Not Really How I Met Your Mother

Warning: SPOILERS! Disclaimer: I am not an avid watcher of HIMYM so this is more from an outsiders POV.

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So it's very fair to say that the series finale of HIMYM had seriously mixed reviews.

Brave ending, artistically consistent, and most of all, true to the characters. #HIMYMFinale— Drew Downs (@revdrewdowns) April 1, 2014

#HIMYMFinale or How I Met My Backup Plan.— Meg (@sassylibrarian1) April 1, 2014

"How I used your mother to get the children aunt Robin couldn't have" #HIMYM #HIMYMFinale— Francesca Greenleaf (@FrancescaY) April 1, 2014

Personally, this is coming from an outsiders POV considering I never religiously followed the series. However, it was pretty easy to notice some pretty major anger-inducing scenes, even for someone relatively out of the loop.

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For starters, the episode begins at Robin and Barney's wedding. Ten minutes later? They're divorced. The slap bet may have been over, but for fans who were rooting for them to end up together for the past couple seasons, or even those shipping them from the beginning, it was a major slap in the face.

Just last episode (overlapping into this episode) they finally had their wedding and then the finale skips ahead 3 years, gets Barney drunk, and has them break up. It is literally that casual. They don't put an emphasis on any lessons learned from the relationship but rather just mention that it was a good marriage and now its time has passed.

Another slap in the face is how any bit of Barney Stinson's character development is completely thrown out the window. It was a huge deal when Barney burned his playbook and orchestrated his most important and final play; Robin. Within the first half of the episode, we go from watching Barney happily married to Robin to him attempting his "perfect month" of 31 girls in 31 days. While we'd never want Barney to be anyone but who he really is, it was a pretty poor argument for such a quick stripping of his well-developed character.

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Before hearing about Barney's perfect month, we reach the annual Halloween party. In this scene, Robin becomes upset over Lily and Marshall being busy parents, her ex-husband hitting on slutty cops, and that the man she was supposed to end up with is with a beautiful woman whom he loves. After saying this, Robin explains to Lily that "no sane person would call that 'the gang'" and basically gets up and leaves. She is then absent for most of the rest of the episode to travel around the world for her reporting career and is criticized by her former "gang" for missing a lot of the "big moments." While this doesn't seem entirely out of Robin's character, when she shows up at Ted's wedding after responding no to the RSVP, she says it was because she promised that she'd be there for the big moments, even though she then reveals that she had to be persuaded by Ted's wife to be.

The decision to temporarily remove Robin from the storyline and distance her from the people who made her feel welcome in New York when she was alone angered many fans. Some called how she was written in the last episode as "lame" and even went as far as saying it made them dislike her character.

The writers made me hate Robin in that finale from the moment she left Lily in the apartment. Didn't think that was possible. #HIMYMFinale— Kristen Marie (@KristenRose03) April 1, 2014

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Not much later, we find out about Barney's perfect month. All went well except for the fact that he accidentally gets girl number 31 pregnant. NPH gives an extremely convincing monologue after seeing his daughter for the first time; one that he previously recited satirically to a woman in McLaren's. Even though this is supposed to regain some of the character development they threw away with the Swarkles divorce, it doesn't. Do they really expect us to believe that all this time Barney Stinson just needed to get a random, unnamed woman pregnant and have a baby to realize he's capable of loving someone forever? Well, that's how they wrapped up this storyline.

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Marshall and Lily didn't receive much criticism but that is because their happy-ever-after was a rather bland one. They have 2 more children together, one which remains unnamed, and Marshall finally becomes a judge. They also leave their apartment to move into a bigger place.. and uh, that is.. about it.

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And now for the most important moment in the series. Tracy McConnell is revealed to be the future mother of Ted's children. The woman under the yellow umbrella. The person we have been listening to a story about for 9 whole years.. or is she?

Well, she is definitely the mother of Ted's children and the woman Ted marries, that is for sure. We learn the, a little too coincidental, story of the yellow umbrella and witness Ted not leave for Chicago and ask Tracy out to dinner instead. Then it is revealed that she gets sick..

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And dies. Um?! Although this has been a prevalent theory all along, Ted was married to Tracy from 2020 to 2024. Ted's marriage to the mother lasted 4 years before she died.. that is less than half as long as we have been listening to this story. If you think it ends there, you're wrong. "And that is the story of how I met your mother," to which the kids reply that their mother was barely in the story. That the story must really be about how he is in love with Aunt Robin. Alas, it is.

The kids rolling their eyes is actually really dark in retrospect - "Yeah Dad you were always waiting to leave Mom for Robin we know" #HIMYM— Arthur Chu (@arthur_affect) April 1, 2014

So total misnaming of the series? Yeah, you could say that. The mother basically serves as a child bearer for Ted and then dies off so he can reconnect with Robin.

It's safe to say the finale left many people in utter disbelief. Many character developments were either thrown away or never even made it. Besides Barney's, as obvious as it is that it was out of the question, people were upset that Ted's character couldn't accept a childless life with Robin. But in the end, of course the main character gets everything people expect him to.

We dream of a day when all series finales don't get rushingly wrapped up in an hour-long mess of trying to tie up loose ends while also attempting to satisfy fans' wishes; which, in this case, didn't really happen.

The question, however, that is still on my mind.. where does Bob Saget fit into this? He voices older Ted the entire time and then when they show the flash forward Ted doesn't look nor sound like Bob Saget...

And the pineapple?

Guess we'll never know.