It ended March 31, 2014.
After a nine-year run, How I met Your Mother came to an end when the highly anticipated finale aired last night--we were finally going to see Ted meeting the mother. Nine years of Bob Saget telling us about Ted's misadventure's in love came down to this. But it wasn't a very satisfying ending, not because the mom died (which I think might be most people's complaint, but I don't know; I've intentionally avoided reading what other people have to say so that the words I write here are my own), but because it wasn't true to the series itself.
I'll start off by saying that I called the mom dying like three weeks ago. Just wanted to put that out there.
Real quick, some context: season nine blows. The show runners did well to make sure the series ended on their terms, securing Jason Segel's participation before deciding to go ahead with season nine. Season eight ended with us finally seeing the mother, which was good as a season finale but neutered the ninth season from the get-go. This season, until last night's finale, took place over the course of like a week(end?) leading up to Robin and Barney's wedding. I say "took place," but I mean "slogged through;" though sprinkled with scenes of future Ted and Tracy coming back to Farhampton, the trek through season nine was very slow-going. We got to see where all of the supporting characters ended up at the end of one of the later episodes, which was nice, but felt rushed too. It smelled of "we have to include this, so here it is." But finally, after episodes and scenes that seemed like the television version of those "fluff" sentences you used to write to meet page minimums in high school, we get to the finale.
The hour-long finale fast-forwards us and the gang through the years, stopping to show us Barney and Robin's divorce, Robin falling away from the gang to pursue her career, the gang lamenting about Robin's absence at big moments such as Marshall's judgeship and the birth of Barney's child with Number 31, and... really, it was a very Robin-centric episode, which I guess is foreshadowing, because, spoiler alert, it ends up all being about Robin anyway, but it seemed to take away from what was supposed to be this epic finale.
The episode dealt with serious subjects--divorce, the gradual loss of friends to life, death. But, for a show that has done the serious stuff surprisingly well for a comedy--from the season one finale which ends with Marshall holding the engagement ring Lily gave back to him, to the 30 seconds in the episode where Ted's cab gets hit by a car (it was touching until Ted was really just ok), to the episode where Robin narrates to her kids that aren't really there, to Marshall's dad's heart attack--the finale really fell on its face. We see the negative effects of divorce as Barney tries to deal with his failed marriage by being the Barney we came to love, the womanizing egotist who would do almost anything for a night of pleasure, but as opposed to the previous eight seasons, this seems sad and mirthless, and casts a shadow on a good half hour of the episode. Same with the whole "falling away from once-close friends" that encapsulates the first half hour of the show. As mentioned above, the episode was dominated by the frame of everyone else's noticing of the absence of Robin in their lives, demoting Ted (the "I" in How I Met Your Mother) and Tracy (the..um...Mother in How I Met Your Mother) to secondary roles. These things happen--relationships end, and it would appear that the show runners and creators wanted to depict something "real," but trying to cram that much into the capstone episode tarnished what could have been a celebration of the last nine years.
Lastly, we come to the death of the mother. My problem is not in the fact that she died--I actually liked the idea of Ted telling the story to his kids as a sort of memorial to their mother--but how it was handled in the show. Ted mentions Tracy getting sick, and we see her in a hospital, and this cool song is playing "remember, remember" and Ted is reading to her (likely Pablo Neruda), and... that's it. Her death is glossed over. We don't see Ted's anguish when she dies. We don't see the gang share in that sorrow. We just... move on. It might be cliche, but I think a shot with Ted crying over the hospital bed where Tracy lay after the EKG flatlines would have been appropriate there. Then we see a grayed Ted talking with his kids (with lighting giving a contrast as we see night sky behind Ted but what appears to be natural sunlight illuminating the kids, but I digress) and the daughter speaks up and voices the concern of many a viewer: their mom is hardly in the story, a nod to the viewers. But then all of a sudden Ted's got the hots for Robin and the whole story is just him trying rationalize that to himself and the kids and now he's gonna steal her the blue French horn again and it all comes full circle. Except completing the loop in this case wasn't the way to go. Ted is this hopeless romantic who was searching for THE ONE for nine years. He finds her, marries her, and they have this life together, but in the end, he ends up with Robin, which means one of two things:
1) He was in love with Robin the whole time
2) He has two "true loves" in his life
Both of these are contradictory to Ted as a character and the show itself.
The finale wasn't true to the series itself.
