If
you haven’t see How I Met Your Mother’s finale discontinue reading now, spoilers
ahead. The views here are entirely my opinion.
I was long-time fan of How I Met Your Mother. I
watched every show and re-watched them in re-runs. I had thought the story of
how Ted met the mother charming. Ted wanted to meet the perfect woman and be
married and have children. He wanted to be like his friends Marshall and Lily
and find true love. The way Ted went through women was long and arduous, but we
knew it would all turn out alright because the writers throughout the series
showed as glimpses of the mother in shadow, or in the character’s words. The
yellow umbrella showed us true love would prevail. Barney grew and become a
different person with Robin, faithful and truthful. Lily and Marshall were the
consummate couple who fought for their love. They gave and took to make it all
work.
Last night was the finale I heard the rumours that
the mother would die, but I chose not to believe them, after all hadn’t the
actress who played the mother Christin Miloti denied that this would happen? I trust too much!
I watched the first half hour last night with very
little of how Ted met the mother and started to wonder where is the finale I’ve
waited for? The second half started with a glossing over of how Ted and the
mother (Tracy) had two kids without marriage and Barney and Robin getting
divorced. I thought, okay, the second hour will show us more of his meeting of
the mother and the love story instead his meeting of the mother which according
to the title should have been the climax of the show, became an anti-climax.
The mother dying and telling the story six years after her death, a postscript to a background of
Barney going on a legendary (crudely put) thirty-one day banging session
(something we thought he had grown-up from) and impregnating an unknown woman.
Barney then goes all ga-ga over his daughter and becomes a different person
with young women (more of a protective father). Ted continues telling the story
to his kids who tell him in the end to just date Aunt Robin. Ted then takes the
blue horn to Robin that he stole for her years ago.
Maybe if all of this had happened in the third year
of the series it would have made more sense, but I think one of the biggest
problems I had with the show ~ the misogynist writing of the entire series. Barney always the consummate playboy and the women falling for it portrayed woman as sex objects but I dismissed that as Barney and his character flaws but all those qualms were brought up again by the final story. It appears three women were only in the series to give birth. One of them
Lily!
Where was the mention of her brilliant career as a painter, sculptor
etc.? No, the story went on about Lily having her third child and supporting
Marshall as a Supreme Court Judge and then as a political wife. Barney divorces
Robin because of her career and then goes back to his old ways, finally getting
caught by impregnating a strange woman who was even important enough to show
the viewers. She’s just mentioned so she can give Barney a daughter to change
his life. Ted’s wife, Tracy gave birth to two
beautiful kids and dies eleven years after they met just so Ted can get back
with Robin.
So kids, sorry your mother was just a stop gap, until I came to my
senses and got back with the real love of my life Robin good thing your mother
died!
This made me hate Ted. How could he have told his children that he loved
Robin all along, He might as well have
said I never cared a wit about your mother. The women on the show at this point
seemed to be only good for one
thing having children. Robin couldn’t have
kids, so she although she was apparently the love of Ted’s life, he married
another woman he claimed to love Tracy, had two children with her, and
gravitates back to Robin after an arbitrary acceptable time after Tracy dies. So he waited a
number of years so what? The fact that he drifted back to Robin shows how
messed up this story-line was. Robin was Barney’s ex-wife and therefore should
have been off limits forever. He said when she married Barney he didn't love her anymore he moved on...lies all lies. Don’t get me started on how this story-line was
always planned by the writers. Really? When you’re writing you have to gauge how that
writing is responded to by your readers, or in this case viewers. Who do the
viewer’s see as couples? Where do they see the story going? What you planned
nine years ago may not work because of what you’ve since written and because of the viewer’s perception from watching those actors perform your lines.
I know
they filmed the children nine years ago, but lines can be dubbed. The writers
could have corrected the problems with this script and plots and have made
it a story-line to remember.
The sweet presence of Tracy ( as played by Christin
Miloti) made us root for her and Ted. We were getting the fairy-tale ending the
title had let us to believe in. The cute destiny thing, the thread that held the
show throughout the season, was broken when they killed the mother off, before
we even got to see much of her. I’m not saying they shouldn’t have killed of
the mother (though I hated that story-line, it happens in real life people die)
but having a whole season where they get the viewers invested in a Robin and
Barney marriage only to pullout the rug from under the viewers and have them
divorce made the viewers feel totally depressed and was a let down of giant proportions . Then to have
Barney revert to old behaviours and have the one thing Robin wanted ( a child)
made the viewers hope that Robin would now get back with Barney. But no, they
had a vision and they went with that.
The viewers felt that last night’s finale had them participating in leg- an
-( wait for it) dary slap bet. We leave the television viewing field battered and
bruised wishing this had all be an early April fool’s joke and wishing we hadn't invested nine years in a finale that should have been called How I Met Your Step-mother.
A wonderful fan made this video on YouTube of how it should have went down and I agree
check it out there https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0caCEG1nH3E&feature=share
A wonderful fan made this video on YouTube of how it should have went down and I agree
check it out there https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0caCEG1nH3E&feature=share
©Sheilagh Lee April 1, 2014
