How I Met Your Mother, or what it should have been called #HIMYM #FINALE

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!

http://popwatch.ew.com/2014/03/10/how-i-met-your-mother-cristin-milioti/ 

    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

©Sheilagh Lee April 1, 2014