How I Met The Disappointing Ending

Pre-Article Warning: Spoilers Ahead



How I Met Your Mother was on its way to becoming one of the best complete sitcoms in the past 30 years. Honestly. In the 2000s, the only sitcoms to top it have been 30 Rock, Modern Family, and Scrubs (Neglecting that final season).





And then the final season happened.





Falling into the now-cliché of running its sitcom life far too long and damaging its legacy with its final episodes (See: Roseanne, Scrubs, Family Matters, That 70s Show, Will and Grace, The Office) How I Met Your Mother’s quality took a severe hit with the final season and then severely hurt itself with the final episode which pretty much demolished any hopes of redemption. And this is not an insult to any of the actors (which did a fine job with the material presented) but the writing staff had forgotten about the magic, love, and care of the previous seasons and threw us a curveball that harmed the consistency and the continuity of the entire comedy.

The final season was a mess because they stretched out a wedding weekend into an entire grouping of episodes, which really harmed the usual quick speed of the show. The unnecessary drama was racked up to the ultimate level, there were tons of pointless secondary characters that appeared and disappeared, and the gang wasn’t even fully together for most of the season. Marshall was in a different state, and he had to be paired up with an absolutely worthless and unfunny Daphne. The gang was rarely together and they finally had their calm peaceful moment as the wedding mercifully takes off---Ted decides to run off. The gang chemistry that ran the sitcom through its worst moments was sorely lacking, simply because you never really saw them together in the final episodes.



And The Mother. That poor gal. The show is about meeting the mother, and she got less screen time than most of Ted’s ex-girlfriends throughout the series run. She is the Holy Grail, the gold mine Ted has been searching for, and she doesn’t get to fully meet and talk to Ted until the very last episode? And then kill her off shortly after? And then treat the death as a footnote? No funeral scene? No final goodbye scene? It’s not only an insult to all the viewers who went along for the overlong ride, but its rather insulting to Cristin Milioti, who carved out a lovable character with the extremely minimal screentime given. Her chemistry with Josh Radnor was electric, and made us yearn for more time between the two.



………….and that final episode……………it was good, but it could have been legend---wait for it…


That final episode should have been Season 9, because there was so much packed into that final hour. The wedding should have been a mere one/two-episode arc, and could have perhaps even fit in Season 7 with enough effort. The final scene of Season 8 should have been Ted finally meeting The Mother on that rainy day at the train station. And then Season 9 could have been all that flashforwarding through the years as we see Marshall’s rise to success, Lily’s third child, the divorce between Robin and Barney, Barney’s transition from Clooney to Father, and the beautiful marriage between Tracy and Ted leading up to the tragedy of her being sick. It was bizarre that despite the acknowledgement of five children on that final episode, we only see the actual delivery of one---Barney’s child.

The final scene with the kids should have been destroyed, because we spent three years unlearning that Robin and Ted would have worked out, we spent three years having the Robin/Barney duo become a believable couple. The ultimate ending would have worked if a) they didn’t just kill off the Mother and pretty much writer her off in a span of 40 minutes and/or b) Ended in Season 6-7 as opposed to 9, making the quest a bit tiring. The sad divorce should have had even more focus than the wedding, because so much was invested in making Robin/Barney happen, and Barney was clearly suffering from the ramifications of the failed marriage years after it had happened. But all these major events became mere footnotes; the promotions, big moves, deaths, births, pretty much everything.

The emotion of the final episode was indeed there, and it was a joy to watch these characters interact one final time. But it felt forced, it felt mildly cheap. Imagine spending your entire life with some really good friends, and instead of continuing the growing experience with them you read up about their next six years in a Facebook post and never see them again. That is how it felt with How I Met Your Mother; it was a well-written, beautifully-acted show that had a nice pace----that was quickly debunked in the final season, and that final episode.

The content of the final moments of How I Met Your Mother in context made sense, but the delivery was absolutely abysmal. We had fallen in love with The Mother only for her to disappear without a proper send-off. We were treated to the evolving love triangle between Ted, Barney, and Robin that eventually became a nice marriage—only for that ship to sail pretty quickly. We saw Marshall put up with years of labor torture to finally reach his dreams---only for us to see not see him actually, you know, judge. And finally, we finally got that ending we had been seeking for years—only for it to be a copout and an excuse to throw a fast one on us and reveal that Robin is the actual love of Ted’s life, even if she couldn’t be the mother.

How I Met Your Mother will stand as one of the cleverest sitcoms out there that ran out of steam in the final season. Instead of reaching all-time status with the likes of Seinfeld, All in the Family, Cosby Show, and 30 Rock, it will settle for being a great sitcom that waned in the final moments like Will and Grace, Frasier, Scrubs, and Everybody Loves Raymond.



That being said, it was still a great run while it lasted.


Goodbye How I Met Your Mother.






P.S. …dary.