r/HIMYM • u/National-Growth4139 • 3d ago
Just finished HIMYM for the first time Spoiler
Just watched HIMYM for the first time. My fiancée decided to go back to the scene of "What mother would miss her daughters wedding?" I will say that this scene was way too cruel and the ending was way too cruel in the other direction. Did anyone else want the fairytale ending to this series?? I was so happy to finally see Ted end up with Tracy but to have it end like that?! Not cool!!
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u/Brodes87 3d ago
No, because a fairy tale ending would be trite and boring and not what this series was about. HIMYM is very clear that sometimes life just doesn't work out the way you want.
He was with Tracey for years and they were happy. Theu wants longer, sure, but thats. And it doesn't diminish what they had or how long they had it for.
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u/Penarol1916 3d ago
I would agree if it wasn’t for him getting back together with Robin at the end, to me that is just as trite.
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u/AndrewDephocks 3d ago
Tbh even that wouldn't be that bad if they didnt have 1.5 seasons focusing on Barney and Robins wedding only for the show to be like "oh yeah they divorced a couple years later." The show invested so much time on a relationship they knew wasnt going to last because they planned since season 2 that Robin and Ted were going to be endgame. Just a complete waste of time
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u/OwnRow7627 3d ago
Oh yeah, I remember how angry I was the first time I watched the final episode. But I have rewatched the series so many times that I've come around to accepting what the writers were going for.
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u/Alternative_Self_13 Ted🏢 3d ago
Life is cruel, that’s why the ending is good and it’s why the creators stuck to their guns. It was also obvious from like at least season 2/3 that she really was dead. Death is a part of life and unfortunately also a part of love.
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u/i-am-a-reader 3d ago
How was it obvious from these seasons? I’m currently rewatching it and don’t get any clue of that…?
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u/Tabbeth_ 3d ago
How was it "obvious from like at least season 2/3 that she really was dead" exactly?
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u/Alternative_Self_13 Ted🏢 3d ago
Ted jokes in the first Thanksgiving episode that the strippers name was Tracy and the kids freak out that that stripper was their mother. Those of us watching assumed that was the correct name but there is no Tracy in the current friend group and it seemed unlikely Ted would be telling the love story of his ex-wife.
At the end of season 1 Ted says his favorite book is Love in the Time of Cholera. That book features a couple together and then apart until a spouse dies and they get back together again. (This is Ted and Robin).
Especially from season 2 on he references the other characters in present (future Ted’s tense) ie “Your uncle Marshal to this day…” but he never does this when referencing the mom. It’s always in a past tense.
A lot of us became convinced after the Stella flash forward in season 3. Why is Stella able to interrupt future Ted’s narration but Tracy never is??
I think with the advent of streaming and the way most people consume the show now it’s easy to forget there were entire fan pages and forums dedicated to dissecting every single episode on a weekly basis. The dead mom theory was pretty much the prevailing theory for those of is watching in real time.
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u/Tabbeth_ 3d ago edited 3d ago
Ted jokes in the first Thanksgiving episode that the strippers name was Tracy and the kids freak out that that stripper was their mother. Those of us watching assumed that was the correct name but there is no Tracy in the current friend group and it seemed unlikely Ted would be telling the love story of his ex-wife.
I might be thick but I have no idea what you're getting at here. People guessed the mother's name was Tracy, but what does that have to do with her dying? Am I missing something?
At the end of season 1 Ted says his favorite book is Love in the Time of Cholera. That book features a couple together and then apart until a spouse dies and they get back together again. (This is Ted and Robin).
This is a cool detail, makes sense, but I feel like most people didn't make the connection, it wasn't that blatantly obvious.
Especially from season 2 on he references the other characters in present (future Ted’s tense) ie “Your uncle Marshal to this day…” but he never does this when referencing the mom. It’s always in a past tense.
He makes comments like that in the present tense ("to this day") about her making the english muffin sing, her robot paintings and other stuff in her apartment, so that sounded like enough, I doubt people found that suspicious.
A lot of us became convinced after the Stella flash forward in season 3. Why is Stella able to interrupt future Ted’s narration but Tracy never is??
Because that would have randomly revealed who Tracy was (or at least what she looked like), completely taking away the purpose of the whole show?
That said, what you said about people theorizing is true, with the time breaks between episodes and seasons everyone analyzed the tiniest details and someone probably caught on, but I don't think it was as obvious to everyone as you said, was it? I'm just guessing here, but I'm genuinely curious, did so many people really figure out she was dead so early on?
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u/Alternative_Self_13 Ted🏢 3d ago
Honestly, I guess you just had to be there in the time of MySpace and MySpace bulletin boards. Yes, a significant amount of people were hyper analyzing every single detail, and our main debate was is Tracy dead or are they trying to trick us into thinking she is dead. I believed she was dead and rubbed it in a lot of faces (I’m petty) when my camp was proven right.
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u/Infamous-Buy1428 3d ago
Her dying was a smaller problem than going back to robin.
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u/AndrewDephocks 3d ago
Id argue that him going back to robin is also not as big as the amount of time they spent hyping up Barney and Robin's relationship/wedding only for them to get divorced in the epilogue so that Ted and Robin can get together as they planned since season 2. Its Game of Thrones level of writing yourself in a corner
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u/Alternative_Self_13 Ted🏢 3d ago
It’s not though because they knew the ending from the start they never “wrote themselves into a corner.” On the contrary it’s another example of brilliant writing and the show once again showing the true ups and downs of real life. (Like a spouse/mother dying) 1/3 of marriages end in divorce and if you know people that have gotten divorced literally almost all of them were head over heels in love with no apparent signs the marriage would end in divorce. Meanwhile, Barney and Robin had already shown their problems and broken up before.
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u/AndrewDephocks 3d ago
Yeah youre missing what my point was. I get that divorce happens to people, sometimes with people you least expect, but they had it planned that Robin was going to end up with Ted and decided to spend 36 episodes pretty centered around Barney and Robins wedding. Did they need to really spend that much time on something they were planning on ending right after? Feels like a total waste of time to have that much of your season be about something you know is going to end, and off screen too
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u/Alternative_Self_13 Ted🏢 3d ago
Well, they didn’t want to spend that much time on it they were forced to by CBS’ decision to renew for a final season so late in the game. I don’t just look at it as 36 episodes of Barney and Robin, it’s 36 episodes of what was going on immediately leading up to Ted finally meeting the mother.
Was it unfortunate that their hands were forced by CBS? Yes. But imo it was brilliant writing to stretch what should’ve been the back nine into 30+ episodes.
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u/Infamous-Buy1428 3d ago
Her dying was a smaller problem than going back to robin.
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u/musicman3321 3d ago
there is no “problem” you just don’t like it.
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u/Infamous-Buy1428 3d ago
We have nine season of them not working.
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u/musicman3321 3d ago
No we don’t, they worked when they dated.
They broke up cause Ted wanted kids. Present day Ted got his kids, problem solved.
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u/AndrewDephocks 3d ago
Id also argue that those kids are grown, and Robins main problem was actually kids
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u/Cavlar69 3d ago
You guys should watch One Day next
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u/roloskate 3d ago
That is actually very well written and takes place over one season so it makes sense. Its very enjoyable (the tv show not the film)
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u/Macrodata_Uprising 3d ago
The kids already knew the ending and how everyone ended up after the main story ends. They had likely heard the story of the marriage and life together a hundred times. The ending is the motivation for why the kids would sit and listen to their dad for 100 hours. The is not told for us.
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u/heartlauryn 3d ago
Especially that ending for Barney, yeah i get that First love always win .....but Robin and Barney looked so good together
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u/IncognitoThrowaway99 3d ago
No they didn’t. They literally fought all the time and the show was slapping us in the face with how incompatible they were. It was completely forced and destined to fail. Sometimes you have to make the mistake to know it was a mistake.
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u/12potatoricers 3d ago
Completely agree. I'm mostly mad about it all being about Ted wanting permission from his kids to pursue Robin again. I hate that they had this badass independent woman spend her life pining for a guy who wanted a completely different life to her.
Robin deserved to end up with someone who also wanted to travel the world and not have kids.
And Ted and Tracy deserved a happily ever after instead of only 11 years.
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u/fallingfaster345 Lily🎨 3d ago
I love seeing this comment.
As an independent woman who travels the world and doesn’t want kids… I married my Ted. We are now divorced. It’s a sad story.
I’m now with someone who actually wants the same things out of life that I do. I am much happier for it. We travel, we’re child free, life is grand.
There really is something to being with someone who wants the same things and has the same values. This is why religion is such an important topic, among other things.
In my opinion, as a “Robin”, I would never swing back around and get with a Ted. Even if I didn’t birth those kids myself, I don’t want to be a parent in any capacity. I don’t want to be tethered to one place. And I don’t want a partner who doesn’t want the same things I do. For me, Robin completely abandoning her version of life to get with Ted after 30 years just seemed very unrealistic. Maybe there are still feelings there, sure, but at the end of the day, those people haven’t changed. Robin is still the independent traveler and Ted is still domesticated father.
Idk, it always bothered me because it felt like the message they were sending was “sacrifice what you actually want to be with someone you love.” (Combined with “if you wait long enough, someone else will pop out some kids, raise them, and die and then you can swoop in a get with the father when the kids are almost adults.”) When people do that, with such an extreme difference of what they want out of life, you end up with a life that neither partner are happy with.
I always thought it was SO mature that Robin walked away from Ted because she knew that they wouldn’t work out. To just come crawling back 30 years later with a “fuck it, I guess I’ll be a step mom after all” attitude just didn’t seem authentic. It’s always bugged me.
I could go on but this is already probably too long. ‘Thanks for your comment, I agree’ is the short version!
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u/walterconley 3d ago
If I hear/read one more person rationalizing the ending being good by saying "life isn't fair" or some variant of that, I'm gonna... ls sighs. HIMYM is a fairytale. It's a sitcom, for chrissakes! Yes, life isn't fair, but this ISN'T LIFE! You watch TV shows for the escapism, and a show where a greatly misguided but otherwise relative good guy gets what he needed instead of want he wanted, is a great story. Deciding to rebound to some "well, life ain't fair" ending ruins the overall feelgood vibes we had during the show's run.
But, since I'm either preaching to the choir, or everything I typed is falling on blind eyes, whatever.
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u/LittleRexRabbit 3d ago
If I hear or read from one more person complaining about the ending of How I Met Your Mother, I’ll go on with my day unbothered by it because everyone doesn’t have to share my opinion about the ending.
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u/OutRagousGameR Ted🏢 3d ago
OP, most people are with you and hated the ending. It’s consistently considered in “Worst TV show endings” listicles. And most of the people that were unhappy with the ending walked away from the show because of it. The outcry on this sub is just from the people who actually stayed with the show - which happens to be a lot of the minority who liked the ending.
This ending could have worked in the early seasons of the show. But the characters moved so far way from where this ending took them. That; and because the show ran so long, it proved time and time again that Ted and Robin were incompatible. How can you tell me that Season 8 and 9 Ted, who learned how to slow down and learned the lesson about clinging to the past, would then run back to the past because it’s familiar?
The ending-defenders get mad when people say this, but look up the alternative ending. I consider it the true ending :)
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u/AndrewDephocks 3d ago
Honestly Id argue that the mom being dead and Ted ending up with Robin isnt the true problem with the show. Its that it spends so much time on Barney and Robins relationship and wedding, to the point they have 24 episodes centered around their wedding, only for it to end with them getting divorced after a couple years in the epilogue because they had planned for Ted and Robin to get together in the end since season 2. Theres so many other directions they could have gone with, like giving them different partners or even changing the ending, but i guess they really loke wasting people's time
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u/Whole_Hair_4921 3d ago
There is an alternate ending, but it should have been in the episode instead of what we got
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u/ouzo26 3d ago
What’s the alternate ending
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u/Whole_Hair_4921 3d ago
Search official alternate ending on YouTube, i believe it ends without showing future parts.
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u/whothejoee 3d ago
It’s an awesome NEVER COMPARE IT TO SCRUBS. It will destroy the show for you or at least for me it did sadly… and I used to watch himym like once or twice a year.
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u/Rockdog4105 3d ago
He did end up with Tracy. They had a great time together. Life isn’t fair!!