THAT'S how it ends?!?! REALLY?!?!

[Drtooth]

Okay... I try very hard not to be that guy who hates a show completely when it takes a terrible direction. I can still watch and enjoy Family Guy when every character's a complete jerk. But this is too much.

In case you're wondering, I'm talking about the How I Met Your Mother ending. A show that I had trouble getting into at first, but eventually learned to love and watch regularly season after season.

So what could I say about the last episode?

I'll never complain about Lost's "everyone was dead to begin with" ending ever again.

So, Spoilers for those who didn't see it...

First, they make Barney and Robin get a divorce, effectively erasing all the character development and heartwarming moments from the past 2 seasons... yeah, they tried to make it better with him having a baby and falling in love with it. Too late. Then they do the worst thing POSSIBLE. They reveal the only reason why he was telling the story was that the mother died and that he was still pining after Robin. Yep... they make you care about a character just to kill her off. That is the biggest screw you in the history of entertainment. It made me effectively HATE one of my favorite shows. Now I don't even wanna watch it in reruns.

I repeat...

 

[Beauregard]

Surely that was SO obvious from the start!?

 

[charlietheowl]

I haven't really watched the show, but I saw that people were fuming about the finale on Twitter last night. It's hard to please everyone when a show ends, especially one that's been on for so long, but it seems like the episode was universally panned.

 

[minor muppetz]

I don't think the finale was as bad as everybody's complaining about, but unlike the whole series before it, I don't think the finale was perfect. I was expecting more of the mother in the last episode, but it seems she wasn't used as much as she should have (I also had a similar problem the second time Ted was in a relationship with Victoria, it seemed like between the episode where Victoria had Ted pick up something from the wedding she ran off from and their break-up episode she was barely there, in comparison to the first time they dated).

I don't know how I feel about the ending. I think I would have liked it better if this were still the first three seasons. And we don't even know if Ted and Robin will end up getting married or if they'll even be a couple (it's just implied). And I've come to like Robin and Barney as a couple better than Ted and Robin as a couple.

 

[Drtooth]

I haven't really watched the show, but I saw that people were fuming about the finale on Twitter last night. It's hard to please everyone when a show ends, especially one that's been on for so long, but it seems like the episode was universally panned.

Endings usually suck because they're disappointing no matter what happens. Look at the Seinfeld ending. They picked a strange way to end it. though, I'd admit it's almost anime-ish... they had everyone who ever was in the show come back. I'd say the fact they were in prison only a year was disappointing. The more I think about it, though, the more the end was fitting. A comedic sociopath show where the characters finally get comeuppance.

Most sitcoms tend to end with a "here we go again" or the occasional big change with the subtle air of "things are more the same than ever." Most viewers want something final. I honestly can deal with that.

But the ending wasn't so much disappointing as much as it was trolling. I wouldn't mind a disappointing ending. What they did was totally destroy the last 2 seasons, and added so many wham moments for pure drama's sake. It was a very roundabout way of saying Let's give Ted Robin at the end anyway. Derailing character development and killing off the show's namesake that we just started caring about to do it was a dXXX move. It wasn't disappointing, it was devastating.

I'll say this in the manner of disappointing, though. They never explained how the heck Ted turned into Bob Sagat. You'd think older Ted would have been played by him after the big reveal. But even if they did, I was too ticked off to care.

In fact, I was so ticked off, I decided to watch Transformers Headmasters. At least in that show you KNOW Ultra Magnus Dies

Honestly, they should have gone with Jason Segal's ending. Where Ted says "And that's how I met your mother" and opens the windows to reveal a zombie apocalypse.

 

[charlietheowl]

Endings usually suck because they're disappointing no matter what happens. Look at the Seinfeld ending. They picked a strange way to end it. though, I'd admit it's almost anime-ish... they had everyone who ever was in the show come back. I'd say the fact they were in prison only a year was disappointing. The more I think about it, though, the more the end was fitting. A comedic sociopath show where the characters finally get comeuppance.

I really liked the Seinfeld ending, I thought it was a great way to tie the series together. You had all the minor characters from the previous seasons come back, and then the ending conversation in the jail was perfect. Even in prison, the four of them weren't going to change.

 

[Drtooth]

There was some awesome alternative ending where it was a year later and they were shaken by the events in prison. Too bad they didn't film that, though.

I've noticed that people really start to hate shows (or at least characters in them) when they take them in an unfavorable direction. My sister loves Madoka Magica and got really upset with the direction they took in a movie. And she wasn't the only one, apparently. I used to scoff at that. I even rolled with it when Lemongrab ate his brother and became a dictator, even though I felt a little uneasy about it (he's my favorite AT character, right up their with Ice King). But what they did with Barney in that last episode, even though they tried to redeem him near the end... it made me not want to watch the rest. And I should've listened to that instinct.

Like I've said, I'm glad I never got involved with Lost considering the ending. I wish I didn't for this series for its ending. And no last Robin Sparkles bit to soften the blow. I'm so appreciative of Heroes' "It just ends" ending.

 

[The Count]

There was an entirely ridiculous conversation about this where the discussion centered on "should we talk about it because a member of our staff has *x* amount of episodes left to go before watching the finale" or "shouldn't we" along with the ensuing "spoiler alert" issuance/onus on a person to walk out on the conversation if it is a spoiler alert and they don't want to be spoiled this morning on ESPN's Mike & Mike in the Morning. Personally, I don't care one way or another, never watched the show.

 

[minor muppetz]

I like last episodes, though sometimes they can go too far, such as The Mary Tyler Moore Show cast getting fired, the cast of Dinosaurs facing extinction, and How I Met Your Mother trying a bit too hard to be sad in the last episode (and wasn't it said that the gang never missed Robots vs. Wrestlers? I thought it meant all of them, not all but Robin).

I kinda like it when last episodes have "ends". Though I kinda like it when an episode is like a last episode but also not. I wish Mister Ed ended with somebody else learning Ed could talk. Of course there's a lot of last episodes I have not seen which have the biggest "downer endings" or somehow reveal that everything wasn't as it was (like the last episode of Roseanne). The TV Tropes "Wild Mans Guess" section for How I Met Your Mother had a few guesses that could have been worse, like one guess where Ted was really imagining how he was going to tell his kids the story, and even before the episode that hinted that the mother would die there were guesses that she had died and that's why Ted spent so much time on the story.

Regarding other last episodes, I like the last episode of The Wonder Years, but don't like that we learn Kevin and Winnie never got married, that Jack died only two years later (I saw one documentary that said they felt it was important to mention that in the episode), and that it seems Kevin and Paul moved on to different places. And I like the ending to the last episode of Newhart (I'd like the last episode of Family Guy to end that way), except for two things: 1. It's often the only episode of Newhart to be included in "greatest TV episodes" lists, and 2. it cancels out any possibility of there being a reunion special with the cast in character (well, unless Bob has another dream...).

 

[mr3urious]

The Amazing World of Gumball's 2nd season finale reminded me so much of Seinfeld. Pretty much everything the family did came back to bite them hard. Of course, it's getting a 3rd season, but I like those Series Fauxnales where they give it just enough closure to make it feel like a final episode.