I am not a huge fan of the way they dealt with the information of the mother dying, the writers had a great opportunity to totally slay the audience with a super emotional moment of Ted 6 years after realizing that his connection with Robin is the best thing for him since the mother died.
This I agree with. I guess they tried to be clever and "copy" the scene from the pilot where Ted brings the blue french horn for the first time (same dog breeds look out the window with Robin, Ted is in a suit with the same tie, etc), but as you say, they've left the show running so long so I don't think that really hit home with a lot of people - even amongst those who noticed. Real shame, since that would have been a perfect "full circle" moment if they had just done it a little differently.
Anyway... overall, I really liked the ending. I don't buy the "regression of character development", but maybe that's because I feel that the characters had started to become bad caricatures of themselves for the last couple of seasons, and consequently there wasn't much there for the writers to regress or destroy.
Hmm… perhaps that's why fans fell so hard for Tracey. She was a fresh face in so many ways, and probably would have revived the show if they had chosen to let it keep running.
In any case… over to the OP!
this is a cop out ending by producers who need to take a lesson in how to properly name a television show.
While I do feel for the fans who didn't like the ending (I still remember how I felt after finishing Mass Effect 3), this argument just makes no sense to me. The name is fine, and it's not the issue; at this stage you're just
trying to come up with things to complain about.
The Big Bang Theory is not a science documentary about the Big Bang.
The Walking Dead is not about a zombie on a treadmill.
Just Shoot Me isn't about a guy who's suicidal.
The name of "How I Met Your Mother" hits the mark just as well as any of those shows. The show just didn't end the way you wanted it to, and that's the
real issue.
The finale itself leaves many important life events as footnotes, breezing through them and ignoring the essential storytelling questions Who What When Where and Why.
Barney gets a girl pregnant. Who?
The Mother gets sick and dies. With What?
Barney and Robin get divorced. When? (yes you see them announce it but they say "got divorced." Past tense.)
Marshall and Lily move. Where?
Ted and Tracy wait seven whopping years to get married. Why? Seems very un-Ted like.
You are correct that the whole last season has been pretty odd, and there are a lot of things I would have liked for them to cover instead of having us sit through 22 episodes about a wedding (not counting the last episode or the "How your mother met me" episode).
However, I think the whole point of who Barney got pregnant was that it didn't matter. What made the whole scene with his newborn so emotional, at least to me, was the fact that Barney himself had grown up with just one parent, and no father figure, and in that moment he was still ready to shoulder the role and responsibility of being a single dad.
Same with the mother. She got sick and died, and that was the point more than what actually killed her. I wouldn't mind if they had covered all of that a little more, but remember that this is meant to be a story narrated from a first person perspective, and I imagine there isn't much need to go into detail as both Ted and the kids went through all of that. So once again, it doesn't really matter. The most logical guess would be some kind of untreatable cancer, but really, would it in any way, shape or form "save" the ending for you if you knew that one detail?
Barney and Robin actually had that whole scene where Robin asks if Barney would want to break up if she "gave him an out". I don't remember the exact lines of the scene after that, but I think it was quite clear that they agreed to get divorced, so I'd say they actually covered that.
Marshal and Lily: Didn't they just move to a bigger house?
As for Ted and Tracey waiting so long… There I just plain disagree. It was VERY Ted-like to want everything to be absolutely perfect. This is the guy who planned a surprise visit to his girlfriend in Germany, and the guy who tried to get back with Robin by waiting with a string quartet in her apartment. He still proposed after just 2 years; it was the endless planner in him that took over after that, until he finally came around.
Again, I feel your pain, but I do have to disagree. It wasn't the "happily ever after" ending that most people expected, but they've hinted at Tracey's death in several past episodes, which makes certain scenes from the past all the more heart-wrenching if you go back and rewatch them. The show would have been worth going back to anyway, but with the ending in mind, going back now will be like watching the show again for the first time. I'm actually excited about that!
And finally, I don't think the love between Ted and Tracey is in any way cheapened by Ted choosing to move on 6 years after her death. They kinda covered the whole process of letting go of your sorrow and allowing life to go on in the "How your mother met me" episode, where Tracey went through essentially the same exact thing before she met Ted. So yes, perhaps they went through it all a little too fast for some fans to feel emotionally content, but at the same time I think the way both Ted and Robin, who wanted far too different things when they were young, finally reach a point in their life where they are ready to get together, is emotionally satisfying in itself - especially considering their "deal" about getting married if they were both still single in their 40's.
So, I think the ending was bittersweet, but sweet all the same.
