How I Met Your Mother: Season 9 (The Final Season)

[p_rushing]

Re: How I Met Your Mother: Season 9 (The Final Season)

Spoiler

That's exactly why I never tried believing the "mother is dead" theory. The kids flat out said "are we being punished" when Ted was gonna tell them a story about their (now dead) mother they never heard before.

She was never in a 2030 scene,but some people said there might have been times future Ted said something that sounded like he was talking as if the mother was still around(saying something like "you can ask your mother about this"),not sure if it's true,maybe some superfan one day will rewatch all those scenes and find out

I remember the you can ask your mother line, but have no clue when it was. It has been brought up as to why she wasn't dead.

[Speed_Deamon]

Re: How I Met Your Mother: Season 9 (The Final Season)

I enjoyed it but it did feel a bit rushed for a finale. I understand why some people are saying that season 9 is basically a waste but I don't see view it like that. Ted's telling the story of his friendship and especially his relationship with Robin to ease himself and his kids to the possibility of him going after her again. This doesn't mean that the mother meant nothing. She meant everything to him but he didn't need to retell all the times he had with her because the kids probably shared many of those memories already. They don't know all about Robin and his other close friends. The story is of him convincing himself after 6 long years of being alone again to get back up on his saddle.

His relationship with the mother lasted 9 years too so thats already many times longer than any relationship that Ted has ever mentioned. It took him 6 years to get over his wife and say maybe he doesn't want to be alone. The mother didn't simply pass away and he just jumps onto Robin. They're done mourning the death by that point and maybe it's time to see Ted move on and find some happiness in a cruel world.

[TheMatrix31]

Re: How I Met Your Mother: Season 9 (The Final Season)

But wasn't the cruel world for Ted what had happened up to the point he met her? And wasn't SHE that happiness?

Maybe they just wanted to convey that Ted is a cursed *** dude.


EDIT: I went back and watch some beginnings and ends of some recent season premieres and finales. I was struck by how good the song they used for the end of S8E1 was. That was when we see Ted and the Mother on the ramp waiting for the train in the rain and the song used is titled "The Funeral."

We probably should have known.

[DonkeyJote]

Re: How I Met Your Mother: Season 9 (The Final Season)

She's been dead six years. I don't think it's unreasonable at all that teenagers wouldn't want to sit through that. And they'd have heard versions of it before.

I also don't get the "she was stolen from us" deal. It's the last episode. There was never going to be anymore Tracy.

I'm okay with the ending. I didn't take it as Robin being "the one." Tracy was. But Robin was the next best one he had ever had. I didn't feel cheated at all. And I thought the shot of her looking out the window with the dogs was perfect.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk

[TheMatrix31]

Re: How I Met Your Mother: Season 9 (The Final Season)

"Stolen from us" in the sense of lasting memory and all that, not that we're not gonna get more. I know it was the series finale and we're not getting more of her, lol.

Side note: Man, they really made Robin look ugly with that haircut in the end scene.

[cavsfan2]

Re: How I Met Your Mother: Season 9 (The Final Season)

I still can't get over the fact that the two really significant episodes this season (How Your Mother Met Me and the finale) needed a lot more time but they somehow had time for Daphne, an entire episode devoted to a slap, Gary Blauman, and more which were kind of unnecessary. If I had it my way the wedding would have been 9 episodes, how your mother met me would have been three, and the finale would have been cut up into 12 episodes.

[ehh]

Re: How I Met Your Mother: Season 9 (The Final Season)

After a couple seasons where the show kind of went off the rails and wasn't very good, I wasn't invested in the show much, but the finale certainly seemed to make the last few seasons worse. I guess I was hoping some of all that would end up making sense that they were doing that, but it didn't.

The show definitely fell off and to me it became redundant. The writers weren't prepared for a 9-season show (understandbly) and they didn't have many options besides stretching out and recycling Ted's story. It was one of the few shows that I could never watch on DVD/Netflix, it was better in small doses. It also became apparent that Marshall was the engine that drove the show. In S9 when he wasn't around as much the episodes became even more blah. Then when he got to the Hamptons IMO the show got quite a bit better and funnier.

More thoughts on the ending...

By comedy standards this series had pretty good character development. It bugs me that the writers threw all of that out to stick to their original plan that Ted & Robin end up together. They asked fans to ignore Ted and Robin's individual growth and the fact that they, to me, don't belong together. I said it early but I keep going back to the fact that the ending didn't fit it at all. It doesn't matter that it's six years after Tracy died, Ted and Robin just shouldn't have been together. It was painfully obvious that they shouldn't be together. Ted had moved on and had met the love of his life, Robin never really needed to move on from Ted - she just missed him occasionally when she was lonely, having a bad day or being emotional. There was nothing left, nothing real to rekindle between the two of them.

I think what stings the most is that the series had enough relationships that didn't seem right, mostly both of Robin's relationships, and then they completely nailed Ted & Tracy's relationship (the scene where they first talk on the train platform was BY FAR the best scene in the series) only to piss it away in a matter of minutes at the end. Whoever posted that alternate ending a few pages back of it fading to black after the train platform scene ends - that should have been the ending. Not four more minutes of depressing, rushed and ill-fitting flash forwards. We can know that Tracy dies without all the other garbage.

As I said, I felt like the final Ted/Robin scene was a plot twist to have a plot twist. It was the writers' original ending they thought up a decade ago but it did not fit at all when the time was here. Their show and characters had changed too much for that original ending to still work.

[DieHardYankee26]

Re: How I Met Your Mother: Season 9 (The Final Season)

I wasn't a huge fan of this show and haven't seen nearly all of the episodes, much less all of this season.

Having said that, I really enjoyed the finale. It's probably because I'm not huge into it and don't know all of the nuances but just the general happenings. Anyway, I would rank it up there with the Friends finale, which I loved and was a diehard fan of.

Friends is my favorite show of all time, I've seen every episode 10+ times and have each season individually boxed and the full collection boxed set. I've been watching HIMYM for a few years, have seen every episode 2-3 times (season 2 I've probably seen 20 times) but I disagree a ton with this:

Spoiler

My issue with this finale isn't that it didn't end the way I wanted it to, even though it didn't. It's that, IMO, it didn't end in the way it was supposed to. They wrote the ending during season 2 which makes sense because Ted + Robin obviously were together, but it doesn't make sense now.

Ross and Rachel were going to be together from Day 1. They made that clear. Throughout the show, through all of the **** they went through together, it was painfully obvious that they were going to get together in the end. Ross saying Rachel's name at his 2nd wedding, them getting drunkenly married and him refusing to get it annulled at first, them having a baby, all roads led to Ross and Rachel getting together.

Ted + Robin, as far as we knew, were not going to get together as soon as he called her Aunt Robin at the end of the first episode. Ok, so they get together anyway. They break up because she didn't want to get married or have kids and wanted to travel the world and ****. Cool. After years of nonsense making it seem like they were going to be together, this season came. And finally, Ted had gotten over Robin. It was going to be ok. He gave Barney his blessing and was understandably hurt by it, but Robin had flown off into the clouds, she was gone.

To the finale...This entire season has been about Barney and Robin's wedding. All of season 8 was the lead up to this wedding. Within 10 minutes of the finale, Barney and Robin get a divorce like it's nothing. This is a complete waste of time. And it makes me even more angry, because I really liked his relationship with Quinn, which was abruptly broken up because he was going to end up with Robin. So many parts of the show were contingent upon Barney and Robin's wedding and Ted getting over her that it feels like I've wasted 3 years.

About the mother...We got her name. That's it. We don't know anything else about her. While the entire show was built up to their meeting, and we saw some glimpses of their future together, we never saw anything about her really and that makes me upset. What makes me more upset is that she died and it was a footnote in the story. The mother was here...they were happy, time passed, she got sick and died. "You're in love with Aunt Robin." BULL****. The writers of the show have been telling us for years that Robin and Ted could never work. Ok so Ted now has his kids and has had his true love, and now that she's gone, we're back on Robin, ignoring the fact that her marriage with Barney didn't work for the same reason that her relationship with Ted didn't work out back in the day and there's no reason to believe it'll change.

And just to piss off the fans, the writers had Marshall pay Lily for the bet at McLaren's that said Ted and Robin wouldn't end up together, just to kill off the mother and go back to Robin at the end.

I hated the finale of this show. Friends was perfect...she got off the plane. This was terrible. This is if Rachel had stayed on the plane and the show ended with Ross standing in his apartment asking if she got off. There's no closure, they just took it back to the beginning. I'm going to do a full 10 season re-watch of Friends to cleanse my mind of this.

[Ragnar53]

Re: How I Met Your Mother: Season 9 (The Final Season)

Dammit Yankee. Now you make me want to watch Friends again

[BigBoi23]

Re: How I Met Your Mother: Season 9 (The Final Season)

Things this show set fire to in the space of one measly hour:

Spoiler

1) Three years of Stinson character development
2) An entire final season building to an event that gets torched in 20 minutes
3) All the goodwill it ever built with those first 4-5-6ish seasons where we actually loved the show.

[KingV2k3]

Re: How I Met Your Mother: Season 9 (The Final Season)

I admit, I've been a "casual" / occasional viewer since Zoe / The Arcadian...

That being said, the final episode played out exactly as I suspected, based on the "clues" I'd seen in previous episodes...

1) Barney and Robin never made sense in the long term

2) Ted and Robin were going to end up together, regardless of what plot devices stood in the way

3) The reason Ted and the mother never got married was because she lost the love of her life (that boyfriend of hers), as did Ted (Robin) and that was a cloud over their relationship, which seemed to based on "making kismet out of willfullness / desperation / practicality"...

Yeah, it got a little "square peg / round hole" for the writers, but they also did a good job of making a point for how messy life really is...

"How I Met Your (Step) Mother", anyone?

[aukevin]

Re: How I Met Your Mother: Season 9 (The Final Season)

My thoughts...

Spoiler

I liked the show and pretty much all that happened. I thought it was cool that Ted and the Mother got two loves of their lives each. I never thought that the Mother was just another girl to Ted. Maybe if you just watched this episode you might feel that way, but if you think about or re-watch this whole season you'll see how much he cared. I think the title of the show is perfect because to 2030 Ted, this is the story of how he met their mother, only he didn't realize until his kids told him that it was really about Robin. He had suppressed those feeling for so long he couldn't accept it and needed his kids to tell it was ok and give him that push. All that being said, had the show ended with the Mother not dying and them all living happy endings I would have been fine too because the Mother was so great. I'm happy with the 9 seasons of the show and the finale and it doesn't diminish the series at all to me.

[elTodd]

Re: How I Met Your Mother: Season 9 (The Final Season)

But wasn't the cruel world for Ted what had happened up to the point he met her? And wasn't SHE that happiness?

Maybe they just wanted to convey that Ted is a cursed *** dude.


EDIT: I went back and watch some beginnings and ends of some recent season premieres and finales. I was struck by how good the song they used for the end of S8E1 was. That was when we see Ted and the Mother on the ramp waiting for the train in the rain and the song used is titled "The Funeral."

We probably should have known.

Spoiler

But that's just wanting it to be a perfect, happy ending. Life doesn't always work out like that. Ted met her and got to spend years with her. And now has two children that will remind him of her everyday.

Of course it's sad that the mother died. But I don't think Ted has any regrets, or that going back to Robin was his "destiny" all along or anything. Every scene with Ted and the mother conveyed the sense that they were meant to be together. And I think they were.

I don't know why everyone had the show ruined because she ended up passing away.

[DieHardYankee26]

Re: How I Met Your Mother: Season 9 (The Final Season)

Spoiler

But that's just wanting it to be a perfect, happy ending. Life doesn't always work out like that. Ted met her and got to spend years with her. And now has two children that will remind him of her everyday.

Of course it's sad that the mother died. But I don't think Ted has any regrets, or that going back to Robin was his "destiny" all along or anything. Every scene with Ted and the mother conveyed the sense that they were meant to be together. And I think they were.

I don't know why everyone had the show ruined because she ended up passing away.

Spoiler

The perfect happy ending for Ted is how things went. He got the kids and the settle down life that he always wanted, and now he gets Robin. The mother dying gives Ted an opportunity to have a happy ending.

[Leon]

Re: How I Met Your Mother: Season 9 (The Final Season)

I really liked the finale. Was I surprised by it? Not at all. I definitely feel satisfied though.

Quick thoughts, because I don't feel like writing an essay.

1. I wish the finale was the whole final season. All the flash forwards would've been fleshed out and all the criticism that Ted "didn't really care" about the mother would be erased. News flash, he does/did care a lot about the mother (as seen throughout the seasons, especially this one), the execution + constraints of an hour finale just didn't convey that all too well. Major clarification!

2. The only one who "regressed" was Barney and he got called out on it by his friends. Even then, he specifically says - "Can't I just be me?" And what's wrong with him wanting that? His marriage didn't work out and they were honest about it. Ultimately, having a daughter is what changes him permanently. The love of his life. Progress.

3. Supreme Fudge.

4. The mother was great. The finale doesn't tarnish her story nor Ted's nor Robin's nor anyone else's. In retrospect, it makes everything a bit sadder but it doesn't ruin anything - at least not for me.

5. Ted & Tracy had a wonderful life together and not once did it suggest that Ted was pining for Robin while they were together. "Don't live in your stories." It's been 6 years (or whatever time) since she passed, and this is Ted finally ready to be happy again.

6. Way I saw it, Robin realized she screwed up with Ted during the Halloween party; respects Ted is happy now and continues with what she wanted to do which is do the news and travel the world; comes back for the big moments with the gang and maybe, ready to settle down from all the travelling with whoever that may be; is there for Ted and his family during the tough times after Tracy's passing (they love Aunt Robin); then it all comes full-circle. Why wouldn't Robin just treat Ted like before? Because rooftop realization, that's why.

7. It's called How I Met Your Mother. The show was about Ted, Robin, Marshall, Lilly and Barney. Their highs, lows, and all the outrageously hilarious stuff in between.

8. Jim Nacho.

9. I'll miss these guys. It wasn't always smooth and perfect, but it was legen-wait for it-

*high infinity*