I didn't really have a problem with the ending. Maybe because it was a surprise,

I like the Robin and Barney dynamic.

I didn't either. I always thought Ted and Robin belonged together.

My issue is just that they moved WAY beyond that in the final few seasons. If this ending had happened 4 years ago (and if they hadn't spent an ENTIRE SEASON on the wedding), I would've been completely fine with it. But they took the characters in directions that just don't make sense with the ending. That ruins it for me.

They couldn't win with this really.

People would have bitched that the entire story made no sense, since it was all about Ted and Robin ultimately.

People now bitch because the mother was a footnote in the Ted and Robin story.

I loved it. I thought it was really neat to see how they spent time developing WHY Ted and Robin didn't work (ultimately due to the point that they were at in their lives) and how that all can somehow change.

I don't think that it cheapened Tracy... It just was never her story (even if she was the titular character).

Do I disagree with the amount of time spent on Tracy? Sure. Giving her a funeral and see Mosby go through that would have tugged right at the heart strings. At the same time, from the writers perspective, is that not just a fan service? The children were there for the funeral, were they not? It would have been something to give US closure (and an argument can certainly be made for that).

God the last season was horrible outside of a few episodes.

I hated a lot of the final episodes. But the ending hit the mark. The point wasn't to say Ted and Robin belonged together. The show actually pretty cleverly made it clear that Tracy was the love of Ted's life, and Robin is a woman who will make him happy after he lost her. Which is interesting, because arguably... Ted may not be the love of Tracy's life either, but he's a man who seems to make her happy.

I personally think the ending was brilliant. It isn't like How I Met Your Mother to end conventionally. For anyone who doesn't get the ending, think of any person you know who lost the love of his life, only to marry again. The ending will start to make a lot more sense and thank goodness HIMYM once again chose reality over fairy tale.

my biggest problem is how they spend the whole damn season on the wedding then cram everything into two episodes at the end. Would have been a much better story if they had spread it out and spent less time on the wedding.

And if they'd done a good job conveying that, I might be OK with it. Instead, they devoted a total of about 3 minutes of screen time to it while devoting an entire meandering season to setting up a wedding that lasted 30 seconds.

No matter what the ending was, we all would have complained about the way the last season was set up. It was god awful save for a few episodes.

Again, I should Q myself as to why Robin / Ted is a bogus ending.

But in short: it undermined almost every moral Narrator Ted espoused about what to look for in a relationship.

What you look for in a relationship when you are young and looking for the love of your life is one thing, and what you are looking for in a relationship when you are older and have lost the love of your life already is another. At that age you know there isn't going to be another love of your life, you are just looking for someone that you care about and are comfortable with - and Robin fit that perfectly.

I appreciate what they attempted to do with the ending, but their execution was abominable.

FYP

Exactly.

Yeah, and just because Ted and Robin wanted different things when they were younger doesn't mean that stays true forever. It's not that hard to imagine that Robin in her 50s might be ready to settle down a little, and that with his kids nearly grown Ted might be ready to un-settle a little.