How I Met Your Mother – Live-action comedy; created by Carter Bays and Craig Thomas; rated TV-14; airs Mondays on CBS; 60 minutes; “Last Forever Parts One and Two” (original airdate, March 31, 2014). Written by Carter Bays and Craig Thomas (7 out of 10).
Full spoilers to follow.
Well, here we are. After a nine year journey through all the ups and downs of relationships, love, friendships and family, we finally get to the moment we’ve all been waiting for — when Ted meets the Mother, or Tracy, as we now know. Series finales aim to tie up all the loose ends and hopefully leave the audience with a cathartic ending, and while HIMYM hit a lot of those notes, it left a lot to be desired. Not to mention an ending that most likely pissed off a bunch of longtime fans and closed the series on a complete cop out.
First though, let’s talk about what it did well. The overall plot of the hour-long finale focused, smartly, on what happens to groups of friends as they age, change and mature. Learning that Robin and Barney got divorced after only three years wasn’t that surprising. I think we all knew that, despite how well they got along, that relationship wasn’t meant to last. And true to real life, when people break up and claim they’re “just fine”, it always turns out that it doesn’t work that way. No matter how much exes still like or love each other, seeing them being intimate with another person is bound to hurt and reopen old wounds. Thus, Robin’s explaining to Lily why she can’t be a part of the original gang anymore makes sense and delivers the emotion necessary for such a decision. Could any of us do better in that situation?
Finally seeing Barney grow up and become a real man with the birth of his child was also a great turning point for his character. Had the writers just let Barney keep being, well, Barney, after divorcing Robin would have been disappointing. With everyone around him maturing, there had to be a catalyst to make him step up as well, and his 180 into becoming responsible was heartfelt and a perfect capstone to his character arc (even if his telling off the slutty women at the bar was kind of cheesy).
Marshall and Lily carried on with more children and Marshall finally getting his judgeship, but they were the least used characters in the episode. Of all the characters, we always knew they would have the “happily ever after”, but they seemed more like set pieces here instead of actual people. Three kids, a happy life and that’s all she wrote. We’re happy for them, but we didn’t get to see anything new or exciting.
Finally, we get to Ted and Tracy. Their moments together were beautiful and truly magical. Josh Radnor and Cristin Milioti really resonate on screen together, and their chemistry really makes us believe they are a happily married (eventually) couple who deserve to be together forever. From the moment Ted first sees her, through their ups and downs with their friends to their finally meeting in the last moments of the episode, they sold it and made us love them as a couple. Despite the fact that Ted has had more than his douchey moments over the years, his relationship with Tracy was the real thing, as Lily pointed out to Marshall right after they met.
Which brings us to the biggest problem with the episode that still has me grumbling. As sad as I was to be right (and I’m still a bit misty eyed over it), we do learn that Tracy has indeed passed away, and that’s why Ted is telling his kids their story. What upsets me is that his kids immediately exclaim that the story isn’t about how Ted met their mom, but how much Ted is in love with Robin and should ask her out.
What?!
Did the writers seriously just end the entire god damn series based on a plot device from the first season that has reared its ugly head constantly over the past nine years and has been the most annoying part of the final season? Yes, it appears so, and the final moment of Ted holding up the blue horn outside Robin’s window made me want to throw things at the TV.
That decision pretty much just undid all the wonderful things that took place in the finale and made the whole story irrelevant. Why the hell get us so invested in Tracy only to barely use her and then throw her out the window just so Ted could get together with Robin? It doesn’t make sense and feels like the writers were too cowardly to give us an ending that actually mattered and worked for the story as a whole. Hell, Ted’s kids didn’t even give a damn about their mother; they were more interested in getting him and Robin together. What a giant “fuck you” to everyone who has been invested in this show and fallen in love with characters!
Ok, rant over. In the end, there was a lot to like here, and even with some of the warts in the episode, it was a mostly fine send off to one of the best comedies on TV. I would have much preferred it ended about two minutes before it did, but I don’t have the power to go back and change what the writers had apparently planned years and years ago. Was it what I was hoping for? No. Did I enjoy it? Yes, and even though this season has had a lot of problems, I’m still sad to see it go. Despite the fact these are fictional characters, I’ve still come to love them all and will miss seeing what craziness they will be up to every Monday night. They gave us some wonderful memories, evoked a lot of emotions and we’ll have moments that will stay with us forever.
Was it legendary? No, but it came close.
KMC-1138 also had a few thoughts she wanted to include as well:
About nine years ago I met this weird crew of friends. I would meet them once a week or so and listen to their epic stories, observe their chemistry, and listen to their implausible tales that somehow inspired nostalgia for my own decidedly less legendary stories. Sometimes I would roll my eyes at the terrible decisions they were making or the redundancy of their mistakes, and things didn’t always end up where I’d hoped or assumed. I laughed a lot, and I wept a lot more than you’d think acceptable while watching a sitcom. Yeah, in case you didn’t realize, these were imaginary friends that crept into my life. Once before I became invested in comedic characters (“Spaced, by the way”), but this time I was in the same place as the folks of HIMYM. I aged with them and experienced a lot of the same laughs and tragedies, and tonight I said “goodbye” to these friends in a surprising, tragic, joyful hour of television. No, the conclusion was not something I would have ever wanted, but it was the getting there that mattered anyway. We navigate life’s twists and nosedives with self-fives, we experience tragedy while giving gratitude for all that came before, and in the end we all just really want a happy ending in spite of it all. It was the getting there that was so much fun. So thank you, “How I Met Your Mother,” for being my friend for the past nine years.