The Ending Nobody Wanted

I'm not going to write a review of Season 9 of How I Met Your Mother like I had planned and I'm not going to write a traditional reaction piece to the finale. It's probably because I'm in such shock as to how a show that I treasure so dearly could have ended in the worst way possible. Let's get one things straight: I wanted HIMYM to end in the happiest way possible because I thought that it was the only way for it to end if the show wanted to display how their characters had evolved over 9 seasons. However, I also understood that such an ending probably wasn't going to happen even if my most honest thoughts were screaming at me otherwise. Nothing could have prepared me for what actually happened though. Nothing could have prepared me for Carter Bays and Craig Thomas to take almost 9 seasons of character development and plot lines and flush it down the drain in the last five minutes of the show's run. Basically, this is what us fans got:

Let's start with the biggest issue at hand here; The Mother (now known as Tracy McConnell) is in Ted's life for about 7 years before passing away due to what we can only assume was cancer. This comes after we've been given several adorable scenes, including the one where Ted finally meets her. It's every bit as good as we'd hoped and Cristin Milioti was the absolute best choice anyone could have picked to play The Mother. There was definitely a tug at my heartstrings as Ted began to recount all the times he had with the love of his life and with each moment I knew he was was leading to that inevitable end; "even when she got sick." As much as I didn't want this to happen, I could at least accept it. I thought that having her die was a rather cruel twist of fate for Ted. After all, he'd just found the love of his life after years of heartbreak and she just gets taken away from him like that? However, in the final 5 minutes, things went from bad to horrendous. Ted finishes his story and his kids are thinking somewhat of the exact same thing that we are: The Mother was barely in the story and the real point of the story is that Ted loves Robin. So what does Ted do? He runs right out of the house, finds a blue french horn and brings it to Robin's apartment where we can only assume that they spend the rest of their lives together: cue my outrage.

Cristin Milioti was the best thing HIMYM ever had and the writers promptly spoiled it

Ted ending up with Robin was the worst possible way that How I Met Your Mother could have ended because it destroys the entire premise of the show and everything that it had been building towards for the past 9 seasons. In just the last episode Ted claimed that he had moved on from Robin and that he didn't love her in that way anymore. It was sweet and it was perfect, exactly what was needed to finally move past the Ted/Robin storyline which was easily my least favorite part of the series. It was so obvious that the two didn't work and that Bays & Thomas were convinced that somehow, some way, they had to end up together is just inexplicable to me. The point of the show was that Ted had to persist through failed love and go through a lot of crap to find the woman of his dreams. In the first season, Ted was a hopeless romantic who thought that he was ready to settle down right at that moment. However, he still needed to grow up a lot and become someone worthy of meeting that woman. In Season 9 (more in the second to last episode of Season 9) we finally see him become that man. So what was the point of all that development if Ted was simply going to end up with Robin at the end? What was the point of even introducing The Mother in the first place? Everything that happens in the previous episodes gets completely discredited because now we know that Ted just ends up with Robin.

The final scene was shot during Season 2 so that Ted's kids would be the appropriate age for when the finale would air seven years later. However, one can't convince me that the writers felt that they were forced into ending the show they way they did because they were tied down to something they shot during Season 2. No, they wanted this end, they knew that some way Ted was going to end up with Robin even if such an ending is completely insane and would be a discredit to every character's development over the course of the series. Perhaps the show was trying to send a new message with this episode: nobody's life should end because another's does, Ted deserved to be happy after The Mother died. However, going back to Robin was completely wrong; what was the point of 9 seasons if Ted never progressed past the first episode of the first season? The saddest moments of the seasons were made better by us believing (thinking we knew) that everything was going to end up happy for these characters. Instead we find out that the writers were simply lying to us the entire time. Lastly, the theme of this series wasn't that one's life goes on after their one true love dies; it was Ted's maturation into a man worthy of true love. Maybe that theme could have been the direction of the show's first few seasons but by Season 9 the show had changed.

Second, Barney and Robin get divorced, spitting in the face of what was the entire premise of Season 9. The ninth season was the crowning achievement of the two character's development as the two characters in the show who couldn't handle commitment were getting married, to each other no less. Sure, there were a lot of things that didn't make sense about them getting married and even if it wasn't a perfect match the two had great chemistry with each other. We had just spent all of the ninth season at their wedding and within the first ten minutes of the series finale, the writers spit in the face of both characters. Even if the marriage didn't entirely make sense it was a powerful symbol of how far these characters had come. With the divorce both of the characters spiraled backwards. While I don't agree that them getting divorced was a good thing; there was no excuse for both characters to self destruct afterwards. Barney, who's development was the most palpable over the course of the show, went right back to his old ways. I don't need to point out that a man having a Playbook in his 40's is sad but at the same time I do. Robin meanwhile just ran away from her problems because she couldn't handle seeing Ted and The Mother together. It's insulting to see 9 years of character development get flushed down the drain because the writers were obsessed with this dumb notion that Ted and Robin had to end up together. Barney ends up having a child, a daughter who becomes the love of his life. However, Barney having a random child with a random girl who we never get to see was disappointing no matter how touching the scene with him and his daughter was. If Barney wasn't going to end up with Robin then why didn't the writers just have him stay with Quinn from Season 8, who was actually perfect for him?

Lastly, Lily and Marshall barely feature in the series finale and are the only one's who seem to get any kid of competent ending. Sure, we don't really get to see where Lily's career goes, we don't get to see much of them in Italy, and they're barely in the episode at all but at least we know that they end on a happy note. Lily gets pregnant with a third child, whose name we never find out which is a real shame. Marshall gets elected to the Supreme Court. Wait a second, these were almost all things that we found out earlier in the season through flash-forwards right? Marshall and Lily are the only two characters who seem to get out of this train wreck of a finale unscathed even if the end to their story is rather unfulfilling. We know Marshall becomes a judge but it's pretty unclear what Lily does with the rest of her life. It was definitely sad to Lily's desperate attempts to keep the friend group together. I could at least appreciate the theme that things change and people have to move on with their lives. While other characters didn't follow this, at least the part about the friend group felt real.

The finale proved that the show never progressed beyond this moment

How I Met Your Mother deserved a perfect ending, unfortunately it crashed in flames because the writers were too concerned with having their square pegged characters fit into the round hole that they had dug themselves into in Season 2. That ending was apparently so important to them that they decided to flush down the drain all the characters growth. So important to them that they threw away the best thing to happen to the series in it's entire run, Cristin Milioti, because they thought Ted and Robin should be together. Even though everything that they had written themselves was indication of why Ted and Robin shouldn't be together. Most of all, I can't believe that they would do this to the fans who have been watching for 9 years. Perhaps if the finale had just ended with Ted and The Mother under the umbrella with Ted simply saying "and that kids...is how I met your mother." We would be all set. What once was a touching story about a man and his quest to find the one became a story about settling for second best. I don't blame any of the actors here they were simply just victims of two writers whose egos got the best of them. Two writers who were so desperate for a twist ending that they ended up destroying everything that the series stood for. A twist has to have a point, there needs to be an end goal. Some finales succeed because they reach a predictable end but not in the way you'd expect. The twist in the finale here was cruel and served no purpose other than arrive at the terrible conclusion the writers reached in Season 2, to have Ted end up with Robin. But I'm done talking about this and I'm done with this show. Thanks Carter Bays and Craig Thomas, you could have had your show end the right way and go down as one of the best shows of the past ten years but instead you ruined it with your hubris.