How I Met Your Mother

[Yamer]

Originally Posted by undercoverbrother

I reckon if people haven't watched it yet, then they probably won't.......

There are a lot of good/great shows that I know I just haven't gotten the time to get around to, like Six Feet Under, Rome, and I would even be willing to give The Wire another go around.

So it isn't impossible. I always appreciate folks talking very vaguely about certain shows outside of dedicated threads...like people in here are doing with Six Feet Under.

[Rhettzky]

I think Ted made out like a bandit. An annoying and awkward dude gets to have kids with a smoking hot bass player and then when she croaks he moves on to cougar Robin.

Niiiiiicce!

[djsFlames]

Originally Posted by SuperMatt18

http://ca.ign.com/articles/2014/04/0...-series-finale

Think the scene they mention in that article about Ted and Robin having lunch would have helped to show that Ted had truly found love with the mother. Might have helped people not be so angry about Ted "Settling".

Great article. I'm glad that they did in fact have more material.

They really could've used those extra 18 minutes. I'd understand if the scenes were more or less useless filler, but these scenes sound like they really could've helped pace the finale better and fill in some of the gaps that a lot of the audience wanted to try and better understand the ending.

The Ted/Robin lunch scene especially, as it would've helped clarify that situation. The wedding scene would've brought some nice comic relief early in the episode and a little more payoff to the entire wedding buildup. And the bet scene wouldn't have hurt either. I don't understand why they didn't just make the finale 1.5 hours, as an additional 18 minutes would've filed up an extra half hour slot perfectly.

[Bigtime]

Originally Posted by djsFlames

Great article. I'm glad that they did in fact have more material.

They really could've used those extra 18 minutes. I'd understand if the scenes were more or less useless filler, but these scenes sound like they really could've helped pace the finale better and fill in some of the gaps that a lot of the audience wanted to try and better understand the ending.

The Ted/Robin lunch scene especially, as it would've helped clarify that situation. The wedding scene would've brought some nice comic relief early in the episode and a little more payoff to the entire wedding buildup. And the bet scene wouldn't have hurt either. I don't understand why they didn't just make the finale 1.5 hours, as an additional 18 minutes would've filed up an extra half hour slot perfectly.

Or they could have given us a lot of that stuff by trimming 18 minutes worth of useless scenes (in retrospect) from this season.

[SuperMatt18]

Yeah this final episode could have easily been stretched over more episodes.

One for the wedding (with Flash forwards to why Barney and Robin didn't work out), one for Ted's goodbye (with Flash forwards to the first couple dates with the mom), and one hour long episode for just the train platform with flash forwards to more of Ted and the Mothers time together.

I was alright with it as it was but That pacing would have made it more bearable for the people against the finale IMO.

[nik-]

Originally Posted by Yamer

There are a lot of good/great shows that I know I just haven't gotten the time to get around to, like Six Feet Under, Rome, and I would even be willing to give The Wire another go around.

So it isn't impossible. I always appreciate folks talking very vaguely about certain shows outside of dedicated threads...like people in here are doing with Six Feet Under.

I want to spoil the ending for Lost to people just to save them 60 hours.

[djsFlames]

Nah, Lost is more about the journey than the ending. The first three seasons are fun just to watch for the twists and turns, and character development. The first half of the series is still worth checking out.

[nik-]

The second season was actually a mess too. A lot of people gloss it over because season three pulled it out of the fire.

[strombad]

Originally Posted by djsFlames

The ending itself would be cliche if seasons 4-9 didn't happen. But that's not the way it went down. While there were Ted/Robin fans that wouldn't give up on that idea, the show spent that entire time convincing us that it would go down another way, and that the possibility of them ending up together was dead and buried and wouldn't allow Ted to be happy. Robin turning out to be the mother at the midway point of the series would be cliche. Ted ending up with Robin after the death of the mother (whom represented in many ways an end point for Ted's story of finding happiness) and after an entire season showing us that Robin was making a life with another man, isn't exactly cliche.

What would constitute a non cliche ending for you? Moments before Ted is about to meet the mother everyone gets killed off by a gang of monkeys with semi automatics in a tragic "swing-by"? It was mentioned in an earlier episode, so that could've been the foreshadowing!

The mother dying and Ted not hooking up with Robin would've been significantly less cliche.

All I'm saying, and feel free to love the ending and defend it to high hell, is that it wasn't creative, or interesting, or new, or whatever. It was just a predictable vanilla ending to the show.

Anyone who watched the show would've guessed Ted ended up with the mother, and while they purposely used misdirection to make the ending less obviously and cliche, the ending is still the ending. It doesn't matter how we got to the ending that decides whether it's cliche or not, but the ending itself.

Speaking of Lost though, I'm maybe one of a small handful of people that thought that ending was just perfect for that show. People drag that whole show through the mud because they didn't like how it wrapped up, which is ridiculous. Despite my feeling towards the ending of HIMYM, my overall outlook on the show hasn't changed. Again, I didn't expect it to pull the rug from under us or anything like that, they got the obvious ending, they just did it a bit cheaply.

[strombad]

Originally Posted by nik-

The second season was actually a mess too. A lot of people gloss it over because season three pulled it out of the fire.

I thought that too until I re-watched it, it wasn't nearly as bad as I remembered. A little weak compared to the first season (which was arguably one of the best first seasons of any network television show out there) but not really bad at all.

6 is definitely the weakest, but really just serves to close up the story.

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by OutOfTheCube

I thought the series finale of Star Trek: The Next Generation was excellent.

But generally, yeah, they kinda blow.

Lost probably could have been condensed into a 3 season series and would have been great, but I got the impression that they saw how popular the first season was and decided to water down the series to stretch it out as long as possible. Probably half the episodes are filler that do nothing to further the plot. I think for a series to be good, you need one or the other.... either a continuing and consistent plot development, or none at all.

For sitcoms, I almost prefer the opposite. All filler with no continuing plot (or at least no serious plot). That is what made Seinfeld such a good one.

Even a show like X-Files was so much better in the earlier seasons when each episode was pretty much stand alone. Once they started having continuity, they painted themselves into a corner.

[djsFlames]

I as well didn't hate the ending to Lost. While it didn't tie up some of the sci-fi elements and mysteries to the show, the somewhat "spiritual" ending I kind of liked, being a more spiritual person.

But naturally most people would've preferred them pulling aside the curtains and explaining exactly how/why everything happened.

One thing that's for sure though is I haven't been a fan of Lindelof's work since.

[Eastern Girl]

I didn't like the mother. To me, she was just a female Ted. That was boring to me, so I was happy to have limited screen time for their relationship.

I wasn't really looking to see him with Robin, but I am happy to see them together. Their relationship, at the very least, was not boring.

He let her go, met the mother, married her, had the kids he wanted, and then she died and he moved on. Ended up with Robin. I think it's realistic and it's nice. They were right for each other, but it just wasn't the right time.

I still like the ending.

[hesh329]

Really the show had set up the finale and I think there were some subtle hints as far back as the first season. They mention Ted's favorite book being Love in the Time of Cholera (which was mentioned in the dating service episode). Which is basically the entire premise of How I Met Your Mother. With the lead characters genders being switch. I think a lot of people wanted the happily ever after episode, I have to applaud the writers for sticking to the story the had intended from the beginning.

[Yamer]

Originally Posted by nik-

I want to spoil the ending for Lost to people just to save them 60 hours.

I actually was a pretty big fan of Lost up until the finale. The rest is a fun ride of speculation, deciphering, and character conflict/development.

The finale ruined it all, though.

[ae118]

Originally Posted by Alberta_Beef

I thought the ending was fantastic, one of the best series finales yet IMO.



Six Feet Under still has the best ending ever though.

I'm still getting over this post from a few pages back. Genres aside, I actually think HIMYM might be the worst series finale I've ever seen, being as completely tone-deaf, badly timed and cheap as I thought it was. And Six Feet Under, specifically the last 10 minutes, was absolutely the best finale ever if you were as invested in the Fishers as I was.

Anyway, hated it. Besides all the good points already mentioned:

- Robin has 4/5 huge dogs but can't manage to be married to Barney? And this busy, traveling, city-living career woman with dogs is now going to make it work with suburbs-living cheesy Ted with kids?

- What about Lily's career? Can she do nothing but be sad and have an unnamed baby? Really?

- All the depth they've finally built into Barney's character and his relationship with Robin and they trash it in a few minutes? And then of course he is a changed man when he has a little girl - not at all predictable... and does he have custody or is he with Number 31? I did actually like the scene where he meets the baby, but that was all NPH (and very familiar for him).

- It should have ended at Farhampton station with the great conversation under the umbrella.

I will say that despite ranting here, I am sick of articles about the finale clogging up my FB feed still. So I'll stop.

[djsFlames]

Those are some pretty lame and feeble arguments for why you thought it wasn't good ^

I never bought into Barney's sudden depth of character. I can understand how falling for Robin would make even a guy as man-whorish as him attempt to change some things, but it never suited his character and seemed a bit sudden for him to be promising all these things to her. When Robin just couldn't get along with his ways and they knew it wasn't working, it's natural that he would revert to his older self, perhaps an even worse version of it. I never bought the idea of Barney being tied down by any woman, unless she was as outlandish and wacky as him, don't know how others thought otherwise. The daughter thing makes a lot more sense, as children, more than spouses or boyfriends/girlfriends ignite change in people more than just about anything else. It actually makes a lot of sense.

Personally I'm just sick of people believing that happily ever afters are the way it always ought to be. When the stuff people watch puts out those ideas of fate, and a perfect ending, people start to believe their own lives are little fairytales and go about the world with these sky high expectations of their lives and the people they bring into them. I love when a writer isn't afraid to be more real than that. But real life is never that pretty, but can still have its great moments, just like the writers showed.

[Daradon]

I watched this and I got to side with the creepy and contrived crowd.

I'll admit, I was never a regular watcher. I stayed on top of the plot points because friends would talk, but even a as comedy, I didn't wait for new episode.

But the growth that Barney, Robin, and especially Ted found throughout the story was completely ripped apart and made non important by the ending.

Not to mention the ending was just super creepy. 'Hey kids, I loved you mom, but I loved Aunt Robin more and first and now we finally get to be together.'

If it was really about Ted and Robin why add the mother at all? Why not figure out a way to show she was the mother. But no, they kill a character off to fit their story. A move that is lazy and cliched to begin with, and really undermines the whole progress as a story.

Frig, why not show Ted and Mom getting divorced to show Ted had it all right all along, and sometimes you get your heart broken?

And if it was really all about Ted letting go of the mom to love again, why not introduce mom seasons ago so we could care for her and understand Ted's pathos?

No, it's was a crappy little plot twist that made no sense, to keep you interested early, but satisfy the Twilight viewers later. Which is sad because there was some decent writing to show how characters changed.

Planned or not, it's one of the most anti-climatic endings ever, as everyone saw it. But more than that, it's a teenaged Twilight ending to feed the sheep. And how they got there was truly creepy.

Ted and Robin! Destiny! (Swoon) I gotta write my journal! Hearts Forever!

[ae118]

DjsFlames, as I said, those were things that bothered me in addition to everything else that's been mentioned in the thread. You don't understand any of the critiques people have mentioned?

Barney's character gaining depth wasn't sudden anyway. They spent at least two seasons on its believability. Only to trash all that in minutes in the finale.

And I don't need a happily ever after - I just expect a finale with logical coherency in a way that respects the story they've actually written, not the way they figured they'd end it years ago. So lazy. I wouldn't over-psychologize it.


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[SuperMatt18]

Originally Posted by djsFlames

I never bought into Barney's sudden depth of character. I can understand how falling for Robin would make even a guy as man-whorish as him attempt to change some things, but it never suited his character and seemed a bit sudden for him to be promising all these things to her. When Robin just couldn't get along with his ways and they knew it wasn't working, it's natural that he would revert to his older self, perhaps an even worse version of it. I never bought the idea of Barney being tied down by any woman, unless she was as outlandish and wacky as him, don't know how others thought otherwise. The daughter thing makes a lot more sense, as children, more than spouses or boyfriends/girlfriends ignite change in people more than just about anything else. It actually makes a lot of sense.

Barney staying with the stripper and Robin with Kevin would have been a better plot in my opinion.

Would have added to the gang growing up and growing apart. Plus IMO those two relationships were more naturally believable than the Barney-Robin relationship.