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[mail-mi]

...I get to be the first on Page 100! w00t!!!!

99 pages of pure randomness.

[GeoLib]

...I get to be the first on Page 100! w00t!!!!

99 pages of pure randomness.

Only if you display 25 posts per page. You haven't even finished page 50 for me.

[Titandrake]

So you're saying mail-mi should make 2500 more posts in a row?

[eHalcyon]

Just watched the last episode of HIMYM.  What a ride.

Anybody else following it?  Have to say, I teared up at the most unexpected scene -- where Barney meets his daughter for the first time.  Did not expect that at all.  NPH is amazing.

And that ending... part of it was already kind of known but the very, very end was pretty unexpected.  Not sure how I feel about it either.  I mean, it makes sense, and I suppose it was a long time coming in a sense, but it still felt weirdly rushed.  I don't know.

[Voltaire]

As someone who has never seen an episode prior to tonight, the part you described (baby daughter) was the only particularly emotional/good part. It was cheesy, but it worked. (but my standards were low, I hate that sort of show. Showed up because a friend was hosting and I enjoy watching only finales. Friend who was a fan didn't like it, btw, but also didn't really care.

[eHalcyon]

What do you mean by "that sort of show"?

I can see why some people would not like the finale, or even the show in its later seasons.  I'm loyal to a fault when it comes to TV shows though, and I don't really consider HIMYM to be among the worst of those shows that I stuck with despite declining quality (the worst is probably Heroes).  I think HIMYM has been remarkably consistent in quality, even though it's changed and evolved a great deal over its run.

The finale wasn't entirely satisfactory on every level, but maybe it wasn't supposed to be.  I'm not sure if it could have been possible for it to be completely satisfactory.  What would have to have happened?  (I know you can't answer that, having only watched the finale.)  Life is messy and full of ups and downs, tragedies and triumphs.  I think they captured that really well in the span of 44 minutes.

I'll say this though -- as a long time fan of the show, I definitely think there were more good parts than that one scene.  Knowing the characters and the life events that they've gone through made many of the events in the series finale much more significant than they might seem at the surface level.  There were also a fair number of call backs that wouldn't make sense to a first time viewer, and at least one meta joke -- the fact that the vast majority of the story did not include the mother has been a criticism for ages, so it was amusing to see it lampshaded with a mildly reasonable explanation.

I don't know how I feel about the very end, but I loved it overall.

[Voltaire]

Shortest answer? It has a laugh track. Those tend to correlate well with other things I hate about shows (yes, I looked beyond that obviously but it is the shortest way to communicate what I am saying).

[Voltaire]

I completely caught the "the mom wasn't a big part of it" (and the "it was a short story" stuff) and honestly I groaned.

[Twistedarcher]

I wasn't a fan of the finale, but I think the show had a really good run overall. I did enjoy this final season overall.

So much effort was put this season and last into the Barney-Robin relationship, and I felt very sad that it ended just like that. It was so sudden. Once it happened, the ending was pretty inevitable, but I was dissatisfied that it didn't work out in the end.

Robin-Ted wasn't inevitable, and although they spent the first several seasons building up to that finale...that's not what I expected or saw as the most fitting ending (and in feel-good comedies, the most fitting ending is a good thing to me, even if it's nothing special). The show wasn't about Robin-Ted anymore, especially not in the last few seasons, and it was a very sudden pivot to the ending. It feels like they wrote the ending years ago and then decided to stick with it anyways.

The mother was so perfect for him and it worked and while her dying wasn't necessarily a bad thing, it kinda seems like a stop rather than the destination, which was disappointing. It was made pretty clear over and over that Robin was not "The one" (something that was HUGELY important to Ted) so to find out that "oh wait, maybe she is" was pretty disorienting. 

Still, the show had a good run. I don't think it fell off as much as people claim (it dragged on a bit but it was never anywhere near unwatchable, and still always had its moments), and I felt a huge connection and investment in all of the characters. I'll be sad to see it go.

 

[Voltaire]

Basically I don't want to trash it because it's just not my thing. If it's well-done in a genre I don't like that's good because it means others will enjoy it and I am free to watch stuff other people hate. 

[eHalcyon]

@Voltaire, if it's not your thing, that's perfectly fair.  My question was just a question, and the rest of that post was just in response to your friend not liking the ending (which you put in spoilers for some reason ).  I can see why some people wouldn't like it, but I think it worked.

@TA, I mostly agree with you.  That's kind of why I'm ambivalent about the ending right now.  I'll say this though -- HIMYM isn't a typical feel-good comedy IMO, and I actually think the Barney-Robin split was a fine direction for the story to go, especially with the rest of Barney's arc (slipping back into his old ways before changing for good for his daughter).  If they had stayed together, that would have been cool too, but I have no real issue with that part of the story.

The turn back to Robin-Ted was sudden, but I can see how the writers tried to steer it back that way.  They brought it up again and again over the course of this season, coming from both Ted and Robin.  It wasn't quite enough to make the ending feel less out of the blue [french horn], but they tried.  I think I would have liked it more if Robin hadn't so completely dropped out of their lives for so many years, or if they had showed more of their reconciliation and maybe a bit of Robin and Ted re-bonding after Tracy's death.

As far as Robin being The One... I'm not sure if they actually made that the message.  Tracy was The One, but the final message suggests that life goes on and maybe there isn't just One True Love.  That's a pretty significant thing considering Ted's character at the start of the series.  And did they say that Robin was The One for Ted at the end?  IIRC, the kids just suggest that Ted "has the hots for" Robin, or something similarly anachronistic and not-quite-soul-mate-status.  Both of them have matured, both are probably feeling a bit lonely, both loved each other in the past and still care deeply for each other as friends.  Maybe they're not perfect, but yadda yadda life isn't perfect.

And I just thought of this now -- in a way, that ending is kind of call back to their pact (when Ted asks Robin to be his back up wife).

Maybe I'm reading too much into it all.  I'll need to watch it again, I think.

[Twistedarcher]

I think you are correct about the overall message of the show, and the finale showing that there's more beyond "The One". It's possible to find happiness without everything being perfect, whether that's Ted and Robin, or Barney and his daughter. I guess what caught me off guard was the pacing. It was just so sudden, even when it was inevitable after the divorce (because they hinted very heavily that Tracy was going to die at some point pre-2030).

They definitely kept the Robin-Ted option open, I guess, what with the locket and all, but I didn't see it coming. That storyline just got played out for me over the years.

I guess talking about it, I'm starting to like the ending a little more. I forgot the part about Robin being Ted's back-up wife, but it really does tie in nicely.

[Lekkit]

A card game friend of mine has recently picked up MLP. He wanted something new. And apparently the mechanics has its upsides. However, the player base in Sweden is apparently not that great. My friend mopped the floor with all opposition during his first tournament with basically a slightly altered structure deck. Many opponents didn't seem to know what they were doing at all. Also, my friend was the only one who didn't have MLP merchandise other than the cards with him. I've also heard some less than flattering things about some of the card designs. And any game that has Ultra Rares that are very powerful are bad news to me. I'm most likely not picking the game up anytime soon. It sounds like a rebranded YGO to me.

I haven't yet watched the finale of HIMYM, but I'll most likely get to watch it later today. So I'm thankful for the spoiler tags.

[Axxle]

...I get to be the first on Page 100! w00t!!!!

99 pages of pure randomness.

Only if you display 25 posts per page. You haven't even finished page 50 for me.

middle of 248 for me

[Axxle]

...I get to be the first on Page 100! w00t!!!!

99 pages of pure randomness.

i don't think that means what you think it means

[shraeye]

Shortest answer? It has a laugh track. Those tend to correlate well with other things I hate about shows (yes, I looked beyond that obviously but it is the shortest way to communicate what I am saying).

I agree with the correlation, and opinion.

[SirPeebles]

[Witherweaver]

Just watched the last episode of HIMYM.  What a ride.

Anybody else following it?  Have to say, I teared up at the most unexpected scene -- where Barney meets his daughter for the first time.  Did not expect that at all.  NPH is amazing.

And that ending... part of it was already kind of known but the very, very end was pretty unexpected.  Not sure how I feel about it either.  I mean, it makes sense, and I suppose it was a long time coming in a sense, but it still felt weirdly rushed.  I don't know.

I watched it.  I thought it was very good.  I didn't really want the mother to have died, but I thought it was treated alright.  It would have been pretty depressing if the show ended on her deathbed, or when she had just died.  But six years is a reasonable time to come to terms with everything and start moving on, I think.

I think it felt rushed because there were a bunch of timelines in succession, so you didn't get to feel how long the intervals really were.  Ted met the mother in 2013 (I believe), and she died six years before the story telling, which I think was in 2030.  So they were together for 11-12 years.  We only saw small flashes of it in the narrative, but our imagination can fill in the gaps.  From all accounts, they were very happy during that time.  By the time he's telling the story, six years have passed, which is also a long time.  Think about how much you change in six years.  For us it was only a minute between finding out the mother had died to Ted going after Robin, but in the story, it was a long, long time.  So I understand it feeling rushed, but I think as long as you immerse yourself in the narrative, it isn't really.

I actually felt the monologue with Barney and his daughter was a little forced.  I think it would have been better if all the emotion was just on his face and he broke down crying or something.  Or maybe said a couple of simple (but weighty) words.  Anyway, overall I liked the finale, and I think it was a lot more realistic than an "everyone lives happily ever after" ending.

[Witherweaver]

I completely caught the "the mom wasn't a big part of it" (and the "it was a short story" stuff) and honestly I groaned.

I think you'd have to have watched the whole series and buy into the way the show tells things to have liked what they did there.  It's hard to explain, but they way they did that was consistent with how they've done the entire show, and Ted telling an entire drawn-out story to justify him moving on from their mother without actually saying that's what he's doing, but still making it very obvious, is exactly what the character would do.  Plus, there was a big thing a few episodes ago about Ted not becoming one of the guys that lives in his stories.  The mother made a big point that he can't always be looking at the past and has to look to the future.  But the entire nine years of show time prior had been Ted meticulously focus on the past.  So to make to make all of this about him moving on and moving forward is a reconciliation of that.

Well, anyway, I'm not trying to convince you that the show is good.  My main point is that the cheesiness of the show is one of its defining qualities, and once you buy into it it's pretty easy to enjoy what they do.  But it doesn't work so well in isolated incidents.

[theory]

Shortest answer? It has a laugh track. Those tend to correlate well with other things I hate about shows (yes, I looked beyond that obviously but it is the shortest way to communicate what I am saying).

Seinfeld also has a laugh track.  I think it depends a lot on how it's used.

[theory]

I would have preferred it if in the finale Ted wrapped up the story, "and that's how I met your mother."  And then fast forward another year, and then Ted is telling the same story again, and then the kids remind him that he tells this story every year, and that it's obvious that he's really telling it because Aunt Robin etc. etc.  That would help alleviate the otherwise jarring transition from happy and in love -> sad because she died -> welp, back to Robin I guess! and make the show a little more romantic -- which is what it's always been

[SirPeebles]

Shortest answer? It has a laugh track. Those tend to correlate well with other things I hate about shows (yes, I looked beyond that obviously but it is the shortest way to communicate what I am saying).

Seinfeld also has a laugh track.  I think it depends a lot on how it's used.

Seinfeld is incredible, but I've never thought that the laugh track improved it. Or do you just mean that they used it less detrimentally?

[Ozle]

Benecio del Toro is Keyser Soze

[Witherweaver]

I wasn't a fan of the finale, but I think the show had a really good run overall. I did enjoy this final season overall.

So much effort was put this season and last into the Barney-Robin relationship, and I felt very sad that it ended just like that. It was so sudden. Once it happened, the ending was pretty inevitable, but I was dissatisfied that it didn't work out in the end.

Robin-Ted wasn't inevitable, and although they spent the first several seasons building up to that finale...that's not what I expected or saw as the most fitting ending (and in feel-good comedies, the most fitting ending is a good thing to me, even if it's nothing special). The show wasn't about Robin-Ted anymore, especially not in the last few seasons, and it was a very sudden pivot to the ending. It feels like they wrote the ending years ago and then decided to stick with it anyways.

The mother was so perfect for him and it worked and while her dying wasn't necessarily a bad thing, it kinda seems like a stop rather than the destination, which was disappointing. It was made pretty clear over and over that Robin was not "The one" (something that was HUGELY important to Ted) so to find out that "oh wait, maybe she is" was pretty disorienting. 

Still, the show had a good run. I don't think it fell off as much as people claim (it dragged on a bit but it was never anywhere near unwatchable, and still always had its moments), and I felt a huge connection and investment in all of the characters. I'll be sad to see it go.

So I really don't feel that the point of the finale was that "Robin isn't the one... oh wait, maybe she is".  I think the point was that the mother was the love of his life, and he found it, and he had it, and he lost it.  It all feels sudden because it happened in a short period of time, but the time that Ted and the mother were together is longer than the entire run of the series (the 2004-2013 narrative).  And by the time Ted is telling the story another six years have passed. In that context I don't think it's jarring at all. 

I'm pretty sure Ted would always choose the mother over Robin, because they were a better match.  But with the mother gone, him moving on makes sense.  And they led up to Robin feeling that she made a big mistake by not choosing Ted.  In the context of the mother being gone, and it being time to move on, this seems natural to me.  Had it been something different, like Ted and the mother getting divorced after five or six years, that would have felt wrong.

And, Barney and Robin not working out made the most sense I think.  They were still together for three years.. they only had about 10-20 minutes of marriage for us, but three years in story time, plus the time they were together before the ceremony.  So that's a significant relationship, even if it didn't work out.  And it made sense given their characters.. they always made a point of Robin putting her career before everything else, and Barney isn't the kind of person to do whatever it takes to make things work.  That sort of behavior requires a certain amount of faith and hope and belief that things will turn out alright that is out of character for him.  The point is that Ted is that guy, not Barney.  Barney tried as much as he possibly could to change, but people don't just change like that.

[Kuildeous]

Shortest answer? It has a laugh track. Those tend to correlate well with other things I hate about shows (yes, I looked beyond that obviously but it is the shortest way to communicate what I am saying).

Seinfeld also has a laugh track.  I think it depends a lot on how it's used.

From what I've seen, laugh tracks are always terrible. It just depends on whether or not the show can grab my attention in spite of the laugh track.

I enjoyed Seinfeld and That 70s Show (at first anyway), even though they had laugh tracks. But in general I really hate for a TV show to tell me when something is funny. If it's funny, I'll laugh on my own terms, thanks. And if there is raucous laughter in response to a joke I didn't find all that funny (which I presume falls under what you mean by how it's used, Theory), then it really grates on my nerves. Married…with Children is a really bad example of the laugh track. On a bright note, Married's laugh track at least was spoofed nicely on Simpsons and Futurama.

When I find a comedy without a laugh track, I take note. This allows for more subtle humor to be inserted, because how do you handle a laugh track for a subtle joke? I really enjoy Malcolm in the Middle and Arrested Development. These shows had some great comedic moments that weren't marred by a laugh track.

I didn't realize how much I hated laugh tracks until I was watching a Friends episode in a plane. Those cheap-ass headphones just pipe the sound down a tunnel, and that distortion made the laugh track exceptionally tinny. It drove me nuts.