Over the course of 9 seasons, How I Met Your Mother has gained a cult following thanks to its unique structure, humor, and incorporation of dramatic elements. But over the years, the show has made too many mistakes to count, and since everything has a moment where everything is bad, it only makes sense to have a not-so-smooth ride. So sit back on your chairs, fasten your seatbelts, and strap in for badness, because the TV Tropers are gonna tell you a story about the show’s moments of suck.
Keep in mind:
- Sign your entries
- One moment per show to a troper, if multiple entries are signed to the same troper the more recent one will be cut.
- Moments only, no "just everything he said", "The entire show", or "This entire season", entries.
- No contesting entries. This is subjective, the entry is their opinion.
- No natter. As above, anything contesting an entry will be cut, and anything that's just contributing more can be made its own entry.
- Explain why it's a Dethroning Moment Of Suck.
- No Real Life examples, including Reality Television and Executive Meddling. That is just asking for trouble.
- No ALLCAPS, no bold, and no italics unless it's the title of a work. We are not yelling the DMoSs out loud.
- Bat Dan: The seventh season finale "The Magician's Code". It's bad enough they went with the safe route and revealed Barney & Robin would end up together despite spending the entire episode building up his relationship with Quinn. But then there's what they do with Ted. He calls Victoria again to attempt tying up that loose end, she happens to be in the city and she shows up wearing a wedding dress. Victoria then says they should run away together, and as they're driving Ted tells her no as he was once left at the altar. But then he decides "ah screw it" and runs away with her anyway. God damn it writers! Do you learn nothing?
- PerfectlyIdiomatic: For me, the DMOS was when, in season 4, Ted forgave Stella and actually helped her get back together with Tony. No. She doesn't deserve to be forgiven. She left him at the altar. She didn't even explain to him. She didn't tell him. She just left. And now, once Ted points out how unbelievably cruel that is to Tony and he leaves her, we're meant to pity her? Helping her doesn't make Ted the better person, it makes him a doormat and not someone whose life I am not interested in.
- Sidebar: The moral of the wedding episode in season 4 was 'never invite an ex to your wedding' and now we find out that Ted met the mother at the wedding of Robin, his ex. They really aren't even trying anymore.
- Nuxx: The constant Will They or Won't They? between Robin and Ted seemed to finally be dead and buried. And about time too given "aunt" Robin was revealed not to be the mother a long time ago. Season 7 however has Ted suddenly declare he's in love with her for the sole purpose of creating an awkward situation (read: poorly written excuse) for Ted and Robin to find new places to live. That's right, the writers couldn't think of a reason why two adults wouldn't want their own place, a change of scenery or to even stop living with their ex without dragging this dead horse back on-screen.
- Lawand Disorder: "Of Course". Robin and Barney broke up a while back and the other guys in the group are talking about Barney's successful womanizing. Note that this doesn't include Barney, or is about him behaving in a way Robin hasn't gotten used to for years at this point, but only Ted and Marshal. So Robin takes the logical course of action and sics an author after Barney whose claim to fame is her ability to break men's spirits. Even when she admits to this nobody calls her on her vindictive and poorly-aimed revenge, Ted and Marshal don't apologize, but instead they yell at Barney for making her feel bad. The ending is the group (including Robin) bragging about how she had sex in front of Barney in the same manner that'd been considering a taunt all episode. Barney gets a lot of punishment in the series, most of it incredibly deserved to be fair, but this was one of the most undeservedly cruel.
- Arcade Fire: I really don't like Ted, but the moment in which I really hated him is in "Stuff", from Second Season. In this episode Robin is jealous because Ted keeps a lot of things from his ex-girlfriends and she asks him to get rid of it. Later, when Ted discovers that Robin's dogs are gifts from her ex-boyfriends he makes her give away her dogs! Even Barney is disgusted about that! And when Robin finally gives her dogs to her aunt, who lives in a farm, she discovers that Ted didn't throw away the stuff from his ex-girlfriends. And in later episodes, he even conserves it! I hate Ted a lot more since that episode.
- BlueButterfly: I fell out with the show in the cougar episode, whatever that was called. The idea is that Marshall and his class can't seem to get above a C on their papers, and this is because his professor, a professional with a history in academia, is obviously just doing it because she's sexually frustrated, and she must be sexually frustrated because she's old but she still puts effort into her appearance. The slew of stereotyping didn't let up for the whole episode and whilst I usually overlook stereotyping in sitcoms, I can't watch that episode again.
- Ablackraptor: The Season 8 Finale. Ted is still in love with Robin. No, he fucking isn't. OK, he established a season ago that he had let her go, it's why they both moved out. Earlier in the season, Barney's complex plan proved he let her go by fixing her with Barney. We've been over this, this storyline should be done now. Why, for the love of Thor, are they dragging this out still? We're sick of it. I'm sick of it. At this point, for Ted to still be in lover with Robin its just creepy on his part to still be obsessing over her to the point he needs to leave town. Not to mention, how he's now supposed to meet the love of his life two days after this development? I'm not sure I want to watch the last season at this point.
- TheMeteorKing: The ending to the season 9 episode "Daisy" is this for me. Marshall has been told just a few episodes ago that he can keep his new job as a judge from Lily and that she won't make a fuss out of it again, and here upon finding out she's pregnant again he just gives it up... why? Throughout the series, Lily has gotten everything she wants with no being called out at all. First she leaves Marshall to study art, then comes back and stalks him, trying to break him up with any new girl he's with so she can try to get him back. Then after they get married her shopping addiction puts Marshall in debt with her so they can't get a new place to live. Marshall has to put his dream job on hold for years. In this episode, Marshall just puts his hand on her stomach and says she's giving him his dream, so he'll give her the trip to Italy. Excuse me, but hasn't a HUGE part of Marshall's character been his constant dream to be an environmental lawyer/judge?
- Damasca Ramza: "The Exploding Meatball Sub": Lily proclaims her love and support for Marshall once he quits his well paying job at GNB and then immediately throws him under the bus and tries to run away to Spain because she's "tired of supporting him". She doesn't do it, but she makes a huge rant about how hard is being supportive for him.
- Larkmarn: As tempting as it is to bring up the finale and the fact that it throws away Character Development to shoehorn in an ending that only made sense seven years ago, Lily's behavior in "Exploding Meatball Sub" bothered me to a ridiculous degree. She's always been a bit of a Karma Houdini and Bitch in Sheep's Clothing, but this episode was the nadir of it. The stress of "supporting her husband" was so bad that she opts to just hop on a plane to Spain. Now, "supporting her husband" in this case seems to mostly consist of "accepting that he's not making huge corporate money," so the fact that she plans on buying a last-minute flight to Spain is particularly nonsensical. But the worst is that she opts not to do it, and it's treated like a CMOA, rather than "just not being an awful person." And of course she's immediately rewarded by the universe with Marshall saying he's going to give up volunteering with the cause he cares for to do... basically exactly what she wanted. Sigh.
- Statzkeen: "The Playbook": Ok, a lot of the plays were hilarious, but the Scuba Diver wasn't funny (because the entire thing was blindingly obvious right away), and was also completely unbelievable, since Barney was so blatantly setting it up and yet all his friends, with no even half-hearted plot explanation for their sudden gaping gullibility, not only take Barney 100% at his word but even band together and start working hard to convince the girl to go out with Barney despite her having every reason not to do so.
- futuremoviewriter: I'm not gonna touch Last Forever (the only part of it that really qualifies is the ending which I personally consider non-canonical in favor of the alternate ending). To me, no episode of HIMYM is truly a bad episode, but there are certainly those that I put on a far lower threshold than others, such as the Slapsgiving trilogy. Since I can only talk about one, I'll pick Slappointment in Slapmarra as my DMOS. In these episodes and before them, I know Barney often asked for trouble when he was a jerk, but Marshall planning these all out and taunting him about it covertly always came off as jarring and unnecessarily cruel. With the third one, he makes up an amusing, but very over-the-top story about how he has prepared to do the next one (none of it's clearly true) and the others go along with the story knowing it's not true. I know Barney often makes it easy and justifiable for the others to gang up on him, but not in this case. It felt like it was enabling Marshall to continue to press this harsh joke and harassment upon Barney. Lily was probably made aware ahead of time, but if I had a girlfriend who made up a story about how she cheated on me, even if I knew it wasn't true, I would be uncomfortable with it. Marshall, with the
Unfortunate Implications, comes off as obsessive, uncompromising and mean-spirited. I also hate how they all treat him as being in the right and each one seems to exist just to be a Barney Torture Porn. It was a relief not only when he finally used the last slap, but did so in a way that it was actually helpful. In the third one (and all the others), he did it to get sadistic pleasure over Barney's emotional and physical pain and that, was not fun. - thunderchild120: I casually watched the series for a while, and intentionally spoiled the finale for myself after I heard it was controversial, so when I ended up watching the full series on Netflix I mainly watched it for the sitcom humor rather than the romantic storyline. So "Last Forever" doesn't bother me much, but the ending "Tick Tick Tick" is my DMOS because it made me come to a realization that Robin is The Millstone to both Ted and Barney where relationships are concerned. For context, Barney and Robin, both in separate relationships, sleep together and then agree to confess this to their respective significant others, then meet up and try to sort out their mutual feelings. Barney confesses to Nora and they break up. Robin tries to do the same to Kevin but he says just the right thing at the right time and she can't bring herself to do it. Watching Barney realize he's sacrificed a great relationship for nothing is downright painful, and made me hate Robin, a character I normally like, and kinda still do like; when you're less honest with your significant other than Barney Stinson, you have messed up royally. But it made me realize how many of both Ted and Barney's failed relationships can be tied to Robin. To my recollection: Ted quasi-cheating on Victoria with Robin; Ted's insistence on inviting Robin to his wedding with Stella leading to Tony being there, leading to Stella leaving Ted at the altar; Victoria and Ted breaking up (again) because Ted won't stop being friends with Robin; and the aforementioned breakup of Barney and Nora. And from an out-of-universe perspective, the Mother died because the writers still somehow thought Ted and Robin should be together. I can only assume the Mother died from licking toxic envelopes Robin picked out!
- Last Forever:
- That Irish Reader: The series finale showing Barney and Robin divorce after only 3 years of marriage. This had to be something they had planned from the very beginning considering that they filmed most of the last scene of the show in season 2 (so Ted's kids wouldn't look way older than they should be) and it is just terrible. The show puts us through the Barney and Robin relationship for the entire series run and it turns out for nothing. Most of the season 9 takes place over the course of the days leading up to Barney and Robin's wedding and they do get married. And for what? To divorce 3 years later to make Barney have a kid from a one-night stand and to set Robin up to be with Ted. The writers put us through their relationship for nothing.
- Echoing Silence: Tropers. It was the eve of March 31st 2014 when I learned to hate the ending for How I Met Your Mother. The rest of the episode, I could deal, typical sitcom angst bull, we get that enough so I wasn't too upset, yeah I was upset at how quickly they divorced Barney and Robin. But what pissed me off, was how they just killed off Tracy. She was a nice person, she seemed like a wonderful person and I would have loved to see more of her! But nope, just kill her off, after we finally learn her name! Just to get Ted back with Robin! I agree with Heavy Metal Snail, typically I would be saying goodbye. Now I just say good riddance!
- tsstevens: Wow.
Just... wow. Way to make the whole series Ruined FOREVER. To completely screw with established canon and characterization and be so mean spirited not just to the characters but to fans, I hope the writers struggle to find work after this. I really do. That's how upset I am. - Heavy Metal Snail: I spoke too fucking soon. Here I thought that "End of the Aisle" was the nadir of the show, but I was wrong. This series finale makes Dexter look like the finale for Six Feet Under. It makes the finale for LOST look like the finale for Breaking Bad. It makes the finale for The Sopranos look like the finale for 30 Rock. I want to say that the whole finale was a dethroning moment but that would go against the rules, so I will say that the real dethroning moment was at the very end where Ted gets together with Robin after Tracy (The Mother) dies. I already made my feelings about Ted and Robin abundantly clear in my previous entry, but this is absolutely wretched. In a show called How I Met Your Mother they end up making it "How I Met Your Dead Mother and Decided To Pursue a Failed Relationship That I Already Let Go Of Over a Decade Ago" They already had them break up, they already had them get back together, Ted already let her go! But apparently, that is not enough for the writers and they have to dredge up what might possibly be one of the most lifeless TV couples imaginable for no reason. Why couldn't it have just ended with the scene where Ted meets The Mother. That scene was sweet. But no, they had to render it all null and void in the last couple of minutes. The compressed time frame, Barney and Robin getting divorced, Barney getting a girl pregnant off screen for no reason, and the general "go nowhere, do nothing" nature of the finale was bad enough. But this particular scene pushed into what might go down as one of the top five worst series finales of all time. Good riddance How I Met Your Mother. Good fucking riddance.
- Prime_of_Perfection: This ending is the first time I've ever been hit by a Ruined FOREVER type of reaction to something. After the entire series build up regarding character development, so many plots that appeared to be wrapping up well enough, and me overall being okay with tons of problems other people have had, this has been the one to actually hit me hard enough to say fuck this series. With it continuing on with everything not being perfect, I was fine with that. However, it was them unceremoniously killing off Tracy after having setup so many different fine endings then pushing Robin YET AGAIN back into the forefront. These are the tactics of bad fanfiction, not a quality series finale.
- Tropers/kbear1995: The ONLY good part of this episode was Barney meeting his daughter for the first time. The rest of the episode is completely lost to me. With Robin and Barney divorcing, Tracy dying, and the Robin/Ted twist, it's almost as if you could just watch season one and be done with it.
- Tropers/darkrage6: I have to concur with everyone else; I've defended the past few seasons and this one until the finale, there are just so many things that didn't make sense: Ted waiting for 5 years to get married to Tracy (especially considering in past episodes he's seen wearing a ring in future scenes), Robin and Barney breaking because of Wi-Fi? seriously? And then instead of ending on the actually well-done scene of Ted and Tracy meeting for the first time, they immediately jump to the kids in the future basically saying "you should totally go bang Aunt Robin!" The nicest thing I can say about the finale is that it doesn't quite reach the level of absolute suckage as the finales of shows like L.O.S.T., Roseanne, The Sopranos and Seinfeld.
- ChrisDV: The show, after nine years of build up, effectively reduces the Mother to the status of "Disposable Uterus" so that Ted can have kids & Robin. But even worse, is that the show was supposed to end after season 8, with little-to-no characterization for the Mother, and with the same ending since it was shot back at the start of season 2 - so the Mother actually would have been little more than a plot device to give Ted children. I'm not a Feminist but after being a fan for nine years, this is both absolutely insulting & disgusting to me.
- Sea Creature: For me, Barney getting a child failed on every level. It was supposed to be sweet and heartwarming but in the end it ended up as disturbing. The whole situation how she gets born is strangely set up through Barney's Character Derailment, we don't even ever get to see the mother. His daughter is supposed to be his one true love in his life, the only woman, but considering how he acted to women and everyone through out the whole series, how can we be sure it won't be the same with her? Why should he suddenly change, when we see him go back and forth in his characterisation troughout the series. Most of his "hunt" on girls is based on their daddy issues, even in the same episode he mentions how now he won't just remind them of their dad, but he will actually look like them now. You won't convince me that suddenly his daughter will make him a better man, that's not how it works, if anything he will only contribute to another generations of those girls with daddy issues, which is a rather creepy full circle.
- Babtest: The kids did not mention or show any emotion towards their dead mother once. They just (for the first time?) listened to the great story of how their parents met, and the reaction is "Yeah well she's under ground so hurry up and get with Robin" No hint of sadness or missing their mom. Not to mention the cheap plot device sudden illness that kills you but just makes you pale and weak so you still look pretty which reduces the mother to a prop.
- sayaleviathan: What really ruined the finale for me is Barney's regression back to his 2005 self which throws all the development that he had for the past seasons including the one from the "Trilogy Time" episode. Well, yeah, he found joy when he saw his newborn kid but really, you let him go back to his womanizing ways after he had the playbook discarded and/or passed it on to those two guys from the "Sunrise" episode?. Another one that really ruined the finale is that last few minutes where the kids told Ted that it's okay go after Robin because Mom is dead for six years. Yeah, I get that it's the original ending that the writers planned years ago. But the problem is that after the last 5 seasons of showing us that Ted and Robin are not meant for each other, that ending wouldn't made sense. It would made sense in the earlier seasons, most especially if Victoria or Stella is the Mother. For someone who had followed this show since 2006 and patiently waited for the events to unravel despite the mediocrity of Seasons 5-8, this is just a big slap on the face. I'll just have the kids yelling at their dad as the real ending.
- digiblackraven93: I don't mean to add to an already long list of reasons why the Finale was a huge DMOS, but what seriously pissed me off most about the ending was how Barney and Robin got divorced 3-4 years into their marriage even though two entire seasons were dedicated to their relationship and their wedding. I was never fond of the Barney and Robin ship personally and I really did think they were not compatible enough to last more than a year, but the show constantly insisted that they were perfect for one another and that they made each other happy. So I was willing to go with it and I liked seeing both characters slowly become better people. Then the divorce happens and neither character keeps the development they supposedly got while being with a relationship with each other. Barney reverts back to his womanizing ways, even creating a second Playbook, and Robin goes back to being the woman who only cares about her career. Everything the two of them supposedly learned over the seasons was forgotten and lost in half an hour. Maybe if they took the time to show us that their relationship was going to fall apart and lead into divorce, but they end up better people despite that, I wouldn't be so bitter about it. Instead they spent more than two seasons constantly telling us that they were perfect for each other only to end it so abruptly, making everything that happened between both of them completely meaningless.
- k9feline7: All of the above moments are technically worse than the moment I nominate as the Finale's DMOS, but my moment is the one where a part of me died inside. As bad as the divorce was, it was still early enough in the episode that I had some hope Barney and Robin would get back together by the end, but that hope ended with my DMOS. It's the moment Barney casually asks the others, "Hey, do you remember the Perfect Week?" Sigh. Yes, Barney, regretfully, I do remember the Perfect Week episode, however much I wish I could forget it. I remember that episode as being perfectly awful, during that terrible time in Season 5, after the first time the creators broke up Barney and Robin for stupid reasons, where Barney went back to his womanizing, only now, he was a complete success at it, always scoring with every girl he hit on, no matter how stupid or inane his ploys were and where the rest of the cast inexplicably became the cheerleaders of his womanizing. The Perfect Week was the absolute nadir of that time. From the moment I finished watching it, I've always regarded it as the Worst. HIMYM episode. Ever. (Yes, it's still worse than the Finale. The Finale did have some good scenes, Perfect Week didn't have any.) But the fact they wanted to do a Call-Back to that worthless turd of an episode in the Grand Finale was a sign to me that Craig & Carter really did have no freaking clue what actually worked on their show and what didn't. And yes, the Finale's last 5 minutes were worse than that moment, but by that time, I was no longer surprised that they could screw up the ending so thoroughly.
- Silverblade 2: Pretty much everything has been said except my personal DMOS: Robin's wangsty speech about how it's too painful to be around her ex-husband then refers Ted as "the man she should have married" and how much she's jealous of Ted and Tracy's happiness. What the hell? I thought the reason why she and Barney divorced was because she's travelling a lot for her work. What make her think that Ted, the guy who puts relationships about everything else would have been more tolerant than Barney? The Unrequited Love Switcheroo (both between Ted/Robin or Barney/Robin) in the whole series was already boring, the writers don't realize that makes the characters bastards that only seek for what they can't have. Through the last seasons, I gradually lost sympathy toward Robin (the way she threats poor Patrice, her flanderization to a apathetic tomboy...). Her inability to be happy for the guy she repeatedly rejected for the last three seasons was the nail on the coffin... yet we're supposed to be sad for her failure in life. By the finale, Robin has become my own personal Scrappy.
- That 897 Guy: I agree with everything here, but I feel you could go on forever talking about how bad this episode is. My own Moment would be, in general, how the writers could not decide whether or not Tracy meant anything to Ted at all. According to the timeline, they had about a decade of happiness together, which is actually quite a long time to get to know someone intimately and be sure they were the one for you. And according to Ted, he never stopped loving her during that time for even a second, and despite the massive amount of pain he went through offscreen when she died, he is extremely thankful that they met. In other words, ten years with her was worth the pain of losing her, which is honestly a very powerful testament as to how much he loved this woman. However, if Ted really does love Robin just as much, and still had a chance with her even in 2030, wouldn't it be easier for him if he and Tracy had never met at all? He'd get to be happy and never have to feel the heartbreak of losing his soulmate. Not only that, at earlier points in the show, he would say things like "This was the best year of my life" (better than any year he spent with Tracy, then) or "This was the most painful thing that ever happened to me" (more painful than losing his beloved wife I guess) and before the finale, these didn't seem all that wrong. The whole story was, through our eyes, meant to show how badly he needed to find love so that the love story itself has the proper buildup. But now you're telling me he was telling his kids about Robin, and just focusing on how great his life was before he met Tracy? Way to shit all over the entire foundation of the series, Bays and Thomas. We are forced to view this series in one of two ways, both of which are fundamentally disturbing: Either Ted just settled for Tracy because he was so desperate and because he needed a working uterus (this is what the finale seems to imply) or Tracy was his One True Love and Robin was his consolation prize, and considering what this episode makes of Robin, they most certainly will break up and Ted will never honestly be happy again. This is an injustice to one of the sweetest and most built-up couples in TV history, and the worst part is in the end this is meant to be a happy ending.
- Pigeons: Honestly, the worst part for me was the fact that this was planned from pretty much the start. They filmed this in, I think, season 2. Fair enough, they didn't know if the show was going to last, so they made this ending that could be tagged on any time... But after so many seasons, so much character development, did no one ever think that the characters couldn't simply revert to the very beginning of the show? Did they have to use those clips of the kids so badly? Couldn't they have written up something else when they started, y'know, spending entire seasons on explaining why it COULDN'T be this way? The worst part for me wasn't in the details, but the fact that I've sat throughout so many seasons of this show, and all along this was the plan. I know it sounds entitled, but I feel cheated of my time. If I'd known it would have ended with such a badly written cliché-storm, I would have stopped watching after season 2 when I still wanted this and called it a day. Instead I've sat through I don't know how many episodes, and all along this has been what it's been leading to. This has been the point of the entire show. Because no one thought that maybe, oh, I don't know, the fans would actually start caring about what was going on rather than keep rooting for Ted and Robin? I thought the writers of this show were so much smarter than that.
- Rippen Fan 33: Agreed, and I'd like to add this little comment. The finale was apparently made earlier so Ted's kids would stay the same age, but not only would them being older be a good joke (as a sort of Lampshade Hanging for how long the story was taking), but one episode featured a Funny Background Event where a couple got engaged, had kids, became old etc. while the gang was telling Canada jokes, and that was apparently okay, but Ted's kids aging isn't?
- Roflopadous: The series finale of How I Met Your Mother should be required viewing for any aspiring screenwriter/writer in order to show them what not to do when wrapping up a story's ending. Of course you'd have to cite the history of the show and then specifically point out why the ending doesn't work and why it's considered a teaching moment. It's a perfect example of what happens when you force an ending to your story that you had written in the beginning of the process. That is not a good reason for your TV show to be memorable. In all honesty, I could've bought most of the stuff that had happened in this finale if it was in Seasons 1-3 even if I would've been a little cranky about the endgame (I initially started watching BECAUSE I liked the idea of Robin not being The Mother and being the one that never was) but it at least would've made sense. Too much had happened and the writers just didn't care.
- Zain R: For me, it was extremely upsetting that after an episode that hinted that Tracy was dying, she really died. This was the moment I rolled my back and just lost it. I could live with Barney and Robin getting divorced even though an entire season was dedicated to their wedding day. I could live with Barney losing all his character development and somehow finding a way to be a better man by being a father. I could live with the show ending with Ted just saying "and that kids... is how I met your mother". It could've implied in the last moments of the show that she died. Her fate could've been left up to us to decide!! That could've been a way better ending at least for Ted and Tracy! Instead we got our finale that aired. And what killed me even more than knowing that their mother did in fact die, it really feels like one big joke when their kids talk about how their dad just wants to get back with Robin. That scene could've been redeemed if the kids actually did show some sort of emotion from remembering their mom instead of thinking the story of how their parents met is some sort of punishment. The way the kids react towards their mother just seems insulting, especially after we, the audience spent an entire year getting to know her and how her relationship with Ted turned out and coming to love her after some people felt skeptical about her appearing at first.
- Tropers/kaydorkeey: I agree with everything said and want to add: They dragged Barney through the mud. They didn't have to have him marry Robin just to break them up. He could have married Quinn, whom he had excellent chemistry with. But instead, they dragged him through the mud, forgot his character development, and gave him a kid he has said before he didn't want. For gods' sake, he celebrates Not A Father's Day! And Robin. A strong female character who went from putting her career first to putting her relationship first, to supposedly finding a guy who she could have both with. Good? No. Because she ends up getting back with the guy she, as previously stated, didn't want. And now she's going to be the step-mom to two teenagers I'm sure she loves, but remember earlier? She never wanted kids, was strictly against having kids. And now she's going to be a step-mother to two teenagers. There are some parents that don't even want to have two teenagers when they gave birth to them, how are we supposed to believe this is Robin's happy ending? Well, because apparently deciding the ending seven years before the show ends and not actively working towards it guarantees everyone will be happy!
- Daniel 1559: The HIMYM finale should in fact, be a lesson in how to not plan a ending years ago in response to an audience that almost no longer exists or have changed their worldviews. If you look at the arguments of most of those who liked the finale have two things in common: 1) They wanted Ted and Robin together from day 1 and 2) they stopped watching the show at a certain point because of the Seasonal Rot and only checked in the end just because they at the most wanted to see it end, and having given up on the show a long time ago, they used their assessment of the character development from earlier seasons than later ones. The second point is justified from a narrative perspective depending on how you view the quality of the show but the first stopped being justified not long after season 3-4. Through some may argue otherwise, I figured the creators were not driven by their own Ted/Robin shipping—had the show never been picked up, Ted would have just ended up with Victoria and that's that, but the fact that Ted and Robin as a pairing was popular during season 2 they may wanted to have "rewarded" the audience for their emotional investment by having the mother die in the end. However the audience changed and a lot of people who used to ship T/R either stopped watching the show because their plot went nowhere and because the show kept telling us that Ted and Robin simply did not work, furthermore the rest of the audience either shipped Swarkles or watched solely to find out who the mother was, thus whenever Ted went back to Robin felt very, very awkward. Thus the fanbase of the show drastically changed from one pairing to another and thus the imposition of this ending made it a very bitter pill to swallow in order to please a Vocal Minority that professes to not even watching the show anymore in contrast to the fanbase itself, which appreciated the show for what it is no matter how much flak it got for Seasonal Rot and wanted the show to end happily with all three pairings Happily Married. Thus the ending no longer works because the fanbase has shifted away from that ending a long time ago and the most popular pairing has changed. Even worse is that the audience could have been prepared for this ending, but the show made no effort to. A key problem is focusing the ending on the wedding itself, when they could have just done half of the season on the wedding and the other half on the events of the finale stretched out to fit 12 episodes, in order to better prepare us for the ending or to justify why Ted should have ended up with Robin, and probably have avoided all the Unfortunate Implications that the creators unwittingly triggered. Since this was not done, the finale felt like very badly written fanfiction that felt very much out of place with the rest of the show in order to please a small group that themselves profess they were less enthusiastic about the show in the first place.
- whiteow82: What really upset me about the finale was that it made me feel like the whole show was a complete waste of my time. Seriously, having a guy spend 9 seasons telling his kids how he met their mother asks for suspension of disbelief to begin with, but you learn to accept the premise and have some fun with the show. But as it turns out, what Ted has been saying for the past 9 seasons is completely pointless because the mother dies and he just ends up with the woman he met in the first episode. It felt like I have been lied to this whole time. Really, the show should have been named "How I wasted Everyone's Time"!
- LGM Horus: Still on the finale, what bothers me the most is the way they set up Tracy for the entire series. One big fear I had was that once she was revealed, there is no way the mother would live up to the expectations. And then, Tracy comes along with an Adorkable personality and actually managed to be all of that without ever getting too unrealistic. She was likeable, had great chemistry with all the gang, and the way she was inserted in the group, one at a time, really got to us. She was exactly everything Ted wanted all those years, and what we as an audience wanted for him.
- Scsigs: Let me just say that I hate the finale, but before I get to that, let me explain as to why I think season 9, as a whole, is just one big, overly long, festival of suck. The fact that the build up to the wedding took the entire season to get through. It should've been only a quarter of the season, then have the rest be dedicated to Ted and Tracy as a couple and maybe Barney & Robin enjoying their honeymoon and marriage. Some episodes, like Barney finally explaining his job, the final slap, and Barney giving the Playbook to two younger dudes are all what I think should've been kept. The rest, minus the wedding and Ted meeting Tracy, should've been removed because most of it was meaningless filler. I think the decision to make this season more serialized and take place over a 48-hour period with the most bland, boring filler in the world made it a slog to get through and, unfortunately, put even more weight on the finale to be what we'd hoped for. Unfortunately, the finale took a turn down a road it shouldn't have. No one seems to mention anywhere here that they spent up until the week the episode aired with which ending they were going to go with; the terrible one in the episode, or the good one from the DVD set. It came down to the wire and the creators made the decision. Unfortunately, it was the wrong one. The ending in the final product is what should've been on the DVD as an alternate ending, not the other one. Let's take a currently-running series for comparison in a similar situation; One Piece. Eiichiro Oda has said that he planned the series' ending already. However, I'm sure he's smart enough to where the ending will be tweaked to accommodate the development the series has had and will have until it nears its end. He's not just going to regress it to make his ending work. That's the thing with the ending, it wouldn't be as bad of a blow if it wasn't being looked forward to as much as it was, but it was, and now the creators have to live with it. You have to change your plans when Characterization Marches On and not piss off fans. I admit, I still like the show. I think it did a lot of what Friends did, only better in a lot of cases. Every time I see it's on, I tune in to it, but I can't bare watching the finale again, it's just too awful for these and many other reasons. If this trope ever needs a new picture on the main page, it should be the DVD cover of season 9 of this show. Just sayin'.
- Miniatures: I'm tempted to say the finale, but really, it's the season 4 episode "Shelter Island" in light of the finale for me. Near the end of the episode, Robin begs Ted not to marry Stella, not so that he can be with her, but because it's not the ending he deserves. She claims that Ted deserves better than to "disappear" into "someone else's wedding, someone else's house, someone else's life". Oh, you mean like how Robin presumably winds up marrying Ted, moving into HIS dream home, being the stepmother to children she never wanted, and more or less filling the Tracy-shaped hole in Ted's life? Robin's speech is fine on its own, but with the added context of the finale, its implications are awful. Apparently it's unthinkable that Ted might not be the hero and author of his story, but it's perfectly all right for Robin to "disappear into someone else's life". It's one of the most blatant and infuriating instances of HIMYM viewing its female characters as rewards for the dudes, not people in their own right.
- SWF Max: For me, the DMOS is in the episode "Bagpipes," when Robin and Barney, who are dating at the time, use affectionate nicknames for each other. Ted, Robin's ex-boyfriend, suspects that something fishy is going on, because when he was dating Robin, she hated nicknames. However, in the earlier episode "Where Were We?", which takes place while Ted is dating Robin, Robin calls Ted "Teddy bear." She does not say it sarcastically. Therefore, the moment in the episode "Bagpipes" is inconsistent with the show's history.
- Capricious Salmon: I got rid of my DMOS for Heather Mosby for Marshall in "No Pressure." In the episode, Ted tells Robin he loves her for the ten trillionth time, because apparently he hasn't gotten over her yet and the writers wanna beat a dead horse, even if it comes the fuck out of nowhere. This has been done to death already, but this is after the heels of her super emotional breakup with Kevin. When Robin tells him she doesn't love him, Marshall goes to Robin and tells her to move out because things are gonna be weird for Ted. Excuse me?! Weird for Ted?! Again, keep in mind that this is not too long after Robin tearfully confessed to Lily and Marshall she was infertile and broke up with Kevin specifically because she didn't want kids and didn't want him to spend the rest of his life regretting he wasn't a father. Maybe Marshall's right things are gonna be awkward for them, but that's not the right time. At least give her more than an hour before you bring it up or help her find another place to stay. It honestly should've been Robin leaves of her own accord or Lily tells her to do it. I don't know why they gave this speech to Marshall, and whenever I watch it, it sets something off in me. Talk about victim blaming and talk about acting out of character!
