How I Met Your Mother

Honestly, the only flaw with this new alternate ending is the lack of the kids and no surprises whatsoever. While there is nothing inherently wrong with that (the show has always been an prolonged romantic comedy), the story just kind of ends at 2024 and doesn't wrap anything up in 2030.

The summation is perfect, which puts the emphasis on the lives of the characters we just saw and not a montage of the life they had and we barely see. And again, capping off with the actual Meet Cute instead of recreating the blue french horn ends with the right note. If they were to go with the original ending idea, they should have shuffled those details before Ted and the Mother marry.

I especially appreciate the little detail of Ted waking up with the Mother every morning, meaning she was still alive. It's subtle but present and very much loved.

While that ending would work if it came right after Ted sees the Mother at the train station, it doesn't really fit with the rest of the finale. If it's not building up to an ending about how everything changes (and sometimes changes back), then all the stuff we see happen after the wedding is kinda pointless.

For some strange reason I keep clicking on this page. I didn't mean to do it.

Make the bad thing stop.

Not to mention, having two endings filmed would've reduced the chance of spoilers. If one gets leaked or someone spills the beans, no one knows for certain which the real one is.

But yeah, I've said it before and I'll say it again... they fell in love with an ending that they came up with seven years ago, and it may have made sense or even been great then, but in order to shoehorn it they had to go through massive borderline Character Derailment. But it was their baby and logic be damned, they were going to follow through with that ending.

Yep.

I don't buy that. Think about it: they've known about this ending ever since the start of Season 2. All the work they did getting Barney and Robin together, showing Ted getting over Robin, and establishing how great Ted and the Mother would be together? All that was done with the knowledge that this was how they were going to end it.

I really, really doubt it was a case of them sitting down to write the series finale and suddenly realizing everything they'd done for the past few years made their planned ending impossible, so they had to try and undo it all at the last minute. Barney/Robin failing, Ted's feelings for Robin resurfacing, and the Mother dying were all part of the master plan; they just did a really good job at misdirection.

I wouldn't call it 'good'. More like 'obsessed with to the point of blindness'.

If they knew all of this, if they knew that in the end Robin and Barney weren't gonna work out, why spend a whole freaking season on their wedding and huge chunks of several other seasons getting them together? If they knew the Mother was going to die why spend so little time on it? she gets maybe 10 minutes in the finale to herself, tops. Plus they spent so much effort making her the most likable and dimensional character she could possibly be, really showed us why Ted and Tracy are perfect for each other, only to turn around and say Robin was gonna be the one Ted grew old with? Real nice show. Real freaking nice.

edited 8th Sep '14 12:57:48 PM by odafangirl

I wouldn't necessarily call it good at misdirection if the show actively worked against the intended ending. It's like if Friends spent the last five seasons pairing Rachel and Joey (instead of the five episodes), spent a lot of time showing Ross getting over Rachel, including the second-to-last episode, introduced a new love interest for Ross that everyone loved, and then had Ross suddenly end up with Rachel anyway with no warning.

I agree with Raven, the writers were never stuck with writing the series from episode to episode but HAD to write with an eye towards what the Grand Finale would be, even if with a little flexibility. The Barney/Robin wedding basically has its origins in late season three, and was locked in with the season seven finale. While not always given a lot of focus, Ted's relationship with Robin were present throughout, with season seven and eight rekindling it as much as possible without the two actually getting back together.

The kids in the official ending shows that the VERY REASON Ted started the story where he did is because he wanted to focus on Robin, and Robin's story arc is probably more important than Ted's. Ted's primary arc was getting over Robin, but if he met the Mother before meeting Robin they probably would have hit it off regardless. Robin's arc is that she had to open up to the idea of marriage and take a chance on a guy, even if it doesn't work out, and as such SHE needed to go through some growth before she could actually be with Ted.

In some ways, the finale is brilliant by how it captures the speed life moves by, might as well put a question mark on the title "Last Forever." But coming on the end of the very experimental Finale Season, it leaves a very odd aftertaste.

That's one way of putting it.

edited 8th Sep '14 5:59:53 PM by odafangirl

@ Raven Wilder

See, this is why I speculate Executive Meddling is involved. It goes like this, in between the Sunday "The End of the Aisle" aired (March 24, 2014), and the Sunday "Last Forever" aired (March 31, 2014), viewers were dying to see that ending. The suits at CBS, eager to please them, told Bay and Thomas to use the ending they plotted since Season 2 to cut corners.

Yeah, I don't buy that either. For one thing, I'm pretty sure that "Last Forever" was filmed well before "End of the Aisle" actually aired. For another, the Mother's death was foreshadowed several episodes episodes earlier in "Vesuvius". And for a third reason, a series finale seems like one of the last places a network would make unreasonable demands like that; I mean, the show's over, it's not like they have to worry about what happens in the finale hurting next week's ratings.

I understand what you're saying, but in terms of Robin's arc, Robin already opened up to a guy before marrying Barney when she gave up her dream job for Mr. Duck or Rabbit (sorry, forgot his real name). I think that was a lot more indicative of her sacrifice than getting married.

Also, I kind of hate it when people act like Robin was the only reason Barney stopped being so much of a "player" and became more monogamous. There was Nora, who seemed to have the same effect on Barney as Robin, Quinn to a much lesser extent, and his meeting with his dad, which made him really upset that his dad became a "normal dad" after leaving him and his mom. And so I think that his regression in the finale was actually caused because the failed marriage with Robin really hurt him, which is why the fact that Ted goes back with Robin in the end makes me upset.

Robin is able to date again without sacrificing her job and she goes back to Ted, who she supposedly didn't love anymore and who already has two kids and had a wonderful wife for at least a decade, instead of Barney, her ex-husband, who she expressly divorced because she couldn't balance a job and a husband, and who is a lonely single dad, from when we last saw him? That just doesn't seem fair.

I always wondered what about Barney. What the fuck makes Ted so special that he gets to be with Robin when Barney went through so much more character development just to be with her? Because he's the designated protagonist who's been telling us this story for 9 years? Fuck that noise. If that was their reasoning, they should have kept Tracey alive. She was so much better for Ted than Robin ever was.

You type the truth Journeyman. Barney deserved better than he got.

>.< I just realized they telegraphed the twisting about in the ending with Barney's proposal. Robin pretty much spelled out that even she and Barney wouldn't work, so what the fucking Hell writers?! You decide to repeat the damn twist?

The Pineapple Incident now has an explanation!!!

So does that mean that the Complete Series DVD collection is out now?

On second thought, that recut ending is partially a cop-out. The implication that the Mother is alive flies in the face of Vesuvius, where they pulled out the stops to scream that the Mother dies, between the snow in the end, and the tearful discussion of mothers missing weddings.

We don't really need an ending where the Mother lives, we just need one where her death has more invested in it than a few minutes that basically just leave Ted open to dating Robin again.

I think it's less of a copout than the original ending because it only contradicts a few scenes unlike the original ending, which kind of contradicts the whole series. Plus, there were still people debating whether Tracy dies after "Vesuvius". I'm not saying I don't think Tracy would have died, I'm just saying it's a lot better than the only other ending we have.

Even though the exchange about a mother missing her daughter's wedding was pretty clear foreshadowing, they could simply have retconned it into Tracy coming down with an illness that threatened her life, but she unexpectedly recovered. Her health scare reminds Ted that he needs to value every moment that they have together, because you never know what may happen.

Aye. I wasn't saying it was bad, or anywhere near as bad as the first one. Just stating it slightly overshot the mark without them going back and retconning other episodes.

In fact, the only thing in Vesuvius that really needed changed would have been the snow. That's a Cinematic shorthand for death, and was the big thing that clinched Tracey dying for a lot of people. If we take that out, or at least forget its significance, this ending's not so bad.

Apropos of nothing, I think Murtaugh was my favorite episode overall. Everything in the episode worked, it had a lot of quotable lines, and Barney continually injuring himself so he could win a ridiculous bet with Ted was just comedy gold.

I think it is my favorite as well but it could be a bias because usually if I catch a series for the first time after it has been on the air for a few years my favorite episode is usually the first episode I saw of the show.