How I Met Your Mother Finale

Last night's finale for How I Met Your Mother has left a lot of people feeling bitter and/or conflicted. I spent over an hour last night arguing in the show's defense, so I'm going to take this opportunity to explain why the finale went the way it did, and why it's the proper ending to a series that has tugged on our heartstrings for the better part of a decade. There will be spoilers throughout this post, so click away if you care.

My biggest complaint about this season was making it take place over a few days. As ambitious as it was, nobody wanted to spend this much time on Barney and Robin's wedding. Not to mention there were several filler episodes that could have been used to make a better finale. That being said, the rest of the complaints I've heard were not thought through enough to convince me.

The worst reaction my fellow viewers had was to the mother, Tracy McConnell, has been dead for six years as Ted tells his kids the story of how he met the mother, and his kids convince him to go after Robin since it's been so long since her death and Robin's divorce with Barney. I'll have to list why this makes sense and respond to other complaints:

1. Robin and Barney as a married couple does not make sense. Period.

You can argue that the character development of Barney was just flushed down the toilet when he goes back to hitting on women half his age. But a wife was never going to help Barney. A daughter would, which is why baby Ellie is so important to this story. But seriously, how the hell has Barney never had a bastard child over the years? All I am saying here, is that it makes complete sense that a divorce would happen between two characters such as these. Something season nine did right, in terms of Robin, was emphasize her relationship to Ted and her slow realization that she belongs with him. I sure believed that. But they've come too far. Ted won't be a part of another runaway bride situation, and it would ruin all of the relationships these characters have with their friends. She is marrying Barney because everyone says she has to, because they think she's just having cold feet. Those two don't love each other the way they thought they did.

2. Ted and Robin belong together.

People argue that Robin didn't appreciate Ted when they were together, but as the show reiterates time and time again, love doesn't make sense. It took her eight years to realize she belongs with him, and another fifteen for him to get her back. The show is titled "How I Met Your Mother" not "How I Met the Love of My Life". He met Tracy, and he loved her, and her him. And while the twist of the mother being dead and Ted going after Robin is almost unnecessary, it makes complete sense that Ted would end up with her. They would not have shoved Ted and Robin down our throats for this long if they didn't want to end the show the way they did. It just felt right seeing Ted hold up a blue french horn outside her apartment. 

3. Ted is not in the wrong for going after Robin in his fifties.

Tracy was dead for six years before Ted's kids encouraged him to try again with Robin. And he was still married when Robin was divorced. He's not dumping his dead wife immediately. He spent time with Robin and his kids without confessing love to her (I assume), and he had to be convinced by his children to ask her out again. 

4. The writers are clever, but they're cruel.

The shock factor of the finale comes from the flash forwards used, because you can't wrap up a series in a one day setting. It was very ambitious to try and cover such a long time span with such little time, and they nearly pulled it off, but they were making the audience like Robin less throughout the finale. We understand why she's not there for all the "big moments" but it doesn't change the fact that she wasn't there. Also, Marshall and Lily are kind of underplayed in the finale. They're more used as catalysts for "big moments" that Robin won't be there for. They are really just joke and drama dispensers in the finale. Nobody really cares where Marshall ends up in his career. We wanted to be told what we already knew, he and Lilly would be together forever.

Tracy dying didn't feel necessary given the small amount of time we were given to bond with her. I would have appreciated Ted meeting Tracy at the end of season eight, and allow us to get to know her in real time during season nine instead of these crazy flash forwards after a ridiculous wedding season. It's unfair to build everything up for Ted and Tracy and kill her off. It is. But we weren't going to get the happy sitcom ending er wanted, because that's not what HIMYM is about. 

5. Luke and Penny are right.

Using Robin as a catalyst for the entire story was unnecessary if they weren't going to end it this way. Ted could have just talked about Barney wanting to play "Haaave you met Ted?" one last time, or the woman at the bus stop telling him to talk to Tracy. But he told them countless stories of him falling in and out of love with Robin. The kids are right to tell him to go after Robin after hearing everything they have. 

6. The timeline is correct, but the flash forwards are sloppy.

The audience doesn't have a chance to mourn the mother. That's the biggest problem. They didn't come out and tell us until literally seconds before he goes to see Robin. We didn't feel the years go by as we were supposed to. Ted and Robin should have ended up together, but the complexities of life just got in the way. That's what this show is about. That's why this isn't satisfying to everyone. The audience doesn't believe Robin deserves Ted, which she doesn't. But Ted deserves her more than anyone. Robin respects Ted's marriage after her divorce, and Ted respects Tracy and the kids after her death. If you rewatch some moments from season nine, there are multiple hints towards her death, and, while shocking, it was necessary to make sure Ted and Robin ended up happy, while still maintaining Ted's love for Tracy. In the end everyone was happy, it was just a very long and sad road to get there. Barney respects women now, Ted's trying again with Robin, and Marshall and Lily blah blah blah. It was a clunky way of telling us how the next seventeen years would go, because you can't expect all of this stuff to happen in their thirties. It was like packing an outline of another sixteen seasons into an hour of television, which they didn't pull off perfectly (like I said earlier about making better use of those filler episodes). The point is, everything that happens is completely justified.

Overall, this show ended a legendary run in a shocking, bittersweet fashion. This will be remembered for years to come as a better finale as people think it out. A show like HIMYM that challenges the sitcom format like it did rarely comes along and plays on our emotions like it did, but we'll move on to create memories of our own.