Jesse is a cofounder of SportsAlcohol.com even though he doesn't care for sports or alcohol. His favorite movie is Ron Howard's The Paper. I think. This is what happens when you don't write your own bio. I know for sure likes pie.
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- The SportsAlcohol.com Podcast: The Biggest Holiday Movies of 1995 - December 22, 2025
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I feel nothing.
I kind of wanted to know what the mother’s job was. Do they say that and I missed it?
Here endeth my trenchant analysis.
You did miss it! Ted clearly said he called her OFFICE. She works in an office.
(But for real, I think they made some lip service a few episodes ago that she was working to end poverty, which was her hastily written dream.)
I work in an office trying to end poverty. My poverty. So Good Job, Writers! I CONNECTED with the mother.
Actually, I did. I really liked her. That’s why the ending doesn’t really make sense to me. I feel like Robin and Ted never had that much chemistry, and the mother was clearly perfect for Ted. And then they made Robin out to be such a sad person with a broken television because OMG she chose a career over marriage and now all she has are dogs. The writers had a great chance to show a woman being happy with her life without a marriage or LTR. It would have been nice if they could have shown that not-oft-used ending in the same way they showed two people being happy in a marriage in a realistic way (ie, not completely drama free or obliviously blissful).
Having Ted end up with Robin makes the mother feel like a MacGuffin, which I guess she kind of is after all, but then why spend an entire damn season making her into an actual person just to off her? Not being particularly articulate here, just unloading.
I agree. I think it’s especially conspicuous because they started leaning harder on “Ted never really got over Robin” in later seasons, if I remember correctly. Maybe I’m just forgetting because I’ve only seen a handful of these episodes more than once, but I feel like back in seasons three and four and five, they had their moments of connection, but it wasn’t like he was holding a torch, necessarily.
Yet this was supposedly the ending they intended for a while? So maybe they should have seeded that earlier.
Even more of a MacGuffin, it seems, was the fucking wedding weekend! We’re spending a whole season in the lead-up to a marriage that fizzles out in a realistic way that nonetheless kinda undermines about half the episodes they’ve done over the past year-plus.
Didn’t she also write a book? There was an episode where they were getting drunk in a limo that may have said it
Yeeeeees, thank you, they did say that. Forgot.
Sometimes I wonder if the mother was composited to be the most appealing character/person possible, as a reaction to the inevitability of crazy fans who “hate Lily now” or “can’t stand Robin” or whatever.
But also, here’s why I think you feel nothing and why I thought this show might make me cry and why it didn’t: where was the goodbye to the mother?
I didn’t love that the show ends with Robin, and if *I* didn’t love a show ending how it began (by far my favorite part of the Seinfeld finale), there’s some problems. But I think that ending actually COULD have been a really sweet coda if it hadn’t been telegraphed — not just from the “daughter’s wedding” thing a few episodes ago (which I thought was SO telegraphed it couldn’t possibly be what they were hinting), but by the if-anything-INCREASED focus on Ted/Robin these last few seasons, even after the show successfully chronicled their relationship and its demise in the first few seasons!
So again I ask: where was the goodbye to the mother? Why is the last time we see her in a hospital bed overlaid with Ted’s narration? Why did this really huge emotional event — Ted losing his wife after just a decade or so — not really land?!?
I was relieved when they cast the mother this year and decided to show her to us. Even better when it turned out Cristin Milioti was super charming and adorable and I totally have Minor Actor Crush on her now. But honestly, if THIS was how the show was going to end all along, I dunno, maybe it would’ve made more sense NOT to actually show her?
I mean, that would have seemed like a cop-out, too. But it would’ve been more of an honest cop-out, in some ways, than to give us a character and then use her about half as much as they should have in the final stretch.
Oh hi. Typing at the same time. But yes, this stuff.
-“[W]hich I thought was SO telegraphed it couldn’t possibly be what they were hinting,” –Exactly.
Having given this no time to digest, I’m generally dissatisfied with the way things ended up, but my problems start way before the finale.
I generally feel like this whole season was a misfire. The finale was mostly about the group’s BIG MOMENTS, but why was Barney and Robin’s wedding the focus of the whole season, when it was just one of a string in a series of BIG MOMENTS? And not even a particularly important one, given that they get divorced three years later.
I don’t see why the meeting of the mother couldn’t be the BIG MOMENT at the end, with similar flash-forwards and flashbacks to Ted and Tracy’s life together the whole season. Tracy is great! I really felt cheated out of her. The structure of the season meant that we only got to see snippets of their life together. It’s so weird that we got to see all of the ins and outs of Ted’s relationship with Victoria or Zoe, but only glimpses of the relationship with the actual, supposed love of his life.
And I’m not really into Ted and Robin as a couple. That might be more of a personal preference, but it makes the whole series feel a little creepy to think that he was holding a torch for her the whole time. It’s also a have-the-cake-and-eat-it-too scenario, since Ted and Robin got to circumvent the things that made their relationship not work (his desire to have kids, hers to travel the world and have a career) by Ted having a wife that dies. Are we supposed to feel good about that?
Upvoting you on your own blog.
Appreciated!
Also, I still contend that the best episodes of the show are the ones that don’t really have any impact on the characters’ lives, like the one where they go in search of the burger place that Marshall ate at his first week in New York. That’s part of the reason why I was less and less happy with the show these past two seasons. I appreciate that the characters aged out of their twenties, but I wish they could’ve had more of those kinds of episodes about things people do in their thirties. (I don’t know, take naps?)
The burger episode is one of my favorites ever if only for the Amadeus reference.
I need to rewatch the burger episode – I remember not liking it too much because it had so little to do with the plot (and I didn’t like the Regis cameo). But, as one of the few that I’ve only seen twice, I will give it another chance.
I noticed that as the show went on, its non-master-plot episodes got a lot worse. They were often delightful and smartly executed in the first bunch of seasons. But the last two seasons, for example, though the rhyming thing was fun enough, a lot of the one-offs were pretty limp. The burger one, though, as well as the race to McLaren’s, had some great NYC notes in them.
Given how his life with the mother was sped through, you really don’t get a real sense of Ted mourning. Could they have worked that in during a “Mother-centered” season? Maybe. But it could have felt even more strung out or like it was trying to give us a payoff it didn’t deserve? I think so.
Also, the idea of two old flames reconnecting with each other (and that there doesn’t need to be “the one,” a message that Ted had had in his head for so long) shows a nice balance between the happy and sad that the show had done well for a long time.
I do agree that the thing with Robin doesn’t really undermine Ted’s relationship with Tracy like, as made-up humans. There can be more than one love of a person’s life. BUT I do think narratively, there was some undermining going on that doesn’t really serve either relationship very well.
I don’t even need to see him mourning. If anything, the opposite: more with Tracy so we feel that loss more.
Oh, i would’ve jettisoned the whole death-and-mourning thing and kept Ted and Tracy together!
First quick thoughts:
I loved the episode, but only liked the ending.
Without a doubt, I could have been happy with Tracie and Ted ending up happily ever after (and possibly more happy). But the idea of Ted and Robin eventually ending up together does make the way he told the story make more sense. And, while I wasn’t “rooting” for them, there is (in my eyes) a good chemistry between them.
I do think they have good chemistry, insomuch as Smulders has good chemistry with pretty much everyone on that show.
I agree that having Ted end up with Robin makes the Robin-focus of the show’s last couple seasons make a heck of a lot more sense, that’s just not where I wanted it to go.
Another question: how many TV shows ever feel like they were ended on exactly the creators’ terms? (Especially comedies or comedy-dramas. I feel like dramas, for whatever reason, maybe that reason being that I haven’t watched THAT many, get more leeway here.)
I mean, I’m not going to say this finale was disappointing to me because CBS wanted the show to continue; it’s still on Bays and Thomas to deliver. But it is striking to me that when I’m thinking of finales, you’re often either talking about something that was canceled where the creators had hoped to do more (Arrested Development; Freaks and Geeks), or something that had to do a finale after being stretched beyond its natural endpoint (The Office, HIMYM).
I guess Seinfeld was one; they pretty much did the show as long as they wanted to, and got Larry David back to write the finale, even though lots of people hated it. And 30 Rock seemed to be about at the correct stopping place.
Breaking Bad’s last episode isn’t going to make my top 10, but it ended the show perfectly. Ditto True Detective, but that was conceived as a limited thing.
Agreed. First Prize!
I don’t know any back story behind The Sopranos, but that finale seemed as tightly controlled as it is possible for art to be.
I have never seen it but I read about it at the time and it sounded amazing and made me want to watch the show more.
I think I’m in the minority on this one, but I’d rather a show stick around longer than may be needed than be cut too short. Having fewer “great” episodes later in a run doesn’t make the early ones any less enjoyable for me.
I also think of shows that tried to do late/last season with a new character added into the mix (especially a baby) and those haven’t worked as well. Being able to see the important moments with the key 5 people we care about, while fast forwarding through the new people we don’t know, was a really neat decision. Do I wish I had known the mother more (because she seemed awesome)? Yes. But could a full season of seeing whether she meshed with the group been a let down? Quite possibly
I’m sort of with you on preferring too long than too short. There is this weird idea that middling or bad seasons/episodes can “ruin” a show but I don’t need TV shows to bat a thousand for a fixed amount of time to enjoy them. It doesn’t ruin The Simpsons for me that it’s no longer perfect the way it was for seasons 3-9 or so.
I have noticed, though, that very little good tends to come from comedy shows lasting more than seven seasons. I feel like the middling/filler/meh episodes from HIMYM could have easily been jettisoned for a rock-solid seven-year run. But, that’s not really how TV economics work, so I’ve tried to accept that, OK, it’s gonna be nine instead of seven, and enjoy what good stuff we got from the extra years.
Parts I loved:
– Juxtaposing Barney’s pickup line with Barney’s encounter with his daughter. I need to start memorizing it for when I meet my daughter in the next few weeks 🙂
– Shout outs to past gags, quotes (“It’s great, it’s great …” was in season 1 when Robin was talking about Victoria; Robots vs. Wrestlers; “Major Production”; Marshall paying Lily for the bet)
Parts I liked:
– The way he told the story makes a lot more sense now.
Tracie taking the picture at the bar
– The fact that the corny goodbye scene took place at the beginning – we didn’t need another “I’ll miss you the most, Scarecrow”
– Marshall having to deal with hating his job (though squeezing that in wasn’t ideal)
– The idea that the group drifts apart (and that Marshall and Lily have developed negative feelings toward Robin)
– Not having a scene where Ted asks Marshall/Lily/Barney about asking Robin out – I’m sure that something like that happened, but we didn’t need to see it (we’d already seen it in prior seasons, really). And the premise that he more needs the blessing of the new most important people in his lives (his kids) makes a lot of sense.
Parts I didn’t like:
– Lily crying at least 4 times in 40 minutes
– Never knowing about the connection the Mother had with the kids (or even really seeing them together)
– As others have said, using the whole season focusing on a wedding that created a marriage that was only a blip on the radar
I’m upset and am going to need some time. Goddammit, Ted Mosby.
One more part that I really liked about the finale:
Most seem to agree that Barney and Robin getting married never fully made sense. Barney committing like that never fully added up to me. So, the fact that they split up was a plot point that I really appreciated. It makes the last couple of years of their fluctuating relationship mean less, but it was an appropriate ending nonetheless.
I’m still thinking about this, and another thing I realized: Ted never would have met Tracy if he hadn’t met Robin first. (At least, not the way this played out.) And in fact, they needed Robin and Barney’s wedding to finally bring them together.
I am in turmoil about the ending, but it overall seems fine… I just re-watched the pilot, and I’ve calmed down a bit. It really does seem inevitable from the first episode. Why start the story there, right?
After an initial “What the eff??”, I think I’m coming around. The show has always, for me, been “How I Grew Up,” about one chunk of Ted’s life. Looking back he realizes how his life fundamentally changed when he ended up with the Mother, but the show was never about her, it was about him tracing how he grew and changed to be able to meet her and appreciate her.
They totally could have done a show for 9 years with Cristin Milioti and without Cobie Smolders, about parents in their 30s and 40s. I’d love to watch it. But that wasn’t THIS show. I think they gave enough peeks to show that yes, Ted’s life was rich and interesting, and not too storybooky (after desperately trying to get married, Ted ends up doing the ceremony as an afterthought). She wasn’t a placeholder for “Ted’s reward,” she was a funny and interesting person.
But the sense I got from the finale wasn’t “And now Ted can finally be with his true love,” but that Ted finally did grow up and had a great life. (And as Sara noted in Twitter, his life pre-Mother wasn’t too shitty.) And now he’s going into yet another phase of his life, and all this reminiscing about old loves has reminded him that he does love Robin and is willing to reach out.
So…show-wise, I think it worked out well. I didn’t want to see the Mother die, but it did give a reason for the whole premise that I didn’t even need. I never got people who complained that Ted’s story was “unbelievably long” or “TMI” for his kids because…it’s TV, the whole thing is a construction, and in real life no one’s “How I did this” story is more than 20 minutes, and I don’t want to hear what a dude would ACTUALLY tell his kids about his 20s. The construct allowed for some awesome storytelling games, about false memories and twisty narratives, but I ended up liking that it actually explained WHY this dude talked so much about this one ex/friend. And hell, so many stories were about how events, quotes, and incidents grow in meaning after the fact, and I like the idea of Ted, single again at age 50-whatever, looks back and finds increased meaning in a relationship that died in his early 30s.
And the show was good at inserting bits about how life is sometimes inconveniently sucky. Awesome fathers die before grandkids are born, etc. Ted ending up with Robin didn’t mean that his Mother time wasn’t the best time of his life, but people do die and life takes both unexpected and totally predictable turns.
That said, it could have been the exact same finale without the last 2 minutes and I’d have been totally satisfied. He met someone awesome, the friends grew apart as friends do, we look back at our past fondly, the end.
Yeah, the more I think about it, the less I’m bothered by *what* happened than *how* it happened. I agree that Ted reconnecting romantically with Robin later in life doesn’t mean Ted didn’t love Tracy fully. I just don’t think they pulled that off as elegantly as they needed to.
I think part of it is a structural issue where for a show that usually is so well-constructed in its flashbacks and flash-forwards, this episode just started jumping around in time without much of the narrative conceit that usually drives those jumps. Like in the “How Your Mother Met Me” episode from earlier that season — I found that really entertaining, but it also kinda felt like a 22-minute explanation dump to tie her into the series’ loose ends, rather than its own story. I was a little taken aback that in the one episode where I’d expect the “Kids…” thing to pop back up a little more forcefully, we’re suddenly out of that nested, digression-heavy story and into a torrent of exposition where suddenly you have to explain what happened to everyone for the next two decades. It just felt like something of an info-tumble (without many jokes) after a season where they spent a lot of time on one weekend.
Also, Ted reconnecting with Robin is another cake-and-eat-it-too scenario. It’s realistic to say there’s not The One person out there for everyone. I liked that Robin married Barney, because she wasn’t The One for Ted, even though he’s thought at different points throughout the series that she might be. Then he meets and marries Tracy (great), who dies (boo), which is sad, but the fact that he’s able to move on confirms that there isn’t The One person for someone, there could be many people out there. But going back to Robin confuses things. He ended up with the person he thought was The One. So the message of the series is: Don’t get hung up on The One, unless it’s Robin, then do. Or, like, the world isn’t magical, unless it is.
To me, this finale felt like the creators were trying to please everyone (Ted/Robin, Robin/Barney and Ted/Mother fans) but ended up pleasing no one. I agree with Marisa that Ted ending up with Robin confused things. I would have preferred that Ted and Tracy live a long and happy life together; however, after digesting it for a day and reading other reactions, I have come to appreciate better my husband’s position. Namely, that the mother’s death, while a bummer of an ending, made Ted’s whole long, drawn-out story to his kids in retrospect, a powerful testament to his faith in love and destiny and marriage (though we agree that it would have been more powerful had we seen more of the mother before her brief end scene since she was so great!). If the mother had to die, I think a better ending would have been to have Ted’s purpose in telling this story to be to tell his kids that he’s ready to date again (because couldn’t they have pre-filmed a couple of possible endings with the kids while they were at it?). Then, they could have had the last scene be the gang at the bar (including Robin and Barney who have not gotten divorced two minutes after their wedding) assuring Ted once again that there is someone out there for him. They get up to leave and Ted leaves behind the yellow umbrella which is then picked up by an unknown woman as a sign that the universe is not done with Ted yet. Since I can’t unsee the finale, this is my revised version rather than Ted’s played-out relationship with Robin being his ending all along!
One more nagging question: I have an image in my head of previous flash forward scenes of Ted’s wedding which showed Ted facing the bride who was only seen from the back with a veil so that you couldn’t even tell her hair color. That wasn’t at all like the scene of Ted and Tracy’s wedding in which she wasn’t wearing a veil. Am I just remembering wrong or did they change things in the finale?
Some had-time-to-sleep-on-it thoughts:
-Also a little disappointed that we only get to hear about Marshall’s life/career through expositional dialogue, we never get to hear about Lily’s career (does she keep her art-buying job?), and we never get to see Barney’s babymama. I also chalk this up to shoehorning this all into the last episode to put the focus on Barney and Robin’s misguided wedding for the whole season.
-If Barney and Robin’s marriage failed because Robin was always traveling for work, how are Ted and Robin going to succeed? Or does Ted not need Robin around because he has kids?
I hadn’t thought about the latter – good point!
I also wish that we had learned more about Lily’s future career. I was a bit troubled that Lily, who has always worked, was only mentioned as having babies (not to mention that Robin, the career woman, ends up as the dog equivalent of crazy cat lady).
I can’t help wishing that THIS LAST EPISODE was the entire season. After spending so much time being so deeply invested in the relationship between Barney and Robin, and crying on the edge of my seat waiting for Ted to meet Tracy, the final episode just felt so rushed. There was so much character development and plot lines built up, SO much emotion invested, and then it was like the writers were like “jk. none of that matters.”
Overall- I love this series so so incredibly much that there was enough in the finale to keep me happy and tug at my heartstrings. However, by letting Barney and Robin fall apart -literally- the episode after they get married, showing Tracy’s death in a two second clip, and then in the last 3 minutes having Ted run back to Robin? It was too much of a 180. There was too much change in such a short period of time, that made this entire season felt like it was unnecessary.
What I DID love? The way Robin distanced herself from the group, but came back for Ted’s big moment. The impact that Barney’s child had on him. How Lily was still so invested in the group after all of those years. THOSE THINGS are believable. Those are the characters I fell in love with. But I want to know more about what led up to these moments. All of those flash-forward scenes could have been full episodes. I can’t help feeling like I missed out on the more important things in their lives.
I can push those critical feelings aside and embrace the feels, but I just wish that there was so much more.
I will still end up marathoning this entire series on repeat until the day I die. Granted, when I do, I’ll be skipping the majority of this last season and go straight to the finale since this season was pretty much just filler, anyway.
I agree with this almost 100%! (I’m probably not going to ado a huge re-watch, but that’s probably more because I’m too behind on other shows.)