How I Met Your Mother came to a close this week and I was surprised by how many friends on my news feed watched the show and even moreso, how it seemed to be the most polarizing finale since Lost. As a fan of the show myself, I thought I'd jot down my pros and cons on the last hour of the show.
Pro: The Mother - All season-long, my favorite moments have been the new life that Cristin Milioti has brought to the show at the titular mother, Tracy McConnell, and this continued straight through to the end with the actual meet-cute being everything I could have hoped for.
Con: The Last Few Years Without the Mother - Milioti has been so delightful, in fact, that it has made me wish that we'd had much more time with her. I very much appreciate that we've gotten a series of Ted/Tracy moments in the future as a result of this final season. If we, the audience, had not actually met the mother until the final moments of the show, the response probably would have been much more rage-filled: "We watched 9 years for that?!?!?!"
Pro: 9 Years - Even in its worst episodes, this show was still better than a whole lot of shows out there so I'm glad we got to spend so much time with these characters.
Con: 9 Years? - I think there's a lot of agreement out there that the best years of HIMYM creatively were those early seasons (I typically see/hear 1-4), back when we had episodes like "Slap Bet" and "Swarley." If the show had ended a few years ago (but still with some extended Mother time), we'd have been spared some of the weaker runs like "the initial failing of the Barney and Robin relationship," "Ted and Victoria: Round 2 (which seemed to try and convince you that you were a fool for liking them together way back in the first season)," and "the never-ending Wedding Weekend."
Pro: Barney's Baby Moment - That scene was just beautiful. Great work from Neil Patrick Harris.
Con: Barney Leading Up to His Baby Moment - It's just a shame that Barney had to revert to his old ways in order to get to that moment. Many people have pointed out that we spent the entire last season building up to a marriage that essentially ended 15 minutes later. Which begs the question: why?!?! Especially since you knew this was where you were heading, which brings us to...
Pro: The Planned Out Endgame - Television shows, especially comedies, rarely have a game plan. Sure, they'll occasionally have season-long arcs (or longer) but the episodes themselves are typically written as they go and even the endings tend to be tough to break because so few shows actually know when they're going to end. See one of my favorite shows - Chuck - for great examples of this. They ended up with like 4 or 5 great finales throughout their run because the show was always on the bubble. So the fact that the HIMYM showrunners came up with this ending waaaay back in season 2 (in order to film the kids response before they outgrew the part) is kind of impressive.
Con: Sticking to That Plan - The ending isn't necessarily a bad ending for this show, but I don't think it was the right ending anymore. Again, going back a world in which the show ended in season five or six, this probably wouldn't have been such a controversial ending. But the show ran so long that many people stopped caring about the idea of Ted and Robin ending up together: in part, because Robin went from being a strong, independent character to a shrill, annoying caricature ("NOBODY ASKED YOU PATRICE!!!"). And when you add in the pretty much universal love that Milioti received all season, killing her off (even if she and Ted had about 12 years together) seems needlessly cruel just to serve an idea that the creators had seven years ago. Leaving that footage on the cutting room floor at this point would have probably been a better fit. At least that what some fans have decided. (That originally linked to a fan-made ending that cut out the Mother dying and ended the show at the meeting, but the studio pulled it from YouTube for a copyright claim.) Include it in the box set as an alternate ending, sure, but also realize that your show is not the same show it was 7 years ago, and sticking to that plan in order to bring back the blue french horn one more time rings false.
Pro: Ted's Happily Ever After(s) - Wrapping up, as a sometimes pretentious douche/hopeless romantic myself, I've pretty much always identified with Ted so even if I didn't want him to end up with Robin, I can recognize that that would bring the character joy so I'm glad that after this long journey he got to enjoy two happily ever afters: his years with Tracy and the 2030 "New Adventures of Ted and Robin" version.
Mini-Con: No Bob Saget - One last small thing. I missed Bob Saget there at the end. Having Josh Radnor deliver the end of the story to the kids in 2030 aged up a bit just begs the question, "why has he sounded completely different for the entire rest of the story?" I'm not saying I wanted Bob Saget saying some lines and then clearing his throat before cutting to Radnor but why haven't we just had Radnor delivering those lines this entire time?
When all is said and done, thanks HIMYM for the laughs and daring to try new things. What'd did you think? Will you watch the pseudo-spin off How I Met Your Dad if it gets picked up? Do you think "Number 31" will be a central character of HIMYD (making NPH's Barney the titular character out the gate)?
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