If How I Met Your Mother has taught us one thing, its that Ted Mosby's children have incredible attention spans.
The show has been on the air for nine years, with 200+ episodes produced in that meantime chronicling the crazy lives of Ted, Barney, Robin, Marshall and Lily. Ted's children must have the world's best attention spans to be able to focus for nine year's worth of story in one sitting.
This stand-off certainly at least provided arguably the best line of the entire series, when the older Ted tells his kids "I kept this story brief and to the point!" - possibly the best laugh out loud moment of this hour.
Of course, demanding teenagers to sit still for nine years may not quite be realistic. But there has been much to admire over the show's run. Its willful defiance of conventional narrative coupled to plenty of good-natured humour and barbs was often the basis of some good viewing, even if it was sometimes prone to missteps (Season 8, for example, was largely forgettable).
Now, with the end of the road in sight, the advance buzz was with people wondering "What is the end going to look like?"
It starts, predictably, in 2005, with Robin's integration in the friendship circle - closely followed by the heady day of May 2013 when Barney and Robin's wedding took place. Season 9 has been building to this.
Think then, of what a smack in the face it must've felt like, when it was dropped at the end of the second act that they were divorced.
The broken woman that Robin becomes, however, is a fair depiction of life. As much as we want to maintain contact with the friends we grew up with, and continue the crazy stupid world we live in when we grow up, sometimes the party has to stop. Certainly, you'll want the party to stop if it contains your ex-husband and the man you could've married and blew it with.
When the party did stop, boy did it stop abruptly. After last week, when the knot had been tied and all we had seemingly had left to go through was Ted and The Mother's meeting and procession to when Ted begun telling his kids the story, and why.
There may have been some surprises and shocks along the way, but near the end, we finally got to see the scene we had been waiting for. The scene in the middle where Ted introduced himself to
the mother was perfectly calibrated, and was exactly how it should've
been played out, in the middle of a train station
platform in the heavy rain, and was a perfect rendition of the big scene this whole thing has been building up to over the past nine years.
It would've been satisfying to end there. There'd been a hurricane of differing tricks, twists and turns as it fully - if a bit quickly - navigated their 30's and 40's in a whistle-stop run of information, but it somehow all stuck. Until, that is, the final ending parts.
This will go down as a very divisive end to a TV show. But it also feels underwhelming that it was essentially figured out ages ago in 2006, and it feels bizarre that this whole episode was engineered to go straight for the conclusion, and with all the Twitter-breaking outrage that followed.
There was a sizeable number who figured out the plotline of the death of the Mother long ago - several weeks ago, in fact, and it was sad and kept ludicrously low in the plot but was seemingly inevitable. Even then, had it been revealed she'd died and Ted was going to stop there, knowing he'd waited so long for his perfect woman only to lose her, nobody would've protested if he just said "I can't remarry again". It would've been understandable if his heart had been built up only to be torn to shreds.
It also felt underwhelming it just sort of ran through the death, going straight from "she got sick" to "Dad, she's been dead for six years" - way too fast in telly time to acknowledge what a sizeable thing killing off the mother from the title actually is, and that's why so many feel cheated by it.
In fact, Josh Radnor has done exceptionally well not just to be part of the sitcom where he's spent nearly all of it impersonated by Bob Saget. He, and the actors that play the kids, have done exceptionally well to keep quiet about this since when they filmed it all the way back in 2006.
It deserves some credit for accepting that real life can, for some people, be a painful kick in the balls, not follow the blueprints that you thought it was going to follow, and some people do not get the fairytale ending. But even then, it still feels very weird they decided to culminate the show with the ending that Seasons One-Five would've got in a conventional sitcom. Of course, its quite a long time after it seemed sane, doable or practical for Ted and Robin to resume their relationship.
As for everything else, its conceivable this episode should've been stretched out for a few
more hours, rather than trying to cram a hurricane of information into
one hour (48 minutes with adverts). A few episodes earlier in the season
could have been condensed, allowing a few or perhaps even a half-season
to play it out, rather than the fact it aired with a weirdly
blip-blip-blip feeling filled with some amusing in-jokes (Cockamouse! Sonofabitch! Yellow umbrella!).
Lily and Marshall's parts certainly felt almost afterthought-y at times, although their happy ever after was always likely (Marshall gets to be a state supreme court judge with 3 kids, and Lily stays with). Alyson Hannigan certainly did well to pull of a dramatic heart-upsetting moment while wearing a bizarre white latex whale costume - no mean feat.
Barney gets the ultimate surprise in the form of a kid of his own after going on a "Perfect Month". This was probably the most surprisingly touching part - even with the pain of the earlier divorce.
Robin's parts worked for the first part, but the finale felt weird. Ted's kids persuading the broken father to ask her out using the fabled blue French horn from the pilot. This is the internet-breaker of a moment, and from afar and in depth, it still doesn't really scan properly.
All in all, there was plenty to admire for 40 of this show's 48 minutes. The last 8, however, is not included in this. Sure, its wasn't as painfully bad as Dexter's perplexing travesty of a conclusion. But is it legen... wait for it... dary?
Well, no. Legendary outrage amongst Tweeters, perhaps, but the show itself was a good show until the ending moments, and rather than answering all of our questions, it just leaves us dozens more that we'll probably have to answer ourselves.
3/5
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