#Himym final

[excuse-me-thanks]

i know of a lotttt of bad tv finales. like, a lot. and truth be told, i cannot name a good (read: popular and generally liked by fans) one off the top of my head. so, a question…

name a tv finale (or a few) that you liked.

[drusill-a]

[WWDitS finale spoilers]

Aside from the obvious – the gross shipbaiting and mocking naive viewers who dared to believe an m/m dynamic could be treated as anything other than the butt of the joke – my biggest issue with the WWDitS finale is that it’s an ending that could have made sense… but at most after s2. Back then, we were still watching a story about characters who didn’t share any particular bonds (except for Nadja/Laszlo) and who were entirely static, unaffected by the things they experienced.

The thing is, the creators themselves realized you can’t build a long-running story on that formula – eventually, the characters had to evolve at least a little, and their relationships had to deepen so viewers would have any reason to root for them. And so Guillermo’s position in the group began to change – first, he earned their minimal respect, then a very solid place, until finally, in season 5, all the other characters had reached a point where they didn’t even hide that they genuinely cared about him a lot. The same happened with Colin, who at first was completely left out by the other housemates but gradually earned an equal spot in the group and developed that stupid yet sweet bond with Laszlo (erasing those memories was, imo, one of the writers’ biggest mistakes). Laszlo showed himself capable of empathy, which he proved again in s5 by helping Guillermo, and even Nadja, who used to completely disregard everyone’s feelings, had several moments in later seasons where she openly cared – at least in her own way –  about the others.

And of course, that’s how we got the romantic subtext between Guillermo and Nandor. Over all those seasons – from s3 up until s6 – I was certain it was a classic will they, won’t they dynamic that would end with them getting together. I just couldn’t believe the writers would spend the last 4 seasons making their relationship more equal and showing Nandor’s journey to realizing Guillermo genuinely mattered to him, only to do nothing with it – or worse, regress them back by three seasons. But the late s6 Nandor’s “no homo” attitude has very little in common with the Nandor from seasons 4 and 5, who was openly pining and lusting after Guillermo.

From Guillermo’s perspective, this ending is an absolute tragedy – even the end of the previous episode gave him much more hope. Maybe he’d lost his lifelong dream and still hadn’t found a new purpose, but he had found a family and a place in the world, with a potential chance to build something meaningful with Nandor in the future. I don’t understand why this episode had to undo all of that – to show us that none of his friends really listen to him, that the power dynamic with Nandor will always be uneven, and that ultimately he wasted 16 years, and no one would really care that much if he left. Considering how great Guillermo’s development was, especially in gaining confidence from s4 onward, this ending feels so unfair and insulting to his character.

I feel like the writers’ biggest mistakes have been forcing a return to the status quo after every season. After the breakup in s3, the characters should have stayed apart for at least an episode or two. Colin should have remembered that Laszlo raised him, and they should’ve kept their funny, fucked-up father-son relationship until the end of the show. Guillermo should’ve been a real vampire for at least a full season—or, in my opinion, permanently—because, as it turns out, the writers had absolutely no idea what to do with his character once he lost that goal. Relationships that had evolved shouldn’t be randomly reset by a couple of seasons just because the writers couldn’t be bothered to put in the effort to write anything new for them.

You can’t have your cake and eat it too – if the writers were so dead-set on giving us an  ending that says “nothing in these characters’ lives matters, and nothing will ever change,” they should have made the show half as long and spared viewers the trouble of getting invested in character and relationship arcs that ultimately went nowhere.

This is a comedy show that was supposed to make people feel better. After this finale, I feel mocked by the creators for believing that the queer ship they sold me for 4 seasons had a chance of being treated equally to an m/f ship. I’m also sad because the characters were regressed and left stuck in eternal limbo, and generally I feel ridiculed because the writers openly made fun of us for getting emotionally invested in the story they wrote for us.

And maybe the biggest crime of these last few episodes was that they weren’t even remotely funny—so you can’t even say they prioritized comedy over character development, because it failed on that front too.

[theelastword]

i saw a very interesting post recently from @fellthemarvelous about how Aziraphale is often treated the way female love interests are— likely because his hobbies and emotions are more traditionally feminine whereas crowley’s style and anger are more traditionally masculine despite the fact that neither of them are gendered. the thesis of the post was essentially that because crowley is the one who fell, fans have decided that aziraphale only exists to comfort and protect and bring peace to crowley rather than be his own person with his own emotions and ambitions. i’d never been able to put this into words, but it’s like this person stole what i was feeling right from my brain and i am so thankful to their eloquence.

but it did get me thinking about the end of season 2— specifically how many fans, even people who defend aziraphale for what he did, believe that the “only” way for his choices in the finale to be valid are if he did them for crowley’s safety/well-being. i’ve seen so many arguments along the lines of “oh, he has to go back so he can fix Heaven for Crowley and make him heal from falling” or “oh, he has to go back to Heaven because if he doesn’t, Metatron could go after crowley and he needs to keep him safe”. and while both of these very popular aziraphale-defenses are valid (this is not an attack on anyone’s opinion!) and i wouldn’t be surprised if they played into his reasoning for leaving, i can’t help but think of that lovely person’s female-love-interest argument.

i don’t actually think aziraphale leaving for heaven needs to be related to crowley at all. it can, of course— and likely does— but aziraphale has gone through just as much Heaven-induced trauma as crowley has, something that many fans (and even the characters themselves, sometimes) like to forget. aziraphale knows first-hand how abusive Heaven is to young angels and humans who they deem unworthy of being saved. and so to me, it is just as valid if it turns out aziraphale going back to Heaven wasn’t “for” crowley at all, but rather a way to protect these other generations from the abuse of Heaven that aziraphale has witnessed and been victim to. is it so hard or unacceptable to think that aziraphale could make a choice that doesn’t have to do with his love life? he is not obligated—nor is crowley!— to live entirely as though he’s making something up/repaying/protecting his love interest. that kind codependency is not something to idolize. i guess what i’m trying to say here is that there are other reasons to go back to Heaven having nothing to do with keeping crowley safe, and while that is a perfectly valid interpretation, i’m not personally a fan of the widespread belief that it’s the only interpretation that makes what aziraphale did “forgivable”.

EDIT/ADDITION: i ALSO think that this is why i’m so bothered by the argument that while Crowley being “selfish” and choosing his own path at the end of s2 is perfectly valid, aziraphale doing the exact same thing is not. i do not blame either one of them for making a different choice, but in my opinion far too many people believe that crowley had a right to his own autonomy and do what he thought was best for himself, whereas somehow it was Aziraphale’s job to choose the same thing in accordance to what was most healthy for CROWLEY and not for himself/his own ambitions as regards to Heaven. people think that crowley has an obligation to do what is best for crowley, but that aziraphale’s subsequent obligation is to also do what’s best for crowley. no one seems to particularly care what may be best for aziraphale. at the end of the day, if one of them can make a self-prioritizing choice, the other can, too. aziraphale is his own person, not a love interest!!!!

[nadjasnandor]

why did we stop saying shit like the one i love the most is actually nandor. guillermo come back stop trying to be a regular human guy we need insane toxic codependency more than ever

[scullysconstant]

A few years back, a really amazing girl came into my life. My daughter Ellie. She is the best thing that ever happened to an idiot like me.

[utilitycaster]

One of my greatest and simplest litmus tests is that if people are like "the finale of (insert literally any show) didn't happen" I have zero interest in hearing anything else. If they say the finale sucked then great, I can engage with that even if I disagree, but when people are like haha I deny the existence of outcomes I dislike it's like yeah I don't really want that energy.

[hello-nichya-here]

No, the HIMYM finale is not secretly genius, stop lying to yourselves

The series finale of How I Met Your Mother, with Robin divorcing Barney and then getting together with Ted, a widower, years later could have been great. Yes, I'm serious.

Two people that were NOT soulmates and did NOT work out as couple when they were in their 20s met their true soulmates but life made them split up, and then they got a second chance of happiness with each other because, despite not being a perfect match they were at a point where they could make it work? Could totally work as a "bittersweet" ending. It's not "happily ever after" but it still finding happiness after the tragedy that stole their actual happily ever after, which is a valid, totally compelling story to tell.

But the writers completely destroyed any chance of it working as a satisfying story because the ending simply doesn't work as a twist and foreshadowing can't compete with consistent characterization.

The finale would only ever work if we had gotten to see the years of character development that were supposed to lead up to it. We'd have to SEE Barney and Robin's marriage deteriorating. We'd have too SEE Tracy's struggle with her illness and then Ted's years of grief. We'd have to SEE Ted and Robin slowly reconnecting and realizing that they've changed so much that can actually be a decent couple now - and more importantly, we have to see them CHANGE IN A WAY THAT MAKES THEM COMPATIBLE, NOT SIMPLY REVERSING THEM BACK TO HOW THEY WERE IN THE PILOT EPISODE BECAUSE THEY WERE ALREADY INCOMPATIBLE BACK THEN!

The show spent 98% of it's time building up to the "red-herring" of a Barney/Robin & Ted/Tracy endgame, with only the ocasional hints that this wasn't actually going to happen. It spent 9 fucking years, 9 seasons of 20+ episodes, building up to it this false endgame. Then suddenly the finale they try to give us SIXTEEN YEARS IN 40 MINUTES, expecting the audience the do the writer's jobs for them and fill in the blanks.

If they had given us the "fake ending" in the middle of the show, then spent the following seasons building up to the true ending, the finale wouldn't have been hated. Sure, no one would be surprised by the events in it, but anyone who didn't want Ted and Robin together would have bailed on the series a long time ago anyway.

And that's why they didn't do it. Because they knew most people didn't want these two to be endgame, LOVED Barney's growth as a character, and were not only eagerly waiting to meet Tracy but were also blown away by how she managed to be even better than we imagined. They wanted to have it both ways: give the audience what they wanted AND say "Sorry, this is our story, if you don't like it you don't have to watch it." It's cowardly, pathetic and a deep betrayal of the audience's trust, because people CAN accept not being given what they wanted - but they don't accept being lied to.

We never saw Barney be frustrated by Robin's work or by constant traveling before the finale - he's the "challenge accepted" guy, for fuck's sake, he used to go random trips just for the sake of having an adventure with his friends - thefore we don't believe that he is miserable enough that he'd want to end their marriage.

You can't show us Robin repeatedly choosing Barney over Ted, give us an insane scene of her covering Ted's face during sex to pretend she's sleeping with someone else, having her react to what she thinks is a proposal with 'You can't do this to me!", and even saying, to his face, that she doesn't love him, and then pretend that she totally still had feelings for him this entire time.

Even Ted pointed out, during this wedding to Stella, that Robin isn't hoping he'll remain single because she genuinely wants him, but because she's just afraid of being alone. C&C cannot convince general audiences, or critics, that she loves this man after they literally described the show as "The story of man that is in love with a woman, and she doesn't want that."

They can't tell me Ted genuinely loved Robin when he was constantly irritated by everything that makes her who she is: the fact that she's career-driven, always takes charge of everything, doesn't want kids, likes to travel around because she wants life to be an adventure, doesn't seem to believe in fate or soulmates, is a gun enthusiast, etc. They can't tell me they'd make it work when that's still who Robin is a person and Ted would still be irritated by it.

They DEFINITIVELY cannot convince me that him being hung up on her for so long means anything when he meets a new potential "soulamte" every other week, and will ALSO fall back in love with multiple exes the second he runs into them again, or so much as thinks back to the good old times.

And they absolutely cannot fucking tell me that he'd still be hung up on her after 25 fucking years, after he met his actual soulmate - unless they want me to believe the woman that was basically born from his rib is not his soulmate, which I call bullshit on.

And no, finale defenders, you cannot make this an inspirational "He found happiness with an old flame after his true love passed away because life is messy like that" when the show itself said, all the way back in season two "If Ted and Robin got married, they'd inevitably divorce, handle terribly, and screw up any kids they had."

Because yes, that's a thing that happens. When Robin meets Ted's parents, there's a whole misunderstanding about the dad supposedly cheating on the mom - and then we discover that actually they've been divorced FOR A LONG TIME, and just never told their kids because REASONS. Ted is even outraged that "Is this what passes for communication in this family?" More importantly, he and Robin, who are wearing the same colors as his parents, are shocked as they realize that the reasons for their divorce were the same reasons that made Robin not want to want Ted - the same reasons that would make them break up episodes later.

The writting is on the wall here. Ted and Robin will inevitably split up, and his kids will resent them both for getting them caught in the crossfire. Ted is already taking a page from his parents' book on How To Suck At Communicating Like A Normal Person by claiming he's gonna tell a story about their mother, only to then be like "Actually, this about how I love someone else and want to date her now."

"Oh, you just don't get it! The show was never about the Yellow Umbrella (Tracy)! It was about the Blue French Horn (Robin)!"

Yeah. It was about Robin. About how she's completely wrong for Ted and how they could never be happy together. About how he needs to let go of this obsession before it ruins his life and his relationship with everyone else that he is hurting during his attempts of getting with her: Victoria, Barney, Tracy, his children, and even Robin herself.

This is not a bittersweet ending. This is not a happy ending. This is two delusional writers ACCIDENTALLY giving their characters the most miserable endgame possible, and being convinced that they're giving us a fairy-tale ending - because yeah, that's what they thought. They weren't even aiming for bittersweet. They were never aiming for "Tragedy happens, but life goes on and you can still find happiness in it." They thought that Robin and Ted being so distraught by their awful lives that they convince themselves they were meant to be, and then go on to ruin their already shiity lives even more, was the most perfect happily ever after anyone could ask for.

The finale COULD have been great. Instead it was the worst thing imaginable, and the very fact that people can only try to defend it by WILDLY misterpreting what the writers wanted them to take from it is proof of how poorly thought out and written it was.

No one likes it for what it is, they like it for what they PRETEND it is. That simple fact is more insulting to this ending than anything I or anyone else could possibly say.

[breathe-2am]

Happy ten year anniversary to the worst episode of all time. Thank you for teaching me that things you love can let you down in a way that makes you feel stupid for loving them in the first place.

[lovealwayssay]

The ending of How I Met Your Mother makes me even more angry now that I’m in a similar situation to Ted’s kids.

[pike-the-monstah]

okay re: the "deconstruction" post i just reblogged, gotta say, the absolute most boring way to "deconstruct" the romance genre is usually "what if....the characters....didn't get together at the end :O" unless you've put a lot of work into exploring why they want to be together but ultimately don't work for each other, and found some other nonromantic interesting payoff for all the time spent setting up the two characters' bond. but most of the time i see it done it's just a gotcha sUbVeRtInG eXpEcTaTiOnS twist like "haha the characters don't end up together! aren't you so surprised! isn't this such a deep message about how life doesn't have a happily ever after!" and it's like no, it's fucking lazy, you literally just took the most obvious path for deconstructing romance and didn't put any more thought into it

[browncesario]

doing an out of order rewatch

[darcyfirth]

fellas i bought a secondhand the hobbit novel 10 years ago and didn't want to finish reading it because i knew the ending from watching the movies and this june i'm going to read it and conquer my fear of endings

[hippolotamus]

10 TV Shows

Game: Add 10 gifs from your favorite shows and tag 10 people.

thanks for the tags @kitteneddiediaz @dangerpronebuddie 💖

1. Schitt’s Creek

2. 9-1-1

3. A League of Their Own (rip my beloved)

4. Fellow Travelers

5. Heartstopper

6. Bridgerton

7. Bones

8. How I Met Your Mother (minus that terrible excuse of a final season)

9. Normal People

10. Gilmore Girls

np tagging @stereopticons @bidisasterevankinard @diazsdimples @daffi-990 @tizniz @slightlyobsessedwitheverything @wikiangela @saybiwithme @jesuisici33 @lemonzestywrites and open tag to anyone else who wants to 😘

[wistfulwatcher]

How I Met Your Father | 2.08 “Rewardishment”

[air--so--sweet]

It has been a decade since the HIMYM finale, possibly the worst ending to any show I have ever watched. And I just found out about this deleted scene from the finale episode.

Are. You. Fucking. Kidding. Me.

Look, I was never going to be happy with the mother dying and Ted ending up in Robin. It was a decision made in season 2 and I think it was stupid to not look at how the rest of the 7 seasons that came after that affected it as a story choice. That said, this scene does such a good job of reframing it because it shows Ted truly was happy with Tracey, not secretly pining after Robin all along and wondering what if. It does shows that Robin is still interested in Ted though and also that she's no longer travelling and so removes one of the biggest barriers to their relationship. In an interview Josh Radnor said he was surprised this scene was cut but he thinks it was cut for time because they were trying to fit so much into the episode, but this is so crucial to the plot! I'm sure there's something else they could have cut instead of this! (Like the whole Barney learns to respect women because he's a girl dad 🤢) God I'm now furious about this finale all over again.

[ughhhdavid]

If I had a nickel for everytime a show about love and hope with a main character called Ted ended with regressing all of the characters, breaking up the found family, erasing the title character from the narrative, going back on everything the show was trying to do or say at any point before the finale, and overall having the worst finale of all time I'd have 2 nickels.

Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice, right?