would have been reasonable as long as it was explained well and didn't completely undermine all the character development in the past seasons.
I believe its from an unused scene that really wraps the whole ending together. Where ted and robin go out for lunch and robin misreads what ted is saying and she confesses that she has feelings for ted but ted shoots it down, saying he doesnt feel that way about her and that hes happy with his wife and kids. Overall showing that ted moved on from robin, that tracy wasn’t just settling for 2nd best
Exactly!! They should have kept that scene. It would have definitely changed how people thought about the ending of the show. Ted was happy with Tracy and didn't even think about Robin. It was years after Tracy died-six years is a pretty long time. That scene was crucial for the ending they showed.
While this brings a new appreciation to the ending, I loved how the show was showing us how this obsession with Robin kind of trapped Ted and getting out of it led him to a happier life. It was amazing how they set up a typical sitcom relationship (Ted and Robin in season 1) and made us not even want it at the end, we moved on WITH Ted, he grew into an amazing husband. Then what I disliked was that all being thrown out the window for another chance at Robin? It felt like using the mother, who was a great person, for kids so now the only thing wrong with their relationship is all good now? When it wasn’t, they were incompatible for many reasons explored in the show.
The showruners plan an ending not knowing how many seasons of the show or how their characters would develop and in the last episode they need it to regress 3 of the main characters to be how they were at the beginning so the ending could "work" as planned
Wait, do non TV characters not regress? This is a story from Ted's perspective (for the most part) so the story will be ABOUT him. This isn't about which "ship" you liked most, the story arc was ALWAYS about Ted/Robin. If the mother were the focal point of this story, it wouldn't have taken 9 seasons to get to her. The final season was mishandled as far as episodic content, but the ending itself was actually pretty spot-on with the day one narrative.
The character development got kicked to death just bcoz they shot that scene around S2/S3. They shouldn't have gone to the tracy route then and should have continued with Ted and Robin.
Frankly, I'm not convinced it would have worked. Part of the reason I was drawn to the show in the first place was because we didn't get to see the mother until the end.
@@dominicishmael sure real people regress but last time I checked characters aren't people so don't follow the same conventions (if the characters regressed they need like an arc) also no it was not always about ted and robin ted and robin literally aren't even a plot line for most of the show and all three arcs for barney robin and ted in the final season specifically shoot down ted and robin also bro is saying this isn't about ships but here's why my ship is better like childish response man
If this was their original intention, why make Robin SOOOOOO unlikeable. In the beginning I was happy when they got together. I was happy even when it was a possibility. But once Robin and Barney started officially dating and it was practically thrown in our face how she sucks as a person, focusing a whole season on the wedding of Robin and Barney, I’m supposed to want to be happy Ted and Robin are starting up again? Especially when they also did an AMAZING job making Tracy extremely likable and compatible with ted. If you only saw the first and last episode you’d be like aw cute. However after everything that happened and how selfish Robin was time and time again you just wish Tracy was alive and they didn’t pull this shit
Exactly Robin almost has no redeeming traits and they waste time putting her into relationships when we all know she can't commit to shit and then she finally commits and we get the conclusion of her character only for her to divorce Barney breaking her entire development and becoming Ted's girlfriend again.
The problem is what the ending does to several characters, and how it flies in the face of the rest of the show. 1. It ends up rendering barney to his playboy lifestyle only to hand him grow up after he has a daughter. 2. It doesn't really make robin look very good because she put her career ahead of her marriage even though the show goes to great lengths to show us that Barney really was something special for her and she was ready to settle down (plus having two such screwed up individuals introduce a little normalcy and stability to each other was executed great, and they threw that away) 3. Tracy is done dirty. She barely gets a chance to exist as he own character (although what we do get is great, especially her back story with Max) and while he chemistry with Ted is phenomenal, it would have been nice to see that breathe a little bit more. The show commits so much time to Stella, Victoria, and Zoey but Tracy barely gets anything, and its done in service of Ted finally getting together with Robin. 4. The entire show is partly an essay on why Ted and Robin do not work together. They are better as friends, they always were. There's a reason why Robin was willing to settle down work Barney and not Ted. Tracy is literally made in a factory for Ted, and while i don't hate that she dies as a plot point, it is handled so weird, and feels so much like the writers brushed her aside to get Ted with Robin instead.
I also thought it had a good ending. I just think they didn't executed it well, it was too rushed.............. I wish in the final season they hadn't made episodes like 'bedtime stories' and instead used the time to show how Robin and Barney's marriage eroded. Maybe they could have done an episode where they juxtapose Ted & Tracy flourishing and Robin $ Barney deteriorating, or something like that. To put everything within a few minutes of each other was just overwhelming and seemed rushed.
Personally even when looking through this lends, it still portrays Ted (to me) as a complete narcissist. His narrative was to always making him brooding over never getting the opportunity to settle down with Robin but that just makes it weird, like “well kids I could’ve had her a long time ago, but I told her to get married to Barney and then your mom came around” makes it feel messy and makes it feel less of fate but more of a convenience that their mom and ted met. Also with Teds narrative it at times made Barney to look as such a bad guy and maybe that could come down to him suggesting that’s why Robin and him didn’t work. And additionally adding the story of Barney having a baby as clarity seems like a justification that ted could after Robin because his best friend found his true love in his daughter. Obviously this over the top thinking and although I love this show, I still hate those last 2 minutes and still don’t find ted to be so compelling. Barney and Marshall’s characters made the show, along with the chemistry and the intrigue of the mother.
Imagine if Victoria had been the mother. That moment at the architects ball with "Victoria" by the kinks in the background is easily one of my favorites of the series.
Think part of the problem I have with the ending is that it felt kind of like his whole relationship with Tracey was a way for him to have kids before getting together with Robin. I understand how that was a big reason the timing wasn’t right in their relationship, but it makes the episode where Robin finds out she can’t have kids almost less impactful, because you know she ends up with step kids, so it’s almost like she doesn’t actually have to fully accept that she can’t have her own. It does make it less bitter going down don’t get me wrong and she shouldn’t be tied to not having kids just because she can’t biologically, but still.
The shows creators needed a gimmick - an unexpected ending that wasn’t so predictable based on the title or the show. The problem is - they never know how popular the show will be, how many seasons the show will go for, so they always have to come up with new content for each season. The Barney/ Robin relationship was perfect for this purpose and instantly became a big hit with fans. They hit a home run with the mother too. They are very talented writers. So the further they get from the shows original ending, the harder it will be to circle back and have everything make sense. Tracey was the love of teds life, the one great love - this is indisputable despite pontificating whether or not the main love story of the series is between Robin and Ted. Life is sh*tty, tragedies happen, people die before they are supposed to. That’s as real as it gets. Ted can find love and happiness even after meeting the one,but they did Barney dirty.
The ending of the series was actually planned and partially filmed during season 2 of the show. I think it was less of a gimmick and more that they wrote themselves into a corner by writing the ending so early. They couldn't have predicted how the show and the characters would evolve over time, and so they had to scramble to fit the original ending into the story. But they absolutely did Barney dirty
@@Silvermooncat123 we are saying the same thing. The original planned ending was the gimmick. Imagine pitching the show to CBS with the title “how I met your mother”. The big reveal is the mother dies and he ends up with Robin. That’s the surprise ending that they locked themselves into (especially already filming the ending with his kids).
I took the ending of “How I met your mother” to Ted telling his kids “Who I wished your mother was”. Because if at any time Robin was ready to settle down and could have children, Ted would have done it in a heartbeat.
Yes, but that was squashed with that episode when Robin learns she can't have kids. Having Robin talk to the kids she'll never have was both brilliant and devastating.
The biggest thing we’ve learned with the ending was that sometimes we aren’t preparared to live a great love ‘cause that isn’t the right moment. Time is the key.
If should have ended like this "barney and Robin have not had divorce but things are not working out, Robin goes to Ted's place expresses her love to him and then ted ask her about barney but then Robin kisses ted , cut to barney is sitting in McLaren's bar alone and someone says something weird and then barney goes challenge... accepted..." the end.......credits
Ted and Robin getting back together was the worst ending that could’ve happened. Their whole romantic relationship was forced by Ted. Nothing was natural. For instance, one of the highlights of Ted&Robin, was when Ted stole the blue French horn for her. Some people would see that as a very romantic and wholesome thing, and maybe it is. However, the key word there is “stole”. On the other hand, Ted&Tracy’s highlight was the yellow umbrella. The difference there is that the umbrella landed on Ted’s hands. He didn’t do anything to get that. It just landed, and it brought them both together. That’s destiny. Something that the Ted and Robin’s romantic relationship never had.
Ted and robin getting back together completely undoes all the character development they had for the last couple of seasons. It also just makes robin look bad, shes just hoeing around her friend circle and when she divorces one she just goes for the backup plan ted which makes him the ultimate simp.
I think if they did the robin/Ted coffee scene AFTER the mother died would’ve been great. The mother dies, he’s depressed and broken up, walks into a coffee shop and sees robin there. They haven’t seen each other in years and he’s still upset about the mothers death. Somehow seeing and talking to robin breaths new life into him. Robin admits that she liked teds dead wife, but she thought they were always meant to be together. They connect and eventually finally get married
also i forgot to mention: the fact that they shot the scenes where ted's kids convince him to go after robin in present day shows that even when they were filming for season 1, they knew how the show would end. meaning that it truly was ted and robin's story all along, it wasn't just something that they decided to do for the last season
I get you however, deciding an ending doesn't mean that there shouldn't be flexibility as the characters grow and take form. What the creators gave us was continued character development for Barney all of which was undone in the last twenty minutes to fit a narrative that didn't make sense to half their viewership and they undid all of Barney's growth as if his entire character arc was dependent on being with Robin.
From what I understand that wasn’t there original plan 100%, there were multiple ending shot with the kids that they could use if they wanted too. It was just one option
I'd argue it made it more contrived how they chose to handle the final episode to get to that point. If they knew they were still locked into that all those years later they should have actually built to it better through the season/s. Like it's great to say the whole thing was about ted and robin which it definitely was. But then all of a sudden all of the contrivances happen so they are finally where they can be together. Ted has kids already so he doesn't need to worry about that with Robin. And robin has had a serious relationship that actually worked out until it didn't cause she was focusing on herself and disappeared from the group for years then all of a sudden she's back and is dateable and great, yes I'm skipping over the bits of stuff when she actually comes back cause there's not a ton to work with other then they're both not especially over each other but at times where the other is happy and doesn't want anything to do anything with or about them in that regard.
I'd argue it was Ted moving on from Tracy while still solidifying how much he loved her, and most of the controversy comes from people not accepting the basis for Robin's character in 2030 that was established in season 1, and that Ted's limited perspective on his friend's life after the wedding would obviously make all the changes seem rushed and out of nowhere to them... as they would've seemed to Ted at the time. The characters grew as they were meant to, but people ignore the set-up from the earlier seasons even while declaring them the best. I'll say this now, the ending to HIMYM was actually pretty well-written if only a little rushed, but I like to think it was just our perspective catching up to the speed at which Future Ted must've actually told the story to his kids. The only badly written part of HIMYM to me is the first half of Season 5 (balanced out by the phenomenal second half) and the fact that they ever expected anyone to think of Lily Aldrin as anything but the self-absorbed demon that she most certainly is.
I feel like the original ending was more about Ted wanting to ease his way of asking his kids if they would be okay with him starting to date, with the children understanding their dad's perspective and being okay with him finding happiness once again, even though the times he had with their mother shall always be cherished and never forgotten. It was even 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 this might have been the kind of ending the show was going for, why does Ted have to move on 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 and understands that they weren’t the same people who dated all those years ago and that she and Barney loved each other dearly and refused to ruin the wedding because of whatever left over feelings he has 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 and in turn puts salt on the wounds of fans since this revelation comes after the reveal that Tracy died some time before Future Ted decided to tell Luke and Penny the story of how he met their mother.
A second point I'd like to talk about is the fact that we watch Ted look for "The One" for 9 seasons. He is obsessed about it, and a main part of his personality evolves around it : he is often scared he cannot find that person, even get depressed at some point because he thinks Robin is "The One" and he can't have her. The fact that they let Ted go through a marriage that lasted 20 years is actually quite marvelous, proving that he was wrong the whole time. I don't think Robin is "The One". And I don't think the love he felt for Robin and the one he felt for his wife are to compare either. None of them is "The One", but life is just full of moments and people who go trough it...
I liked and hated the ending at same time. I like everything about it that you just pointed out: how it changes the whole story to it being about robin. But I hated it for being such a truth bomb about how there are no happy endings in life: Ted searches for his dream partner, finds her, but then reality happens: cancer and death. Boom. Dream destroyed. Barney seems to develop in character throughout the series, learns that his issues derive from being abandoned by his father, and makes steps towards being a better person. But then boom, relationship failed, here’s your reality: most psychopaths never find a cure. Shoehorning a daughter in last minute makes me worry more about the poor kid than it gives me closure for Barney’s story.
what i’ve always loved about himym is that it’s uniquely realistic compared to other lighthearted sitcoms, shit happens, life happens, and it’s not always perfect. how i met your mother showed that better than almost every show i’ve ever watched
This show is a lesson on Law of Attraction, and if you don’t understand Law of Attraction, then you hate the show. Sometimes, to get what you want, you have to let it go. It is a lesson on that. Timing is important too. No matter how much you want something in life, if you are not ready for it, it won’t come. It was not Robin and Ted’s time Ted didn’t want to be with Robin after he let her go, he was happy with his wife and children. But after Tracy’s death, after they both had what they wanted in life., the timing was right for them. The show starts with Robin and ends with Robin. It was always Ted telling his children why, at that moment, he wanted to be with her. My only complaint is that I feel the last two episodes should have been an entire season. But I am one of those weird people who love the way this show ended.
That's exactly the perspective I naturally fell into watching the show a second time, and it does fit. The first time it felt like an attack on the mother, and honestly an attack on us because we were so desperate to meet and subsequently fell in love with her; we weren't allowed enough time with her, let alone time to grieve her immediate loss. The second time, after a long break, the story feels like it's regained it's heart and we're longing for the good memories after we had our time to process the loss.
Still doesn’t change the fact the ending seemed forced I know the kids where shot at season one but I don’t think the way it was wrote after 9 seasons lead to that ending
I agree. This video has some good points, but the show spent almost it's entire runtime drilling into our heads that Ted and Robin can't and won't ever be together, and to accept it and move on. Which we finally did in season 8 when Barney proposes to Robin. Then they spend all of season 9 on the wedding, just to undo it in the final episode. Not to mention hints and teases of the mother put throughout the show as well. I get the idea of what the ending was trying to do, but you can't have a 9 year tv show going in one direction and at the very end just do a total 180. It doesn't do justice to all the episodes and storylines that came before it. Everything after like season 5 was basically just filler for Ted trying to extend time until the mother came. The only really meaningful stuff with any impact on the end was Marshall and Lily having kids and Barney and Robin getting married, and one of those is invalidated in the series finale as well. They should have kept the show to 7 seasons or had more than just 1 episode take place after the wedding. I wanted Ted and Robin together, everyone else did too. But the show kept telling us no at every possible turn. That wasn't the way to do justice to the show's premise and the character of the mother we had been waiting to see for 9 years. The first 4-5 seasons of the show are goated, I wish the rest was handled better.
i hate the ending because it creates this narrative that if you wait long enough you'll finally get what you want. i hate it even more considering the fact that we went through 8 seasons accepting the fact that some things are not meant to be no matter how much you force it.
6:10 and that is the pathetic part of it all. Just because you really, Really, REALLY want to be with somebody, doesn't mean they want to be with you. That's a problem the show never dealt with until, of course, the final season where Robin( who told Ted some months ago she didn't love him ) conveniently starts having feelings for Ted. But by then we were too invested in Barney/Robin ( a relationship critically tied into their character's development ) to care.
I personally refuse to let one episode/season ruin such a PERFECT show. I cannot tell you how many times I have rewatched HIMYM, and how many more I plan to. This show is my safe space ❤ but yea the ending sucked donkey balls
I'd say the problem with the ending is that it dragged for 10 seasons. Had it only been 5 or 6 but with the same story it wouldn't have been so controversial
My only concern about the finale is how they told the story ... How I met your mother ... but your mother after 9 years (and an entire season for Barney and Robin's wedding) dies a couple of episodes.
I personally never had an issue with the fact he didn't end up with the "mother", when watching while it was airing, i always had the feeling the mother wasn't around anymore, maybe it was a popular fan theory at the time, but i always had that in my mind when watching, and while i like the idea of a story about moving on, and from the get go, its clearly about robin, they had written the ending in advance, but that never let the story take its natural course. So after 9 years of the stories progressing naturally and taking turns the writers couldn't have expected when starting the show, with Robin and Barneys wedding, they suddenly have to make a hard right turn, and undo the entire last season of build up to get to there pre-written destination that no longer made sense for where the story now was.
Pretty sure this series was just Carter Bays living out his fantasy, since Ted is based on him (and Marshall and Lily on co-creator Craig Thomas and his wife). Carter was single at the time of the show’s creation, and “Robin” would have been his dream girl he wound up with.
It's been a long time since I watched this show, but it's amazing how much the last episode alone has impacted the show's reputation. If Barney would have been in a new committed relationship when Ted goes back to Robin I think the show would have a much better reputation. I'll have to watch it again.
@@FreneticFolklore my perspective is that the ending of Tracy dying and Ted getting back together with Robin would have worked if they had spent more than like 2 minutes on Ted and Tracy’s life together and Barney and Robin’s life together. If we had seen a season 10 with Ted happy and his relationship grow with Tracy, and Barney and Robin’s relationship crack and then resolve with an amicable breakup, it wouldn’t be so jarring for Ted and Robin to get back together at the end. Instead, there’s a whole season of buildup about meeting Tracy and then as soon as they get together, she dies. In the same episode!
@@paradoxmofully agree, I think the ending has one problem and it is that they rushed through things, everything that happened would’ve been fine if it just took longer to happen.
Many people don’t realize that the last two episodes are so rushed because old Ted has no interest in telling his kids the details about meeting their mom, so he tells them the rest of the story in fast forward. Furthermore we don’t even know if what he tells them in the last two episodes is 100% true. Everything that feels weird or forced about the ending is not a lack of its quality its rather a hint that we can’t take everything that old Ted tells us at face value, especially in those last two episodes. I believe that we don’t even know for sure if Ted really ever was that happy with Tracy; maybe her long absence in the story is just proving that he was in love with Robin all along. Although his narration before the final scene seems to indicate that he loved tracy („I could never stop loving her not even for a second“), again thats just what he wants his kids to believe and it matches the tonus his narration had all along throgh the series. I mean he wouldn‘t tell them if it were any different would he? What I also figured is that we don’t know how Barney and Robin really split up, because how Ted is blaming it once again on Robin prioritizing her career over her marriage following that weird scene were Barney calls his daughter the love of his life - as if that could replace anything he lost with Robin - just seems like kind of a placeholder that old Ted would use to have a quick explanation for his kids; as things ended for him I cant picture Barney anything but to be very very miserable, this doesn’t seem like a real ending for him; maybe - to pick up on your thesis - telling the truth would reveal that Robin is in fact more cold-hearted than Ted wants us to know. But thats open for interpretation, and I don’t want to say that things must have happened very differently than it is shown; I just want to say that it’s possible to be doubtful about some aspects of the ending. So the only scene not being told by old Ted as the subjective narrator is the last window scene with Robin: given that, its the first time we don’t have a subjective lens over what we see and it must be sure that Ted and Robin are coming together at the end right?… unless: Is Robin laughing and crying because she waited for this moment all along or is it just out of some nostalgia beeing remembered at their old times? Maybe she‘s still not capable of loving him. Maybe - even though the story Ted told indicated that its now the perfect time for them - her feelings for him were never as strong as he hoped they‘d be. I think the scene blends out soon enough for us to still wonder.
robin legit doesn't want children and yet she's willing to settle with good old teddy westside when he has some cause ruining your characters is a great way to form an endin
My issue was t the ending it was good but… the last season was geared towards Barney & Robin… which could’ve taken half the season… we all wanted to actually meet the mother… she dies well ok… none of us were invested enough in HER to care that she died … I wanted to actually meet the mother … the ending felt like the rest of the show where she was hinted at but never revealed
I think this ending is fine... but I prefer the alternate ending where it just ends on a (albeit more predictable) happier note. I think the story still works there. Howd I meet your mom? Oh, at Barney/Robins wedding. Short Story but told in a super long winded way that I was invested in. I know they filmed the ending back in 2005 or whatever, but I felt like over the years the show had grown passed that. But I consider the entire last season to be a shaky ending entirely personally. Still love the show tho!
I think that the showrunner clearly had the ending planned that whole time but when the show evolved past it he refused to let the footage go and instead tried to shoehorn in his original ending. But it's definitely interesting seeing some other perspective on the ending that isn't solely negative.
@@jackdavenport5011 the scene with his kids were all filmed at the beginning so yeah it had to be planned. they did that because the kid actor would age otherwise and it wouldnt fit
Totally agree with all of this. I think a lot of hate this gets (and other long running series/movies as well) is rooted in not getting what you expected. Going back with fresh eyes once you KNOW what you're getting can help you see what was actually being done. So many little things take on new meaning on a rewatch. Victoria for example. The perfect girl. Before knowing the ending, I assumed the point was that the mother was going to be even better than Victoria. That's how great the mom is. But upon rewatching, it feels obvious that Ted is saying, "I once had the perfect girl... but I threw it all away for Robin." It's not about how great Robin is. It's about how great Ted's feelings are for her. Not that Robin is a better match for Ted than Victoria, or better than the mom, not that Robin even has feelings for Ted. It's that Ted cannot escape his feelings for her, and after all these years, that's still true. So yeah. This is a great love story, just not the one we thought we were getting.
But people sometimes do like to be suprised... The problem was that it felt like the writers themselves just wanted to surprise the viewers witht he ending, ignoring if that suited the characters or not. Also, it's very irritating that suddenly when Ted is married and happy, Robin wants him, even tho her feelings for him had died long ago, even tho apparently she had drifted apart from the gang and thus probably didn't interact much with him anymore. They just mention it out of nowhere. It's annoying that this man who has been obsessed with Robin for years, finally gets what he wants... after he got everything Robin couldn't give him from another woman. This woman, Tracy, was just a stepping stone. It's very clear then that Robin never stopped being his top 1.
I dont get why people dislike the ending.. Its life. Not always going the way you want it too. Show display that manymany times. So i dont get why people bashing just because they wanted a different outcome.
Made it to 1:54. Pretty much as soon as hear an effeminate male voice tell me that objectively bad, universally hated pop culture thing was "actually great," I know I'm in for a waste of time.
I always thought the mother at the end dying was common knowledge. Because there was a scene were ted was breaking up with Stella and he shows us an alternative ending with Stella and there kids, but in reallity it is only Ted with his kids and without a mother. (hope you are getting what Iam saying, my english is shit)
I used to hate the ending but after hearing you say " It's a story about Ted and Robin and how they both became the people that they needed to be in order for them to be together ", I kinda see it in a different perspective now, well said my friend 👏
Except this isn’t them becoming the people they needed to be. This is them settling after they got everything they wanted. Ted got his kids and Robin got her career and that was holding them back.
Serious question - Was anyone who watched the entire series surprised by the ending? I would have been more surprised if Ted and Robin didn't end up together. The entire series was about them, really. The mistake the creators made was making season 9 completely different than the first 8... The foundation of the show is them all hanging out at the bar and apartment, in season 9 they were in a completely different location and way too much happened in just a couple of episodes. Like most shows, they had to tie off way too many loose ends in a short period of time and it felt rushed and like a completely different show for the last season.
The show also explicitly told us in the season 8 finale what the ending would be. The ending narration shows Barney and Robin fighting over the wedding, and Ted says “They were fighting about whatever it was they were fighting about that night.” Ted’s imagined monologue at the mother’s door, about how he can’t wait 45 days to meet her, has a broken-hearted, yearning air to it that we all missed the first time because we thought it was just Ted being a hopeless romantic. The performance is very clearly stating subtextually “I want those extra days because now I’ve run out of days with you.”
Yup Tracy was the plot device to give ted the children robin did not want. She did not really matter they could have had ted be together whit any women so she could have given him children. And robin had to have the widely successful carrier. Then they were ready to be together
I don't care about Tracy dying bc he got his epic love, he met their mother. It also adds context for why he's telling the story, he's telling them bc she's gone. I think I don't like the ending bc I watched the whole show through a feminist lens, and since Robin is his friend I saw her as a person instead of a love interest, and she grew sm since they filmed the ending w the kids that idk if s9 Robin would have actually gone back to Ted especially since he has kids. I also feel like Ted was pretty insufferable sometimes so idk if he deserves to get Robin despite wanting completely different things on top of getting exactly what he wanted w Tracy. I would need to know a lot more about what happens w Robin between her divorce and when Ted shows up to change my mind
I liked the ending. I guess that's why it's called controversial instead of just bad. There are people very squarely on both sides of the fence. But regardless of the ending, I think most of us can agree that the show was great.
My only big problem with the HIMYM ending is that they shoved the big shocking surprise and switch down our throats in only the last 7 1/2 minutes of a 9 year series. Even Game Of Thrones had the decency to have Dany go Nuts and murder most of Kings Landing in the 2nd to last episode. I don’t need an M. Night Shamalamadingdong ending to surprise me.
From a storytelling standpoint, himym had a really good ending. I think the reason so many people hated the ending was because they felt like the show had been saying that Ted and Robin weren't meant for eachother. We saw them try to make things work over and over, and it never worked. And after a while I think people stopped wanting them to be together. After so many failed attempts, and seeing them be in much better relationships, the audience just stopped being invested in their relationship. For me, Ted cheating on Victoria to be with Robin really solidified my dislike for Ted and Robin as a couple. It just sorta soured the whole relationship for me. And I also think Barney and Robin's relationship is another big reason people didn't like the ending. They made us get all invested in their relationship, just for it to end offscreen? It made Ted and Robin getting together in the end feel more cheap than satisfying. Like "ooooh you're invested in this couple now? Well too bad, they're divorced because we were planning this other relationship all along!" It makes the development of Barney and Robin's relationship feel like it was for nothing. Idk that's just my thoughts on it. I think thematically the ending is great, I just think they could've done better and made it more satisfying.
People just got caught up in the name and not in the story it was telling from the start. I always knew what was going to happen in the end. It wasn’t a big twist if you paid attention to the actual story they were telling, which was Ted and Robin. The ending was perfect because it was the ending that was set up from the first episode. The biggest issue I had with the ending was it was a little rushed, and they could have actually introduced Ted to the Tracy earlier in the last season and prepared the audience just a little more for her Death. But there are huge markers and clues along the way if you paid attention to it.
@@never.nothing I felt like it was pretty obvious she was going to die. It's pretty heavily foreshadowed in the Time Travelers episode. That's a whole season before the episode depicting her death. Heck, that's before we even meet her.
Totally agree. The mom was never the main character of Ted's story, the "one" was always Robin and was always going to be Robin, even as he was narrating the story for his kids. I'm totally cool with how this all ended, i think the suddenness was just a little much for me in the last season. could have been paced out a little better is all. still my favorite show and still about to start my actual 14th viewing of the whole series.
I saw the show when it had already ended, and I knew the end. I guess this make it for me more of a “enjoy the ride not the destination” show, so I had always thought the ending was perfect.
Yes!!! It great to hear positive things about HIMYM ending because I really liked it too. It made sense seeing as though most of the story is about robin and the writers didn't force a happy ending we would expect. Life doesn't go as we expect it to but we still can find happiness and the writers did a great job finding silver linings through the complexity of life (TV show resembling a man's life).
That perspective thing is key... for example the barney and suit episode was odd for me at first watch because it's impossible that Ted really share that story this way to his kids... but at a 2nd watch i realized Ted is maybe not the only one telling the story.. you know when you have some part of stories from your uncle and aunts and other member of the family and then you get the whole story from your parents? on HIMYM i feel like what we are watching is actually the story on the perspective of the children (as in one or both children are the director of the series) So they provide us with every perspective to understand the family, life, love etc.. That's why i grew to love this show so much more after the ending - i am at my 7th watch by the way :) love your take on the show, please continue!
took me a while to accept/digest but honestly I understand the story so well now. Even though the plot line with barney was later added to thee original plan, Both robin and ted have these emotional obstacles that make it hard for them to love each other in a healthy way. As friends they were transparent, close, trusting but in a relationship their expectations for emotional boundaries and expectations made it hard to make the other person happy. Ted wanting to rush into commitment is just as unhealthy as robins inability to commit and whether with barney or otherwise, i think she knew it would've been easier to recover from an already failing relationship foundation than her friendship with ted that quickly built do to the natural chemistry they share for all the series. Her and Barney being able to spin back shows me that they felt more comfortable with each other due to their ability to just ignore/justify the things they dislike about each other and reflectively, in themselves. they literally reflect each others daddy/mommy issues so well, of which ted had none of because he was raised ideally watching his parents in love, not realising how much accountability conflict resolution requires. Leaving the relationship with their sanity intact tells me they realized they were both running and just happened to run into each other but they both know they deserve more than just lust and trauma bonds (the whole her growing up as a boy is really why they bond like whiskey, cigars, dressing nice, hiding emotions and being strong), making it so that robin realizes her femininity and vulnerability are things she is entitled to and making it so much easier to accept teds love. Ted on the other hand HAD to love and lose because he spent so much time rushing into relationships and had trouble learning that things of quality take time, and he had to set robin free to prove his true love. Life literally is this ironic sometimes.
I don't think Ted is secretly in love with Robin while he was married to Tracy. Tracy IS the love of his life. They did live happily ever after, in sickness and in health, in every definition of those ideals. I think while the show is about Ted believing there can only be one true love for everyone and being proved wrong, as well as 'timing' also being repeatedly stressed by the show to be a critical component of whether or not perfectly suitable people can be together. I find Barney's "it's a successful marriage that only lasted 3 years" line very important to that core concept in the show. The timing was perfect for Barney and Robin to get together, but it is horrible for them to remain together. Robin got everything she wanted career-wise, making it impossible for Barney to keep anything he wanted. They would have to give up dreams and things they cared about to remain together. That's why their marriage wasn't a failure, their timing was the failure. The same goes for Ted and Robin. Robin not only didn't want to have children, it was later revealed she literally can't have children. Had Ted and Robin been together when that was revealed, Ted probably could set aside his life-long dream of having children, but they weren't together, and Ted found Tracy, who was a match for Ted in every way. It was only possible for Ted and Robin to get back together after it's been at least 20 years since Robin's Wedding, Ted's children are teenagers, Tracy unfortunately passed away, and Robin has already achieved everything she wanted in her career. They are both in their 50s by this point, and the timing finally was right for them. Although, it is a bit ironic that Marshall revealed in one episode that he has to imagine Lily dying of a disease before he could fantasize being with other women, and it is essentially what happened to Ted and Tracy.
You know what a real twist would've been like? If Ted poisoned his wife or something after he's had kids with her, something Robin couldn't give him. He lets some time pass and tells his kids the story of how he met their mother, which is told in a way that his kids believe that he's still in love with Robin. After getting a green light from them, he then does the blue French horn thing. It kinda fits in really well, and for all we know, Ted could be a psychopath.
The first time Barney and Robin hooked up I cringed like it was an incest happening. It was exactly the same as Rachel and Joey hooking up in Friends; just wrong. Their chemistry was below zero and I never forgave Barney for doing that to Ted, especially because all of that bro code crap. It was selfish, inconsiderate and beyond hypocritical, which is something you would expect from a psychopath like Barney. It was clear as a day from the very beginning that the central romance of the show was Ted and Robin. I was rooting for them from the start till the very end. These are the reasons I never got invested in Barney and Robin. What kept me going through the last season were the massive hints the writers were dropping that those two are not right for each other and I was just waiting for an ending which finally completed the main storyline from the Pilot. P.S. I couldn't agree more with the video, the perspective changes entirely the second time you watch it. You pick up and piece together much more stuff and it all makes perfect sense.
I think to double on your point of timing there was a point in one of the episodes Ted tell his son Luke that timing is everthing I think , robin and Ted where meant to be but there problem was timing and when the series ended the timing was perfect for Ted and robin as well to be together
My main problem was that they got us so invested in Barney’s growth only for it to be somewhat abandoned for Ted and robin to get back together again. If Barney ended up taking those lessons and being in a committed relationship with someone else I wouldn’t have taken the ending so hard as at least the journey we went with Barney romantically would have meant something.
I never got why they made the whole season about Robin and Barney the could have just made Barney and Quinn endgame and everything would have been fine
It wasn’t that Barney needed to be in a committed relationship, he needed someone he felt would never leave him. After his father abandoning him and the situation with Shannon in the late 90s that sent him down the path of one night stands for years to fill that hole in his heart, he always had abandonment issues.
With Robin, things were better, but he also felt that Robin was putting her career before him and he probably didn’t like that. It’s fucked to think like that, but Barney does have those issues.
However, with his daughter, he was able to find someone that would never leave him and that he can care for for the rest of his life. Robin and Barney weren’t a failure because he probably wouldn’t have reached that point without being in a marriage with Robin, but his love of his life was his daughter and for him to be the best father he can be for her.
Even though the entirety of season 9 dropped, not hints, but atom bombs as to why Barney and Robin wouldn’t work, and why his “development” took a backslide once the marriage ended.
People typically don’t look further, which is why we have people like you and countless others.
Yeah it was so stupid. That’s not how stories work, it’s impossible to give us a satisfying ending when you do that. Especially since the whole point of the last season was Ted finally learning to let Robin go and then the next episode “lol jk the characters actually went through no character development”
@@drpigglesnuudelworte5209 Yeah that is my biggest gripe with the ending. The "twist" that Ted is still in love with Robin is done during season 9 with the locket story and it concludes with Ted literally letting go of Robin in probably one of the best episodes of the show. The show concludes their arc there but then goes back to the point it had already made to give it an alternate ending and it just doesn't make sense and invalidates all the powerful scenes in S9.
My biggest problem was the final season focuses so much on Ted moving on and letting Robin go, just for it to all mean nothing in the end.
Absolutely this. The evaluation in this video would be very accurate if I didn’t feel the writers worked so hard to get him to move on. It was emotional and fulfilling and then torn away with a “you still love Robin.”
If the show was a Robin/Ted love story this part was poorly handled. Either skip it or show how the love happens again, don’t just jerk it away a few episodes later.
Same with Barney and Robin’s development. It was well done and fulfilling and then in a little cut just undone.
My problem with HIMYM is not Robin, my problem with this show is the DRAMA in the last seasons.
We didn't need ANY of that.
Drama is not why most of us got into "how I met your mother".
Hard agree. Robin was the worst in the whole last half of the series, and I can't agree enough that they got him to move on SO WELL and then the final scene, after all of that, is him with the blue french horn :( absolute garbage
This is the entire point of the show, learning to let go.
It did mean something. If you experience this in your life, then you’ll understand. You can let go and still love someone for the rest of your life even if your not with them. Plus it wasn’t as if Ted rushed over after his wife dies, he waited 6 years!
The ending was already filmed when the first season aired, since the kids couldn’t age 9 years from start to finish. I feel like this might have held the writers back in writing a suitable ending. After like 5 seasons, the ending might have worked. But we went through so much character development (especially Barney’s) only to have it all basically thrown away because ted and robin had to end up together since it was decided from the beginning. We were led to believe Barney and robin were a good couple that complimented each other, and ted and robin wouldn’t work out, only for it to completely change in the last 10 mins of the series
very true, the finale was too rushed
@@jojoyoshi5472 season 9 shouldn't have been a finale
My 2 cents on this would be that the kids’ aging is a very insignificant part of the show, like I appreciate the continuity but i’d much rather have them show different kids at the end than have a shitty ending. Also, I feel like a little bit of editing is enough to cut out the robin scene and give it a proper ending.
Totally
Just cast different similar looking kids. I know the internet would have produced video after video, meme after meme, but doing that and having a better ending, alongside explaining why the same kids as were there in the beginning weren't used in the scene at the end would have been much better than using a scene that wasn't fit for purpose in the finale. I'm not actually against the ending that happened it was that it will happened in one episode after methodically going through years and years of events. There needed to be more time with the mother, more time with Robin and Barney falling out to cause the divorce, and then it would have all been ok. The pacing was just all wrong and left you thinking - wait, what!!! Not good storytelling or TV either for that matter.
I would be fine with the ending if they would have not wasted the entire season making us believe Barney and Robin are meant to be together, only for them to get divorced in 15 mins of the last two episode. And then for Barney to get back to his old trick to get laid, undoing his whole character development. They did Robin dirty. They showed Robin as this strong, independent woman who finally gave love a chance, only for her to be lovelorn girl who gets jealous of Ted and Tracy, not because she likes Ted, but because she hates the fact that is sth she could have had. Then using the mother's death as a plot device to get Ted and Robin together.
Its not that I hate that the mother died. Its fine, its life, I know it happens! But at least lead us to that death, I know the foreshadowing was done. But she just dies, like that in the last episode, without a fair warning. Maybe have the 10 episodes about Barney and Robin's wedding, then the latter episode leading to Ted and Tracy's relation and showing cracks of Barney and Robin and maybe showing why we should cheer for Ted and Robin, when the whole last season, they showed us that they weren't good for each other. So, why should we believe that they will be fine together even at the end?
Why? The children would've known the story better, and having just made peace with their mother's death, would've preferred not to linger on it. Ted and Robin were already close in 2030, and Robin had likely made peace with who she was and her interests considering how goofy she became by that point, so their getting together seems a natural conclusion. Barney and Robin very clearly did not work, unless you've forgotten that her career only really picked up around the time they got married, and neither of them was truly looking for yet another relationship to define who they were as people. Barney needed stability and a healthy relationship, which he actually got with his daughter, while Robin needed to be at peace with herself and stop caring what others thought of her, which is why she connected with Ted's kids while being whatever she wanted to be (she stopped trying to be cool or put up an unnecessary front).
It was more Like Ted trying to reinforce the issue that barney and robbin didn't work out the only person for her was him
Are there really people who could suspend disbelief long enough to ship Robin and Barney?
@@voluntaryismistheanswer yes, especially when you make the viewer spend 440 minutes watching their wedding day and why they work. The ending basically cheats you out of 7 hours of your time
@@danielf1833 You must have seen a different 440 minutes than I did. In that same 440 minutes I saw that there were two people who wanted to make it work, but clearly were not equipped to do so. Did you miss that Mama Scherbasky telling Robin that Barney was too much like Papa Scherbasky? Did you miss that Barney's doubts were keeping him from getting dressed? Did you miss that Mam Scherbasky asks Robin, point blank, "do you have someone who will always put your needs ahead of himself" and Robin is clearly not thinking of Barney when she says "yes"?
One wants to believe it will all work out. One turns a blind-eye to the extant problems. I've spent a "weekend in Farhampton." I watched two dear friends get married, and they got more than three years out of their marriage, but it still went bust. And in hindsight, the deal-breaker was a trait they both knew about before they ever dated. That's how life can be. And in a show which dealt with the parents divorcing, parents dying, parents never really even being together, and the female romantic lead learning she's infertile, how life can be should never be discounted.
I'm fine with the mother dying but it's Ted going back to Robin that I have a problem with. We spent the last seven seasons reinforcing that those two in the end do not work together romantically long term
Because their goals at that point in their lives did not align. Ted truly loved Tracy. Tracy passed away. Ted was able to have the family he always wanted with a woman he truly loved. Robin was able to pursue her career and get to the heights she had always dreamed. Both Robin and Ted were in a place (16 years after) where they didn't have their "thing" holding them back from committing to each other. This is a real story - not a fairy tale TV ending.
Same
Yeah like, that’s just not how stories work. You can’t give a satisfying ending when you undo all that character development
I think that's why he's saying it's a different show when you watch it again. I think the biggest misstep in the final episode is Barney not being in a committed relationship after he an Robin separate. You guys are saying it undoes character development, but I would say otherwise. Robin and Ted's relationship grows to the point that they could be in a long term romantic relationship together in the last episode, that's their character growth. Barney in the end gets no growth, he's right back where he started.
What about Barney's daughter?
My biggest problem was how fast they went through the final parts
1.they skip all of robin and barney's marriage only showing the bad part
2. We only get to see Tracy for a phew episodes and then she just dies
3. We don't get to see the mosby family just being happy no they skip to robin and ted
Yeah. I think it would've been good if the wedding arc was shorter and the last two episodes be like half that season, or better yet, have a tenth season, maybe shorter, showing Ted and Tracy being happy and Robin and Barney's marriage being successful and then showing cracks which leads to divorce. Then Tracy gets sick and we have a couple of episodes after she dies showing us what could only be described as the worst of times, having Ted be supported by the gang and slowly through many episodes, him and Robin starting to get close again
@@xgise yep
The happy parts are the boring parts
Especially considering how long they take with much less interesting parts of the story. It would be better to have had a real love story with the mom, real loss, then a kind of rediscovery of his history with Robin and the same with Robin and Barney…
I think it would've been impossible to portray Ted & Tracy's love story as anything other than boring and cheesy. The few short clips of them getting together were already almost too much. The show was leading up to the big moment they finally meet, there's really not much left to tell after that.
The ending was very rushed, no argument there, I think the last 10 minutes should've been spread out into about 2 episodes. But not much more than that.
I’ve always believed that the Barney and robin wedding season should have been season 8. Season 9 should have been developing how Ted finally moves on from Tobin and meets Tracy. We have a whole show where the girls that Ted meets are developed throughout the whole show but Tracy was basically the last couple episodes only for her to die
thy focused a whole season for barney and robin wedding with fillers only for them to divorce the next ep, and they showed so little of tracy and she didnt even lived through the end
season 9 was great, but they should have covered all the events in the finale over more than 2 episodes.
I think they should have developed the ending over the course of entire season or two. The last season felt rushed just to provide a "twist" ending. In doing so, they undermined a lot of character development in many of the main characters.
They should have called it How I settled for your mother.
Then I guess the mother is the same way because she settled with Ted because her ex Max died?
Well he loved the mother so it’s more like he settles for robin at the end
@@MichaelAnthonyPresents not really because she had her own personal arc about learning that it was okay to genuinely love again and that she deserved to be in love
@@drpigglesnuudelworte5209 So did Ted, his arc was actually a lot longer, and they based an entire TV show on it... 'How I Met Your Mother', maybe you've heard of it?
did you already forget the episode where hes all alone at the bar?
The biggest problem I have with this ending is that it COULD have worked if they'd given it more time. Maybe shorten the wedding to a few episodes and have Ted and Tracy's love story, have the whole arc of Barney and Robin's marriage not ending up like they expected, have Ted and Tracy and Lily and Marshall with their families, have Barney for once unhappy with just picking up 20 year olds at the bar and maybe show him learning how to be a dad and going to Ted and Marshall for advice after his baby is born, have Robin feel SO left out and just not knowing what to do with herself other than focusing on her work and her dogs, maybe throw a little something extra in her arc, show Tracy's sickness and how hard it hit Ted and their kids, show Ted learning how to take care of his kids on his own and wanting to go back to the dating scene but being too scared about hurting his family by doing so.
The ending makes sense when you’re watching the first two seasons and not much after. Let’s break it this way, from the perspective of Robin’s love life:
Season 1: Ted’s in love with Robin
Season 2: Ted dates and breaks up with Robin
Season 3: Barney sleeps with and falls in love with Robin
Season 4: Barney is in love with Robin
Season 5: Barney and Robin date but fail as they are both not mature enough for commitment at this point
Season 6: Robin dates Don prompting Barney and Ted to drunkenly chase after her
Season 7: Robin is now in love with Barney but let’s him go for Nora and she dates Kevin, before Barney and Robin sleep together and contemplate getting back together, but Robin backs out. Ted out of the blue confesses his love to Robin and is rejected by her. He moves on to Victoria.
Season 8: It is hinted from the beginning that while Barney and Robin are in a relationship with other people, they still have feelings for each other. A cat and mouse chase later begins where they end up getting engaged. Ted thinks Robin “should” be with him even though she has no feelings for him.
Season 9: The entire season is just Barney and Robin’s wedding weekend. Ted lets Robin finally go.
The finale: Barney and Robin immediately divorce, which is okay despite the build-up, and Ted finds true love and happiness. He marries the “one” and spends over a decade with her, having two kids, and then she passes away, which would explain why Ted is telling the heartfelt story to begin with. It’s sad and touching to hear of how they met and how they were separated by fate after many happy years.
30 seconds after that heartfelt moment we hear the kids dismissing the story as him just being in love with Robin, despite him being in love only at the beginning and near the end, and then bam they do the French horn thing despite no explanation as to why Ted wants Robin now, except that they’re both old and single so why not.
This is not a good ending for so many reasons, but the main one is the stupid tone shift from telling us the mother tragically died young to Ted getting Robin back all within a minute.
We should have felt sorrow for the mother’s death but instead it just felt like she was killed off to get Ted and Robin back together.
"We should have felt sorrow for the mothers death"
Yes. This.
Maybe find some way of weaving in the foreshadowing scenes from earlier in the show, before switching the game up.
While the overall story might have everything one might have wanted, the ending was a narrative/emotional curveball.
These kinda twists worked so well in earlier episodes, I don't know why the actual ending of the series was so loose with its emotional impact
The mother's death is theorised to have occurred a few years before Ted tells the story, and the story itself isn't supposed to have taken all that long to tell, meaning that the children naturally questioned all the build-up. I think anyone can tell from the pilot episode that Robin is one of the key focuses of the story, and you have to follow through on something so integral to the show, which I think they did. I've explained it at length in another reply.
@@RP-mp4ow Are you insane? There was so much build-up about the way Ted was heartbroken about losing Tracy, and how that forced him to reflect on himself as a person and all the stupid stuff he did in the past, and the person he had to become in order to be a good partner to her. There's a good chance that Ted told his kids this story after they had made peace with the Mother's death, and were reminiscent of her, with Ted verbalising his emotions so that he could finally let go. That's why the kids moved on from the story, they KNOW he loved her and would ALWAYS do so, just like she loved Max but still moved on and lived her life as best as she could. People always forget about the Max thing, maybe because they don't analyse the nuance of Tracy as they should to actually get her character and arc. The emotional impact felt rushed for sure, but Ted probably rushed things from there because he had already gotten to the point where he met their mother, and they likely knew a majority of what had happened from then on. He covered the key points as he saw them after the whole reflection, of course the Barney-Robin divorce felt rushed to him, he barely saw them after the wedding! You cannot cherry-pick when the central framing device of the whole story is important or not, it always should be, or it just isn't. Robin being a different person is also established from the onset, about how much she came to care for Ted's kids and naturally formed a relationship with them over time, meaning they likely looked to her for comfort and formed a bond after their mother's demise. I'd argue that Barney and Robin's relationship was never meant to be, not because they didn't care for one another, but simply because they couldn't find what they actually needed in that relationship. Robin didn't need Barney's approval, because he loved her entirely and she needed to find it within herself, which I doubt she could do so quickly if her father remained the way he did, but her growth from a person so concerned with how others thought of her to a goofball Aunt who could care about her own interests and her loved ones finally gave her some peace. Barney didn't get the stability he desired from a relationship with Robin, or with any of the women in his life besides his friends and relatives, so he gave himself to his daughter because that bond gave him the bedrock that he desired. He could be a father, even if he didn't actually marry someone and remained a bachelor, that is his choice and doesn't affect his growth as a person. I wish the deleted scenes were added to the finale, they create so much context for the story, and the show ends very appropriately with Marshall singing another benign but annoyingly catchy song.
They could have done it better and still had it end the same. The kids: "we get it dad you love Robin". Tearful Ted: "No I don't, I thought I did but I never truly loved anyone the way I loved your mother, the way I love you two. I started this to explain why I feel up for dating again and why I think Robin might be the one I feel comfortable with, but talking about your mom again I don't know". The kids: "Dad you deserve to be happy it's been 6 years." Ted through his tears: "I'll try." Cuts to Robin holding Ted on her couch with Ted saying: "You might not be my one, but I just miss her so much and you've always made me happy. I just want to be happy." Robin smiling but slightly sad says: "Ted, I love you and I want that too." Cuts to black.
Not the over the top romance, that always backfired for Ted and never was Robin's thing. This shows Ted has learned to just be open and honest, which is true love and romance, not a French Horn. It shows Ted truly loved Tracy. And you see two of your favorite characters together trying to make each other happy.
Also for this to work they need to improve the Barney Robin divorce somehow so it doesn't ruin Barney's growth.
@@danielbrhel8344 It didn’t, his growth is what led to a divorce and no extramarital affairs. Also, Ted wouldn’t ask Robin to be his ‘backup wife’ in earnest, because that’s messed up. People move on, just like Tracy did from Max, not because he wanted to but because humans adapt and Ted’s romanticism and his closeness with Robin makes the whole thing make sense. Robin does care for Romance, just not like Ted does, Ted romanticises romance, while Robin just appreciates direct gestures, with the French horn (‘Orchestra’ line makes me cry every time) being a critical component of this. If Ted had an arc, it was finding out that Love is what gives you happiness, which he found in Tracy when he let Robin go, and then later found in Robin when he had to let Tracy go. That’s how it ended, and it was amazing, especially after you start catching all the little things here and there. I think we need to get over the ending, because unlike more recent shows, this ending won’t piss us off the more we think about it (GOT, Star Wars EPISODE 9: Rise of Skywalker.)
My main complaint about the ending is is that Ted had actually let go of Robin in the final season and the entire final season shows us how Robin and Barney work, only for it to get flipped in the final moments.
I get the mother dying , its sad but it has been foreshadowed several times during the show. (For example In the time travelers episode)
i cry everytime i see that episode, my gf didnt see the ending yet so she was wondering why i found that scene so sad. it hurts way more when you know the ending
I don't remember what's sad about that episode, could you explain please?
@@Pan666 Basically Ted goes back in time and goes to the apartment where the mother lives and says "we are going to meet in 45 days and i want to spend every last one with you" or something like that
@@adri7063 Oh yeah, thanks
he never let go lmao you can see it all through if you rewatch
I just hate how the children look so damn happy saying that this is not a story about their mother but a story of how much Ted loved Robin. Robin messed up Ted's heart so many times that it is hard for me to feel happy they ended up together. I know life sucks and people die and we have to move on, but we invested so many hours figuring out who the mother was, just for the last episode having the kids saying "get over mom, go after aunt Robin... AGAIN!"
It was so ridiculous and unnecesary.
I *still* hate the ending with every fiber of my being.
Agreed
this show has so much more to say than that. it isn't just a rehashing of Friends
Didn't 'watch' the show huh
me
too
Regardless of your thoughts on the ending, I think we can all agree that HIMYM is definitely the best modern laugh-track sitcom.
is it?using laugh track, the creators always deflected that question
@@pp-vf8ls It's only done in editing, there isn't a live audience or awkward pauses, which allows the writers and actors to actually think about how funny the lines and delivery are.
I finished almost 10 years ago. Can't be considered modern
@@pp-vf8ls Plus sometimes if you listen carefully you could here the exact same laugh in the background
So for their laugh tracks they played the episode to people after to catch their laughs. Probably recorded them and used them at different points they didn't get a good enough laugh that filled an awkward void.
think the problem i have with the ending is that it completely goes back on the growth and character development of the past 9 seasons
The issue with the whole “unreliable narrator” thing is that, if you expand that idea to the entire series, then you can’t trust ANY of it. THAT is one of my biggest problems.
but with that you had so much choice with how to perceive the story but i agree icl it was annoying not knowing what was true or what wasn't
yeah like what's even the point of the show if Ted could've been lying out his ass the whole time
One way to overbroaden the point. Ted is still very reliable. He didnt always paint himself in the greatest light. And he loved his ppl so he portrays these zany lovable ppl as accurately as he remembers them as they are still in his life.
The problem with this is several things though
1. The series showed multiple times why Ted and Robin aren’t compatible
2. Introducing the mother and then turning her into a macguffin for the entire series is just insulting to the audience
3. Saying Ted is an unreliable narrator doesn’t make the ending any less lazy
So, I agree tons with your stuff on perspective, but there were a lotta flaws here too.
1. the whole marriage of ted and the mom feels cheap cuz he still had that thing for robin.
2. you spend a whole season on the wedding building barney and robin up.
3. you kinda screw up barney's character development
4. how would ted and robin work out if they hadn't worked out for soo long.
5. Spending an entire season for Ted moving on from Robin, only for him to chase her back.
Hell, at least make HER do the work and have her bring the blue french horn to him, so it doesnt break the rest of the season that much (although, Barney would still be ruined).
my only problem is that his voice changes from Bob Saget to Ted Mosby... other than that, I actually think that the finale was brilliant and didnt get enough credit for continuity. Although i would have loved for TED and ROBINS pact to get married at 40 if they were both single.. if they made it 50, maybe a little more serendipitous
yessss
It doesn't matter what to motive was in telling the story, Tracy was nothing but an incubator for teds kids so he could have his cake and eat it to. She was not even human at the end just a place holder for robin keeping the seat warm for her as it were.
I get why they went the way that they went. I understand that the story was meant to be a portrayal of how Ted isn't really over Robin. I'm fine with that. But what really irked me about the ending is just how unsatisfying Barney's storyline was. Yes he does find a way to truly love a girl but it's only through his daughter, which he accidentally has due to a binge after he relapses from his much healthier lifestyle. It just feels like barney got thrown to the wayside to make way for Ted and Robin. I would have been much more accepting of the ending had they really explained why Barney and Robin didn't work, and then shown how being in a loving relationship, even if it didn't work out in the end, changed him for the better. The way they did it basically just killed his arc in less than 20 minutes without a proper conclusion.
Plus, just going to put it out there that Tracey was such a fun and compelling character, yet we only got to experience her for such a short time and couldn't see how she really fit into the group as a whole. Those are the reasons I was dissatisfied with the ending. Because the writers had a one track mind on how to get Ted and Robin together in the end, the other characters didn't have any sort of proper conclusion. While this show is just as much a story about Ted meeting Tracey and Ted not being over Robin, It's also about the gang, the group of goofballs who always sat at the same booth in McLaren's pub.
Ted was over Robin for years, but because life got in the way, it opened the door for him to maybe reconnect with someone who he’s still close with. Tracy moved on from Max with Ted, but no one says that Ted is just her consolation prize, so I don’t get why they make Ted out like he thinks Tracy is a consolation prize. Ted loved Tracy more than words can describe, just look at the Time Travelers episode, he wouldn’t of had that monologue about how much he wishes he could spend just 45 seconds longer with her.
Time went by and he decided to date again, just like many others after their significant other passes away. It’s not super common you’ll find someone who has their significant other die at a young age and you never date again, Ted waited 6 years and even though he’s back together with Robin, he will never stop loving Tracy.
@@MichaelAnthonyPresents THANK YOU SO MUCH! Finally, someone actually mentions Max, who perfectly parallels Ted and Tracy's story! People don't think about how close Robin and Ted's family were described to be from the very first season, and how she was a goofy fun aunt who probably became a motherly figure for the kids and formed a bond with them after their mother died. The Barney and Robin pairing was atrocious from the beginning, but the writing and acting were so effective that people stopped seeing that, and even then the writing was only trying to show why the two even got together while still highlighting all the issues. People just see what they want to see, and it pisses me off to see random people on the internet off-handedly calling the ending sh*t when they've barely glanced over the synopsis and the rhetoric. Meanwhile, I've seen the show about twenty times in the last year, and it has become deeply important to me in how it has resonated with me. Seeing half-baked dipsh*ts dog on it pisses me off so much. Sorry for the outburst, it just gets so annoying, but I am grateful for your comment.
thats the perspective of ted tho maybe barney wasnt that bad at all but ted was seeing him as that defiled human because he was with the woman he loved and always thought he didnt deserve her
@@theperson8539 Yeah, but there's a difference. Tracy met Ted for the first time after Max died, it's not like she had met Ted before and was obsessed with him. To me, the problem is that the mother, Tracy, feels just like a way to give Ted the conventional life he wanted, get married and have kids... After he gets all that, the mother must disappear so that Ted get the one girl he had actually wanted all along but who couldn't give him that, Robin. It seemed to me that the writers loved Ted way too much. There was no way Ted couldn't get everything he wanted in the end. The mother didn't matter that much, she was there just to provide Ted with the comfortable married life he had yearned for... at least thats how I perceived when I saw how fast they wanted us to move on from Tracy's death.
@@alexxacastillo515 They wanted us to move on from the death because they couldn’t really linger for too long after Ted meets the mother, as that would kind of f*ck up the entire framework of the show. I think the issue is that you really like Tracy, but had grown indifferent of Ted over time, and that might be the reason for your distraction.
10 different ways HIMYM could've ended and it would've been better
10. Tracy is dead but Ted remains single and tells the story in memory of her
9. Tracy is alive and that's how the story ends
8. Tracy is alive but the kids can't believe the Barney/robin divorce so the show ends with the window scene but it's Barney instead.
7. Ted ends up with Barney. it would work better
6. the whole show is a script for a wedding bride spinoff
5. it's an audiobook in Marshall's car
4. Barney begins to tell his daughter his version of the story
3. Ted is dying, not Tracy, and he's telling his story to his kids
2. the gang meets at Mcclarens all these years later
1. 3 again because that sounds lie a pretty good ending
#3, Ted is dying. or, create a spin-off episode where Tracy Moseby sits the kids down to tell them her story. But they better hurry, Tracy dies this year (2024).
I liked the premise behind the ending. Tracy being dead makes sense, and him getting with Robin was a good twist. It was executed poorly. It made me feel like it Ted was just a guy longing for the “Glory Days” or something
Ok so what's the morale of the story then? "If you love her, be in her friendzone for ages and see her date millions of dudes, even let her marry the other dude, your (second) best friend, because you know that eventually, perhaps, maybe, when you're 50 she will want to be with you *(its not yet the punchline)* not even because she wants you as much, but just because she lost her competitive advantage and neither of you want to die alone?
No... This ending is just a way to finish the if-youre-still-single-after-50-we'll-be-together meme. Really if feels like nothing more than just a reference. Its not the ending the characters deserve.
I would've accepted that Robin and Barney divorced after three years despite all the buildup for their wedding and the writer's clear effort in making us believe they could really work out fine... had they not undone all of Barney's growth and had they not suddenly, out of nowhere, make Robin "fall in love" with Ted. They never show us how this happened, it's just mentioned in Lily and Robin's conversation because it's all very rushed. Also, the way Lily and Marshall talk about her is just so sad, like... for some reason Robin never interacts with the gang anymore but Ted is the exception, even though the most logical thing would be for Robin to avoid him because she's in love with him now and it hurts her to see him with Tracy. Of course, Robin is unhappy because she chose to prioritize her career. Very surprising. But well, let's get to Barney's character destruction. It's not good writing to make Barney change because of her daughter. I cried when I watched that scene, but it's such a stupid decision to go back and forth and to imply that a man can only respect women if he's in love with one and on a monogamous relationship or if he's a father. That's the only way Barney could ever be a decent man, because as soon as he and Robin divorced he want back to his lying and scheming just to get laid.
Another issue I have with the ending, and the show overall, is that the writers obviously love Ted so so much. I don't know if they see themselves in Ted or what, but they clearly wanted to give Ted everything he had always wanted in the end, which is a happy married life with kids and Robin. Since both weren't compatible, they had to get another woman to provide him with the first part. After that, Tracy wasn't needed anymore, because now he could be with Robin without having to give up on the traditional life he wanted. So, Tracy had to die. Again, the fact that this was all very rushed makes me think that it was not that important... the important part comes after that, Ted finally getting his dream girl, Robin. Let's not fool ourselves, Ted's feelings for Robin were never a healthy thing, he was obsessed for years. The ending tries so hard to get us to believe this is sweet... and honestly, I teared up a bit. I would've liked the ending if they had never make it seem like Robin's feelings for Ted were over for a very long time, only to bring them back to life in the last episode and if they had actually taken their time to develop this relationship again and this time, in a healthy way. It would've been okay then. Still, what happened to that whole scene of Ted "letting go" of Robin? Honestly, it's always "I'm gonna try again with Robin".
Most people I've talked with aren't unhappy with the ending because "Ted didn't end up with the mother", it's because he ended up with Robin. He could've end up with another woman, or maybe just deciding to start dating again. But Robin? I always remember that whatever questionable thing Ted did that involved the possibility of getting with Robin was excused by the fact that ITS ROBIN (I can hear Ted saying "but it's ROBIN"). Also, the themes and messages the shows tried to convey are all over the place, it's like they change their mind depending on the situation and depending on wether or not it benefits Ted. Also, please let's not pretend that making something "realistic" or "similar to how life really is, messy" is a show's goal or something it should aim to be.
I've watched this show four times, and I know that this story is really about Ted's undying feelings for Robin (I mean, Ted's kids themselves tell us), and it doesn't make it any better. It makes it even more infuriating... because I'm tired of this complicated stories where the guy pesters a girl until she dates him, doesn't work but he still is hung up on her. I can't get over that scene when Ted says "theres not top 5, theres only a top 1, and it's you, Robin". Because then those girls you dated and said you loved mean nothing? Even going as early as season one, he said he thought Victoria was the one, and still ditched her when he realized he could get Robin. So, to me, Victoria and Tracy aren't much different, I have no reason to believe the contrary.
Exactly thank you. And I couldn’t watch it all the way through more than once I owned all the DVDs it was my favorite show but that ending broke me and I know there’s a alternate ending on the dvd but what’s the point. Thank you for this comment it was great.
@@FreneticFolklore I liked season 9 because Cristin Milioti did such a good job. I would have preferred a season 10 with her in the cast where Ted and Tracy’s life together gets developed and we see the reasons behind Barney and Robin’s breakup. Tracy would die toward the end of the season and then Robin would be there for Ted and his children for a few episodes, establishing the reason for why their feelings for each other come back to the surface. It would also redeem Robin a bit instead of being the commitmentphobic woman who can’t decide what she wants.
@@paradoxmo I agree. In order for the ending to work, they needed another season or two to more fully develop a more reasonable ending. Life is messy. People die. The people we marry sometimes don't work out in spite of being sure they will. Pretty much any ending would have been reasonable as long as it was explained well and didn't completely undermine all the character development in the past seasons.
I believe its from an unused scene that really wraps the whole ending together.
Where ted and robin go out for lunch and robin misreads what ted is saying and she confesses that she has feelings for ted but ted shoots it down, saying he doesnt feel that way about her and that hes happy with his wife and kids.
Overall showing that ted moved on from robin, that tracy wasn’t just settling for 2nd best
Exactly!!
They should have kept that scene. It would have definitely changed how people thought about the ending of the show. Ted was happy with Tracy and didn't even think about Robin. It was years after Tracy died-six years is a pretty long time. That scene was crucial for the ending they showed.
While this brings a new appreciation to the ending, I loved how the show was showing us how this obsession with Robin kind of trapped Ted and getting out of it led him to a happier life. It was amazing how they set up a typical sitcom relationship (Ted and Robin in season 1) and made us not even want it at the end, we moved on WITH Ted, he grew into an amazing husband. Then what I disliked was that all being thrown out the window for another chance at Robin? It felt like using the mother, who was a great person, for kids so now the only thing wrong with their relationship is all good now? When it wasn’t, they were incompatible for many reasons explored in the show.
The showruners plan an ending not knowing how many seasons of the show or how their characters would develop and in the last episode they need it to regress 3 of the main characters to be how they were at the beginning so the ending could "work" as planned
Wait, do non TV characters not regress? This is a story from Ted's perspective (for the most part) so the story will be ABOUT him. This isn't about which "ship" you liked most, the story arc was ALWAYS about Ted/Robin. If the mother were the focal point of this story, it wouldn't have taken 9 seasons to get to her. The final season was mishandled as far as episodic content, but the ending itself was actually pretty spot-on with the day one narrative.
The character development got kicked to death just bcoz they shot that scene around S2/S3.
They shouldn't have gone to the tracy route then and should have continued with Ted and Robin.
Frankly, I'm not convinced it would have worked. Part of the reason I was drawn to the show in the first place was because we didn't get to see the mother until the end.
@@dominicishmael sure real people regress but last time I checked characters aren't people so don't follow the same conventions (if the characters regressed they need like an arc) also no it was not always about ted and robin ted and robin literally aren't even a plot line for most of the show and all three arcs for barney robin and ted in the final season specifically shoot down ted and robin also bro is saying this isn't about ships but here's why my ship is better like childish response man
@@a_little_flame589 You're responding to a 2 year old comment? 😂 You're welcome to disagree.
If this was their original intention, why make Robin SOOOOOO unlikeable. In the beginning I was happy when they got together. I was happy even when it was a possibility. But once Robin and Barney started officially dating and it was practically thrown in our face how she sucks as a person, focusing a whole season on the wedding of Robin and Barney, I’m supposed to want to be happy Ted and Robin are starting up again? Especially when they also did an AMAZING job making Tracy extremely likable and compatible with ted.
If you only saw the first and last episode you’d be like aw cute. However after everything that happened and how selfish Robin was time and time again you just wish Tracy was alive and they didn’t pull this shit
Exactly Robin almost has no redeeming traits and they waste time putting her into relationships when we all know she can't commit to shit and then she finally commits and we get the conclusion of her character only for her to divorce Barney breaking her entire development and becoming Ted's girlfriend again.
The problem is what the ending does to several characters, and how it flies in the face of the rest of the show. 1. It ends up rendering barney to his playboy lifestyle only to hand him grow up after he has a daughter.
2. It doesn't really make robin look very good because she put her career ahead of her marriage even though the show goes to great lengths to show us that Barney really was something special for her and she was ready to settle down (plus having two such screwed up individuals introduce a little normalcy and stability to each other was executed great, and they threw that away)
3. Tracy is done dirty. She barely gets a chance to exist as he own character (although what we do get is great, especially her back story with Max) and while he chemistry with Ted is phenomenal, it would have been nice to see that breathe a little bit more. The show commits so much time to Stella, Victoria, and Zoey but Tracy barely gets anything, and its done in service of Ted finally getting together with Robin.
4. The entire show is partly an essay on why Ted and Robin do not work together. They are better as friends, they always were. There's a reason why Robin was willing to settle down work Barney and not Ted. Tracy is literally made in a factory for Ted, and while i don't hate that she dies as a plot point, it is handled so weird, and feels so much like the writers brushed her aside to get Ted with Robin instead.
I also thought it had a good ending. I just think they didn't executed it well, it was too rushed.............. I wish in the final season they hadn't made episodes like 'bedtime stories' and instead used the time to show how Robin and Barney's marriage eroded. Maybe they could have done an episode where they juxtapose Ted & Tracy flourishing and Robin $ Barney deteriorating, or something like that. To put everything within a few minutes of each other was just overwhelming and seemed rushed.
i agree haha "bedtime stories" is kind of a waste of an episode, and there are a couple other ones like that in season 9 as well!
Personally even when looking through this lends, it still portrays Ted (to me) as a complete narcissist. His narrative was to always making him brooding over never getting the opportunity to settle down with Robin but that just makes it weird, like “well kids I could’ve had her a long time ago, but I told her to get married to Barney and then your mom came around” makes it feel messy and makes it feel less of fate but more of a convenience that their mom and ted met. Also with Teds narrative it at times made Barney to look as such a bad guy and maybe that could come down to him suggesting that’s why Robin and him didn’t work. And additionally adding the story of Barney having a baby as clarity seems like a justification that ted could after Robin because his best friend found his true love in his daughter. Obviously this over the top thinking and although I love this show, I still hate those last 2 minutes and still don’t find ted to be so compelling. Barney and Marshall’s characters made the show, along with the chemistry and the intrigue of the mother.
"Telling your kids how you love a woman that is not their mother and use their mother as one of the escapes" is such a wonderful epic love story.
Imagine if Victoria had been the mother. That moment at the architects ball with "Victoria" by the kinks in the background is easily one of my favorites of the series.
Yeah that was such a great one!
She was originally the backup mother if the show got cancelled
@ Anthony Kvesic fucking wow lmao
Think part of the problem I have with the ending is that it felt kind of like his whole relationship with Tracey was a way for him to have kids before getting together with Robin. I understand how that was a big reason the timing wasn’t right in their relationship, but it makes the episode where Robin finds out she can’t have kids almost less impactful, because you know she ends up with step kids, so it’s almost like she doesn’t actually have to fully accept that she can’t have her own. It does make it less bitter going down don’t get me wrong and she shouldn’t be tied to not having kids just because she can’t biologically, but still.
The shows creators needed a gimmick - an unexpected ending that wasn’t so predictable based on the title or the show. The problem is - they never know how popular the show will be, how many seasons the show will go for, so they always have to come up with new content for each season. The Barney/ Robin relationship was perfect for this purpose and instantly became a big hit with fans. They hit a home run with the mother too. They are very talented writers. So the further they get from the shows original ending, the harder it will be to circle back and have everything make sense. Tracey was the love of teds life, the one great love - this is indisputable despite pontificating whether or not the main love story of the series is between Robin and Ted. Life is sh*tty, tragedies happen, people die before they are supposed to. That’s as real as it gets. Ted can find love and happiness even after meeting the one,but they did Barney dirty.
The ending of the series was actually planned and partially filmed during season 2 of the show. I think it was less of a gimmick and more that they wrote themselves into a corner by writing the ending so early. They couldn't have predicted how the show and the characters would evolve over time, and so they had to scramble to fit the original ending into the story. But they absolutely did Barney dirty
@@Silvermooncat123 we are saying the same thing. The original planned ending was the gimmick. Imagine pitching the show to CBS with the title “how I met your mother”. The big reveal is the mother dies and he ends up with Robin. That’s the surprise ending that they locked themselves into (especially already filming the ending with his kids).
@@dustierbottoms Ah, my bad I misunderstood. That's a really good point.
I took the ending of “How I met your mother” to Ted telling his kids “Who I wished your mother was”. Because if at any time Robin was ready to settle down and could have children, Ted would have done it in a heartbeat.
not when he was with Tracy though
@@jojoyoshi5472 he would have definitely left Tracy for Robin Lmfao
@@jojoyoshi5472 maybe not, but they sure made it seem like he would
No. I think he loved Tracy way more than Robin. But she died, so then Ted's old feelings for Robin resurfaced.
Yes, but that was squashed with that episode when Robin learns she can't have kids. Having Robin talk to the kids she'll never have was both brilliant and devastating.
The biggest thing we’ve learned with the ending was that sometimes we aren’t preparared to live a great love ‘cause that isn’t the right moment. Time is the key.
I genuinely believe this is one of the most beautifully written pieces of television ever.
If should have ended like this "barney and Robin have not had divorce but things are not working out, Robin goes to Ted's place expresses her love to him and then ted ask her about barney but then Robin kisses ted , cut to barney is sitting in McLaren's bar alone and someone says something weird and then barney goes challenge... accepted..." the end.......credits
Ted and Robin getting back together was the worst ending that could’ve happened. Their whole romantic relationship was forced by Ted. Nothing was natural. For instance, one of the highlights of Ted&Robin, was when Ted stole the blue French horn for her. Some people would see that as a very romantic and wholesome thing, and maybe it is. However, the key word there is “stole”. On the other hand, Ted&Tracy’s highlight was the yellow umbrella. The difference there is that the umbrella landed on Ted’s hands. He didn’t do anything to get that. It just landed, and it brought them both together. That’s destiny. Something that the Ted and Robin’s romantic relationship never had.
Ted and robin getting back together completely undoes all the character development they had for the last couple of seasons.
It also just makes robin look bad, shes just hoeing around her friend circle and when she divorces one she just goes for the backup plan ted which makes him the ultimate simp.
I think if they did the robin/Ted coffee scene AFTER the mother died would’ve been great.
The mother dies, he’s depressed and broken up, walks into a coffee shop and sees robin there. They haven’t seen each other in years and he’s still upset about the mothers death. Somehow seeing and talking to robin breaths new life into him. Robin admits that she liked teds dead wife, but she thought they were always meant to be together. They connect and eventually finally get married
I remember watching the finale on Netflix. I screamed so loud and was so pissed I startled my mother.
And that how u started ur mother.
*how i startled my mother*
doesn't really seem like a healthy response..
'How I Woke My Mother'
@@J1283-s1k bro i hate the internet for the usage of the woke cause it meant I actually had to think to get the joke
also i forgot to mention: the fact that they shot the scenes where ted's kids convince him to go after robin in present day shows that even when they were filming for season 1, they knew how the show would end.
meaning that it truly was ted and robin's story all along, it wasn't just something that they decided to do for the last season
I get you however, deciding an ending doesn't mean that there shouldn't be flexibility as the characters grow and take form. What the creators gave us was continued character development for Barney all of which was undone in the last twenty minutes to fit a narrative that didn't make sense to half their viewership and they undid all of Barney's growth as if his entire character arc was dependent on being with Robin.
From what I understand that wasn’t there original plan 100%, there were multiple ending shot with the kids that they could use if they wanted too. It was just one option
I'd argue it made it more contrived how they chose to handle the final episode to get to that point.
If they knew they were still locked into that all those years later they should have actually built to it better through the season/s. Like it's great to say the whole thing was about ted and robin which it definitely was. But then all of a sudden all of the contrivances happen so they are finally where they can be together. Ted has kids already so he doesn't need to worry about that with Robin. And robin has had a serious relationship that actually worked out until it didn't cause she was focusing on herself and disappeared from the group for years then all of a sudden she's back and is dateable and great, yes I'm skipping over the bits of stuff when she actually comes back cause there's not a ton to work with other then they're both not especially over each other but at times where the other is happy and doesn't want anything to do anything with or about them in that regard.
no it was filmed at the end of season 2
I'd argue it was Ted moving on from Tracy while still solidifying how much he loved her, and most of the controversy comes from people not accepting the basis for Robin's character in 2030 that was established in season 1, and that Ted's limited perspective on his friend's life after the wedding would obviously make all the changes seem rushed and out of nowhere to them... as they would've seemed to Ted at the time. The characters grew as they were meant to, but people ignore the set-up from the earlier seasons even while declaring them the best. I'll say this now, the ending to HIMYM was actually pretty well-written if only a little rushed, but I like to think it was just our perspective catching up to the speed at which Future Ted must've actually told the story to his kids. The only badly written part of HIMYM to me is the first half of Season 5 (balanced out by the phenomenal second half) and the fact that they ever expected anyone to think of Lily Aldrin as anything but the self-absorbed demon that she most certainly is.
I feel like the original ending was more about Ted wanting to ease his way of asking his kids if they would be okay with him starting to date, with the children understanding their dad's perspective and being okay with him finding happiness once again, even though the times he had with their mother shall always be cherished and never forgotten. It was even 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 this might have been the kind of ending the show was going for, why does Ted have to move on 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 and understands that they weren’t the same people who dated all those years ago and that she and Barney loved each other dearly and refused to ruin the wedding because of whatever left over feelings he has 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 and in turn puts salt on the wounds of fans since this revelation comes after the reveal that Tracy died some time before Future Ted decided to tell Luke and Penny the story of how he met their mother.
A second point I'd like to talk about is the fact that we watch Ted look for "The One" for 9 seasons. He is obsessed about it, and a main part of his personality evolves around it : he is often scared he cannot find that person, even get depressed at some point because he thinks Robin is "The One" and he can't have her. The fact that they let Ted go through a marriage that lasted 20 years is actually quite marvelous, proving that he was wrong the whole time. I don't think Robin is "The One". And I don't think the love he felt for Robin and the one he felt for his wife are to compare either. None of them is "The One", but life is just full of moments and people who go trough it...
I liked and hated the ending at same time. I like everything about it that you just pointed out: how it changes the whole story to it being about robin. But I hated it for being such a truth bomb about how there are no happy endings in life: Ted searches for his dream partner, finds her, but then reality happens: cancer and death. Boom. Dream destroyed. Barney seems to develop in character throughout the series, learns that his issues derive from being abandoned by his father, and makes steps towards being a better person. But then boom, relationship failed, here’s your reality: most psychopaths never find a cure. Shoehorning a daughter in last minute makes me worry more about the poor kid than it gives me closure for Barney’s story.
what i’ve always loved about himym is that it’s uniquely realistic compared to other lighthearted sitcoms, shit happens, life happens, and it’s not always perfect. how i met your mother showed that better than almost every show i’ve ever watched
This show is a lesson on Law of Attraction, and if you don’t understand Law of Attraction, then you hate the show.
Sometimes, to get what you want, you have to let it go. It is a lesson on that. Timing is important too. No matter how much you want something in life, if you are not ready for it, it won’t come.
It was not Robin and Ted’s time Ted didn’t want to be with Robin after he let her go, he was happy with his wife and children. But after Tracy’s death, after they both had what they wanted in life., the timing was right for them.
The show starts with Robin and ends with Robin. It was always Ted telling his children why, at that moment, he wanted to be with her.
My only complaint is that I feel the last two episodes should have been an entire season. But I am one of those weird people who love the way this show ended.
That's exactly the perspective I naturally fell into watching the show a second time, and it does fit. The first time it felt like an attack on the mother, and honestly an attack on us because we were so desperate to meet and subsequently fell in love with her; we weren't allowed enough time with her, let alone time to grieve her immediate loss. The second time, after a long break, the story feels like it's regained it's heart and we're longing for the good memories after we had our time to process the loss.
Still doesn’t change the fact the ending seemed forced I know the kids where shot at season one but I don’t think the way it was wrote after 9 seasons lead to that ending
I agree. This video has some good points, but the show spent almost it's entire runtime drilling into our heads that Ted and Robin can't and won't ever be together, and to accept it and move on. Which we finally did in season 8 when Barney proposes to Robin. Then they spend all of season 9 on the wedding, just to undo it in the final episode. Not to mention hints and teases of the mother put throughout the show as well.
I get the idea of what the ending was trying to do, but you can't have a 9 year tv show going in one direction and at the very end just do a total 180. It doesn't do justice to all the episodes and storylines that came before it. Everything after like season 5 was basically just filler for Ted trying to extend time until the mother came. The only really meaningful stuff with any impact on the end was Marshall and Lily having kids and Barney and Robin getting married, and one of those is invalidated in the series finale as well. They should have kept the show to 7 seasons or had more than just 1 episode take place after the wedding.
I wanted Ted and Robin together, everyone else did too. But the show kept telling us no at every possible turn. That wasn't the way to do justice to the show's premise and the character of the mother we had been waiting to see for 9 years. The first 4-5 seasons of the show are goated, I wish the rest was handled better.
i hate the ending because it creates this narrative that if you wait long enough you'll finally get what you want. i hate it even more considering the fact that we went through 8 seasons accepting the fact that some things are not meant to be no matter how much you force it.
Tracy McConnell, we hardly knew you.
I love how I met your mother! People don’t talk about it enough! Thanks for making a video about it
6:10 and that is the pathetic part of it all. Just because you really, Really, REALLY want to be with somebody, doesn't mean they want to be with you. That's a problem the show never dealt with until, of course, the final season where Robin( who told Ted some months ago she didn't love him ) conveniently starts having feelings for Ted. But by then we were too invested in Barney/Robin ( a relationship critically tied into their character's development ) to care.
I personally refuse to let one episode/season ruin such a PERFECT show. I cannot tell you how many times I have rewatched HIMYM, and how many more I plan to. This show is my safe space ❤ but yea the ending sucked donkey balls
I never thought Ted was over Robin. I just didn't like the ending because as soon as Robin agreed to marry Barney, I felt like she didn't deserve Ted
I'd say the problem with the ending is that it dragged for 10 seasons. Had it only been 5 or 6 but with the same story it wouldn't have been so controversial
When Marshall and Lily escape out the bathroom and swear that they jumped down.
The ending for HIMYM was a MASTERPIECE. And I'm delighted that you see it that way. Well done!
My only concern about the finale is how they told the story ... How I met your mother ... but your mother after 9 years (and an entire season for Barney and Robin's wedding) dies a couple of episodes.
I personally never had an issue with the fact he didn't end up with the "mother", when watching while it was airing, i always had the feeling the mother wasn't around anymore, maybe it was a popular fan theory at the time, but i always had that in my mind when watching, and while i like the idea of a story about moving on, and from the get go, its clearly about robin, they had written the ending in advance, but that never let the story take its natural course. So after 9 years of the stories progressing naturally and taking turns the writers couldn't have expected when starting the show, with Robin and Barneys wedding, they suddenly have to make a hard right turn, and undo the entire last season of build up to get to there pre-written destination that no longer made sense for where the story now was.
Pretty sure this series was just Carter Bays living out his fantasy, since Ted is based on him (and Marshall and Lily on co-creator Craig Thomas and his wife). Carter was single at the time of the show’s creation, and “Robin” would have been his dream girl he wound up with.
It's been a long time since I watched this show, but it's amazing how much the last episode alone has impacted the show's reputation. If Barney would have been in a new committed relationship when Ted goes back to Robin I think the show would have a much better reputation. I'll have to watch it again.
@@FreneticFolklore my perspective is that the ending of Tracy dying and Ted getting back together with Robin would have worked if they had spent more than like 2 minutes on Ted and Tracy’s life together and Barney and Robin’s life together. If we had seen a season 10 with Ted happy and his relationship grow with Tracy, and Barney and Robin’s relationship crack and then resolve with an amicable breakup, it wouldn’t be so jarring for Ted and Robin to get back together at the end. Instead, there’s a whole season of buildup about meeting Tracy and then as soon as they get together, she dies. In the same episode!
@@paradoxmofully agree, I think the ending has one problem and it is that they rushed through things, everything that happened would’ve been fine if it just took longer to happen.
Many people don’t realize that the last two episodes are so rushed because old Ted has no interest in telling his kids the details about meeting their mom, so he tells them the rest of the story in fast forward. Furthermore we don’t even know if what he tells them in the last two episodes is 100% true. Everything that feels weird or forced about the ending is not a lack of its quality its rather a hint that we can’t take everything that old Ted tells us at face value, especially in those last two episodes.
I believe that we don’t even know for sure if Ted really ever was that happy with Tracy; maybe her long absence in the story is just proving that he was in love with Robin all along. Although his narration before the final scene seems to indicate that he loved tracy („I could never stop loving her not even for a second“), again thats just what he wants his kids to believe and it matches the tonus his narration had all along throgh the series. I mean he wouldn‘t tell them if it were any different would he?
What I also figured is that we don’t know how Barney and Robin really split up, because how Ted is blaming it once again on Robin prioritizing her career over her marriage following that weird scene were Barney calls his daughter the love of his life - as if that could replace anything he lost with Robin - just seems like kind of a placeholder that old Ted would use to have a quick explanation for his kids; as things ended for him I cant picture Barney anything but to be very very miserable, this doesn’t seem like a real ending for him; maybe - to pick up on your thesis - telling the truth would reveal that Robin is in fact more cold-hearted than Ted wants us to know. But thats open for interpretation, and I don’t want to say that things must have happened very differently than it is shown; I just want to say that it’s possible to be doubtful about some aspects of the ending.
So the only scene not being told by old Ted as the subjective narrator is the last window scene with Robin: given that, its the first time we don’t have a subjective lens over what we see and it must be sure that Ted and Robin are coming together at the end right?… unless: Is Robin laughing and crying because she waited for this moment all along or is it just out of some nostalgia beeing remembered at their old times? Maybe she‘s still not capable of loving him. Maybe - even though the story Ted told indicated that its now the perfect time for them - her feelings for him were never as strong as he hoped they‘d be. I think the scene blends out soon enough for us to still wonder.
"We don't even know if Ted was ever happy with Tracy."
I don't think I need to add anything. That pretty much speaks for it self.
No matter how many times I watch it, Ted and Robin are not good for each other.
robin legit doesn't want children and yet she's willing to settle with good old teddy westside when he has some cause ruining your characters is a great way to form an endin
My issue was t the ending it was good but… the last season was geared towards Barney & Robin… which could’ve taken half the season… we all wanted to actually meet the mother… she dies well ok… none of us were invested enough in HER to care that she died … I wanted to actually meet the mother … the ending felt like the rest of the show where she was hinted at but never revealed
I think this ending is fine... but I prefer the alternate ending where it just ends on a (albeit more predictable) happier note.
I think the story still works there. Howd I meet your mom? Oh, at Barney/Robins wedding. Short Story but told in a super long winded way that I was invested in.
I know they filmed the ending back in 2005 or whatever, but I felt like over the years the show had grown passed that. But I consider the entire last season to be a shaky ending entirely personally. Still love the show tho!
I think that the showrunner clearly had the ending planned that whole time but when the show evolved past it he refused to let the footage go and instead tried to shoehorn in his original ending. But it's definitely interesting seeing some other perspective on the ending that isn't solely negative.
@@jackdavenport5011 the scene with his kids were all filmed at the beginning so yeah it had to be planned. they did that because the kid actor would age otherwise and it wouldnt fit
1:26 it was legen ... wait for it ... dary! Legendary! 😂😂
Totally agree with all of this. I think a lot of hate this gets (and other long running series/movies as well) is rooted in not getting what you expected. Going back with fresh eyes once you KNOW what you're getting can help you see what was actually being done.
So many little things take on new meaning on a rewatch. Victoria for example. The perfect girl. Before knowing the ending, I assumed the point was that the mother was going to be even better than Victoria. That's how great the mom is. But upon rewatching, it feels obvious that Ted is saying, "I once had the perfect girl... but I threw it all away for Robin." It's not about how great Robin is. It's about how great Ted's feelings are for her. Not that Robin is a better match for Ted than Victoria, or better than the mom, not that Robin even has feelings for Ted. It's that Ted cannot escape his feelings for her, and after all these years, that's still true.
So yeah. This is a great love story, just not the one we thought we were getting.
But people sometimes do like to be suprised... The problem was that it felt like the writers themselves just wanted to surprise the viewers witht he ending, ignoring if that suited the characters or not. Also, it's very irritating that suddenly when Ted is married and happy, Robin wants him, even tho her feelings for him had died long ago, even tho apparently she had drifted apart from the gang and thus probably didn't interact much with him anymore. They just mention it out of nowhere. It's annoying that this man who has been obsessed with Robin for years, finally gets what he wants... after he got everything Robin couldn't give him from another woman. This woman, Tracy, was just a stepping stone. It's very clear then that Robin never stopped being his top 1.
I dont get why people dislike the ending.. Its life. Not always going the way you want it too. Show display that manymany times. So i dont get why people bashing just because they wanted a different outcome.
Made it to 1:54. Pretty much as soon as hear an effeminate male voice tell me that objectively bad, universally hated pop culture thing was "actually great," I know I'm in for a waste of time.
I always thought the mother at the end dying was common knowledge. Because there was a scene were ted was breaking up with Stella and he shows us an alternative ending with Stella and there kids, but in reallity it is only Ted with his kids and without a mother.
(hope you are getting what Iam saying, my english is shit)
I used to hate the ending but after hearing you say " It's a story about Ted and Robin and how they both became the people that they needed to be in order for them to be together ", I kinda see it in a different perspective now, well said my friend 👏
Except this isn’t them becoming the people they needed to be. This is them settling after they got everything they wanted. Ted got his kids and Robin got her career and that was holding them back.
Serious question - Was anyone who watched the entire series surprised by the ending? I would have been more surprised if Ted and Robin didn't end up together. The entire series was about them, really. The mistake the creators made was making season 9 completely different than the first 8... The foundation of the show is them all hanging out at the bar and apartment, in season 9 they were in a completely different location and way too much happened in just a couple of episodes. Like most shows, they had to tie off way too many loose ends in a short period of time and it felt rushed and like a completely different show for the last season.
We're Finally Landing automatically makes a video essay 15% better. Well played
you have a great ear, and great taste in music
Fr but I feel like it’s best when it’s a video about video games or nascar documentaries
The show also explicitly told us in the season 8 finale what the ending would be. The ending narration shows Barney and Robin fighting over the wedding, and Ted says “They were fighting about whatever it was they were fighting about that night.” Ted’s imagined monologue at the mother’s door, about how he can’t wait 45 days to meet her, has a broken-hearted, yearning air to it that we all missed the first time because we thought it was just Ted being a hopeless romantic. The performance is very clearly stating subtextually “I want those extra days because now I’ve run out of days with you.”
YESSSSSSS
To me is not a controversial ending, it’s just bad
Yup Tracy was the plot device to give ted the children robin did not want. She did not really matter they could have had ted be together whit any women so she could have given him children. And robin had to have the widely successful carrier. Then they were ready to be together
I think that immediately making Robin not a possibility for the mother was a bad choice, because it made the ‘will they, won’t they’ less interesting.
I don't care about Tracy dying bc he got his epic love, he met their mother. It also adds context for why he's telling the story, he's telling them bc she's gone. I think I don't like the ending bc I watched the whole show through a feminist lens, and since Robin is his friend I saw her as a person instead of a love interest, and she grew sm since they filmed the ending w the kids that idk if s9 Robin would have actually gone back to Ted especially since he has kids. I also feel like Ted was pretty insufferable sometimes so idk if he deserves to get Robin despite wanting completely different things on top of getting exactly what he wanted w Tracy. I would need to know a lot more about what happens w Robin between her divorce and when Ted shows up to change my mind
I liked the ending. I guess that's why it's called controversial instead of just bad. There are people very squarely on both sides of the fence. But regardless of the ending, I think most of us can agree that the show was great.
agreed!!
Idea was decent, considering the amount of setups they did, but the execution sucked. They destroyed Robin, Barney and Ted development to get there.
My only big problem with the HIMYM ending is that they shoved the big shocking surprise and switch down our throats in only the last 7 1/2 minutes of a 9 year series. Even Game Of Thrones had the decency to have Dany go Nuts and murder most of Kings Landing in the 2nd to last episode. I don’t need an M. Night Shamalamadingdong ending to surprise me.
"Come on dad mom has been gone for 6 years now"
No, it was literally less then a minute.
From a storytelling standpoint, himym had a really good ending. I think the reason so many people hated the ending was because they felt like the show had been saying that Ted and Robin weren't meant for eachother. We saw them try to make things work over and over, and it never worked. And after a while I think people stopped wanting them to be together. After so many failed attempts, and seeing them be in much better relationships, the audience just stopped being invested in their relationship.
For me, Ted cheating on Victoria to be with Robin really solidified my dislike for Ted and Robin as a couple. It just sorta soured the whole relationship for me. And I also think Barney and Robin's relationship is another big reason people didn't like the ending. They made us get all invested in their relationship, just for it to end offscreen? It made Ted and Robin getting together in the end feel more cheap than satisfying. Like "ooooh you're invested in this couple now? Well too bad, they're divorced because we were planning this other relationship all along!" It makes the development of Barney and Robin's relationship feel like it was for nothing. Idk that's just my thoughts on it. I think thematically the ending is great, I just think they could've done better and made it more satisfying.
People just got caught up in the name and not in the story it was telling from the start. I always knew what was going to happen in the end. It wasn’t a big twist if you paid attention to the actual story they were telling, which was Ted and Robin. The ending was perfect because it was the ending that was set up from the first episode.
The biggest issue I had with the ending was it was a little rushed, and they could have actually introduced Ted to the Tracy earlier in the last season and prepared the audience just a little more for her Death. But there are huge markers and clues along the way if you paid attention to it.
I was disappointed at the ending at first but after rewatching a few times I started liking it
it's really hard to grapple with the fact that Tracy died... I think that's why so many people instantly didn't like it haha
@@never.nothing I felt like it was pretty obvious she was going to die. It's pretty heavily foreshadowed in the Time Travelers episode. That's a whole season before the episode depicting her death. Heck, that's before we even meet her.
how i met your step mother
Totally agree. The mom was never the main character of Ted's story, the "one" was always Robin and was always going to be Robin, even as he was narrating the story for his kids. I'm totally cool with how this all ended, i think the suddenness was just a little much for me in the last season. could have been paced out a little better is all. still my favorite show and still about to start my actual 14th viewing of the whole series.
I saw the show when it had already ended, and I knew the end. I guess this make it for me more of a “enjoy the ride not the destination” show, so I had always thought the ending was perfect.
Yes!!! It great to hear positive things about HIMYM ending because I really liked it too. It made sense seeing as though most of the story is about robin and the writers didn't force a happy ending we would expect. Life doesn't go as we expect it to but we still can find happiness and the writers did a great job finding silver linings through the complexity of life (TV show resembling a man's life).
That perspective thing is key... for example the barney and suit episode was odd for me at first watch because it's impossible that Ted really share that story this way to his kids... but at a 2nd watch i realized Ted is maybe not the only one telling the story.. you know when you have some part of stories from your uncle and aunts and other member of the family and then you get the whole story from your parents? on HIMYM i feel like what we are watching is actually the story on the perspective of the children (as in one or both children are the director of the series) So they provide us with every perspective to understand the family, life, love etc..
That's why i grew to love this show so much more after the ending - i am at my 7th watch by the way :) love your take on the show, please continue!
I’ve never been more impressed with someone’s take, as someone who has watched the show an unimaginable time I agree so strongly with everything said.
took me a while to accept/digest but honestly I understand the story so well now. Even though the plot line with barney was later added to thee original plan, Both robin and ted have these emotional obstacles that make it hard for them to love each other in a healthy way. As friends they were transparent, close, trusting but in a relationship their expectations for emotional boundaries and expectations made it hard to make the other person happy. Ted wanting to rush into commitment is just as unhealthy as robins inability to commit and whether with barney or otherwise, i think she knew it would've been easier to recover from an already failing relationship foundation than her friendship with ted that quickly built do to the natural chemistry they share for all the series. Her and Barney being able to spin back shows me that they felt more comfortable with each other due to their ability to just ignore/justify the things they dislike about each other and reflectively, in themselves. they literally reflect each others daddy/mommy issues so well, of which ted had none of because he was raised ideally watching his parents in love, not realising how much accountability conflict resolution requires. Leaving the relationship with their sanity intact tells me they realized they were both running and just happened to run into each other but they both know they deserve more than just lust and trauma bonds (the whole her growing up as a boy is really why they bond like whiskey, cigars, dressing nice, hiding emotions and being strong), making it so that robin realizes her femininity and vulnerability are things she is entitled to and making it so much easier to accept teds love. Ted on the other hand HAD to love and lose because he spent so much time rushing into relationships and had trouble learning that things of quality take time, and he had to set robin free to prove his true love. Life literally is this ironic sometimes.
PERFECT
I've always liked this ending, glad to see some explain so well why this ending was the best decision and plot twist
I don't think Ted is secretly in love with Robin while he was married to Tracy. Tracy IS the love of his life. They did live happily ever after, in sickness and in health, in every definition of those ideals. I think while the show is about Ted believing there can only be one true love for everyone and being proved wrong, as well as 'timing' also being repeatedly stressed by the show to be a critical component of whether or not perfectly suitable people can be together.
I find Barney's "it's a successful marriage that only lasted 3 years" line very important to that core concept in the show. The timing was perfect for Barney and Robin to get together, but it is horrible for them to remain together. Robin got everything she wanted career-wise, making it impossible for Barney to keep anything he wanted. They would have to give up dreams and things they cared about to remain together. That's why their marriage wasn't a failure, their timing was the failure. The same goes for Ted and Robin. Robin not only didn't want to have children, it was later revealed she literally can't have children. Had Ted and Robin been together when that was revealed, Ted probably could set aside his life-long dream of having children, but they weren't together, and Ted found Tracy, who was a match for Ted in every way.
It was only possible for Ted and Robin to get back together after it's been at least 20 years since Robin's Wedding, Ted's children are teenagers, Tracy unfortunately passed away, and Robin has already achieved everything she wanted in her career. They are both in their 50s by this point, and the timing finally was right for them. Although, it is a bit ironic that Marshall revealed in one episode that he has to imagine Lily dying of a disease before he could fantasize being with other women, and it is essentially what happened to Ted and Tracy.
You know what a real twist would've been like?
If Ted poisoned his wife or something after he's had kids with her, something Robin couldn't give him. He lets some time pass and tells his kids the story of how he met their mother, which is told in a way that his kids believe that he's still in love with Robin. After getting a green light from them, he then does the blue French horn thing. It kinda fits in really well, and for all we know, Ted could be a psychopath.
The first time Barney and Robin hooked up I cringed like it was an incest happening. It was exactly the same as Rachel and Joey hooking up in Friends; just wrong.
Their chemistry was below zero and I never forgave Barney for doing that to Ted, especially because all of that bro code crap. It was selfish, inconsiderate and beyond hypocritical, which is something you would expect from a psychopath like Barney.
It was clear as a day from the very beginning that the central romance of the show was Ted and Robin. I was rooting for them from the start till the very end.
These are the reasons I never got invested in Barney and Robin. What kept me going through the last season were the massive hints the writers were dropping that those two are not right for each other and I was just waiting for an ending which finally completed the main storyline from the Pilot.
P.S. I couldn't agree more with the video, the perspective changes entirely the second time you watch it. You pick up and piece together much more stuff and it all makes perfect sense.
AGREED.
And much like the title of the series it is discussing, this video has a misleading title.
It's like poetry, it rhymes
I think to double on your point of timing there was a point in one of the episodes Ted tell his son Luke that timing is everthing I think , robin and Ted where meant to be but there problem was timing and when the series ended the timing was perfect for Ted and robin as well to be together