The How I Met Your Mother finale: the aftermath

Series finales are funny things.  First of all, few shows are able to go out in a premeditated fashion and allow the creators to tie up all the loose ends at the end.  For those that do have advanced notice of their mortality, it’s a mixed blessing.  The final episode could provide fans of the show with the closure they desire by allowing things to end as the majority of fans want; but that would be dull.  Creators seem to want to surprise fans with sudden revelations, or open-ended plot devices that seem unsatisfactory to fans of the show.

Patrick McGoohan said after the finale of The Prisoner fans confronted him in the street and shook their fists, angry over the fact that the final episode explained nothing.  There was outrage over the last episode of St. Elsewhere, which revealed that the entire show had taken place inside the imagination of an autistic boy with a snow globe.  Chuck went out not with Chuck and Sarah living happily ever after but with her having amnesia and them starting their relationship all over again.  And then there is Lost, which assured fans that the Island-dwellers were not dead and not in limbo, only to reveal that they were dead and were in limbo.

A similar fate awaited fans of How I Met Your Mother.  Nine seasons after Ted told his kids that their mother wasn't their “Aunt Robin,” and eventually telling them that Aunt Robin married Uncle Barney, the last three minutes of the show revealed that the Mother (now named Tracy) had died, Robin had divorced Barney, and Ted and Robin were going to end up together after all.  Fan reaction was swift and negative.

The first few dozen posts on the show’s comment board at Television Without Pity all contained short, scatological epithets.  One website had an on-line poll that had 64% of those responding saying they hated the ending (the percentage of dissatisfied Lost fans was 53%).  AV Club posted an article that asked if a series finale could single-handedly ruin an entire show (their conclusion: no, but this was a close call).  The Rotten Tomatoes website determined that the critical reaction was Rotten.

What went wrong (assuming that the creators weren't going for “fan dissatisfaction” as the desired response)?  A couple of things.  First, the show lasted far longer than anyone anticipated at the start.  This required Ted and Robin to be in relationships with other people and not each other for several years, making a reconciliation less plausible.  Second, the show had to try really hard to make Barney and Robin a plausible couple, which meant getting the audience to invest in their relationship only to have them split up in a couple of years.  Not awesome. 

Third, it is a case of trying to have your cake and eat it too.  How I Met Your Mother had numerous episodes in which the writers took pride in psyching out the audience, making them think one thing but revealing something different.  For example, in one episode events seemed to be taking place at the same time but were, in fact, taking place over three days.  But the ending was the ultimate bait and switch; they told us for nine years that Ted does NOT end up with Robin, only to have Ted end up with Robin.  So Ted had this magical romance with The Mother (excuse me, Tracy; after nine years it is tough to put a name to the character), and then he gets to go back to his favorite bedmate, Robin.  So he has an adorable relationship with Tracy, then he goes back to bangin’ Aunt Robin.  Way to scar your kids for life.

This also has a huge “ick” factor in that Robin slept with Barney and Barney slept with half the under-25 women in the Greater New York City area.

Speaking of Barney, his arc ended on a cliché-filled note.  One of the bimbos he boinked after splitting up with Robin got pregnant and somehow saddled him with the baby, who naturally was a girl.  So now Barney is instantly reformed from being a womanizer to being the protective father of a future bimbo.  Of course we thought he was reformed before when he married Robin, so fool me once and all that.

The thing I find the most unsatisfactory about the How I Met Your Mother finale was that, in casting Cristin Milioti, they found an actress who seemed to be as special as The Mother was supposed to be.  The character was everything we wanted for Ted.  So what’s her arc?  She falls in love but the guy dies; she swears off men for about ten years; she gets into a relationship but dumps him for Ted, with whom she has two kids and then marries; then she dies.  This is a sitcom; characters we like in sitcoms are not supposed to have lives that tragic.  I know the creators would say “Life is like that,” but this isn't life, it is a sitcom.  How could you create such a special character and then kill her off just because you wanted Ted to end up with Aunt Robin and Tracy staying alive was inconvenient.

So way to muck things up, How I Met Your Mother.  I hope you enjoyed your nine years on the air because now you are dead to me.