The number one thing I take away from this article is that the most successful shows are those with showrunners who listen to audience feedback and write accordingly. The shows that fail, get canceled, and have the most epic of professional disasters have showrunners who refuse to listen to what their audience wants and in fact flies in the face of what their audience wants.
The article is absolutely right that once a show gains an audience it no longer belongs to the showrunners alone. That's just the nature of the business if you want to have a popular show on television. If that's what you want then you can't just be disrespectful to your audience or you're not going to have any audience left. It's an astonishingly simple concept. No one wants to hear Beyonce sing opera or Justin Timberlake sing country. Sure, they could do that and call that their right as "artists", but then they better not expect to sell any records. They better expect that to be the end of their careers.
A child could understand it. You're a brand and the public expects you to serve what you've always served. That's what they want. That's why they come to you. No one goes to McDonald's for a taco. They expect a burger because that's what McDonald's advertises and that's what McDonald's has always peddled and that's what people want of McDonald's. So when they go to McDonald's expecting another burger and they order that burger but get served a taco instead then obviously there is going to be an angry uproar. End of story.
Yep. Yep, yep, yep, yep, yeeeeeeep. All of this. Brandng is important in this business of entertainment, same as in the food world. If the label on the jar says butterscotch pudding, I expect that jar to have butterscotch pudding inside it, not pureed kale. Oh, but kale is better for...no. If I wanted pureed kale, I would buy pureed kale. I bought butterscotch pudding, and that had better be what's inside the jar, or I am taking it back, talking to a manager and not buying from that brand ever again. This is a very basic concept. One that C/C don't seem to get, so good luck to them. Popular entertainment has the goal right there in the name - give the people what they want, and they'll come back. Flip them off and insult them and they will stampede in the other direction.
I'm not sure how many in this community would remember when Garth Brooks tried to launch his Chris Gaines alter ego, but that's pretty much the whole point. :crickets:
Oh yes. If you have a happy romantic show, and this is what your viewers are giving you their time for you better make sure to keep delivering a happy romantic show all the way up to the last credits.
It's as if someone made a horror movie, one of the most gritty, scary and disturbing ones of all time, but then reveal in the last 10 minutes that the monster wasn't actually killing its victims but always just invited them over in her well to play some Texas HoldEm (or whatever) and turn the gritty, scary and disturbing horror movie into silly Scary Movie-esque comedy in its final moments. Make a movie like that and a huge chunk of the people who paid money to see it will not only never watch anything related to you again, but make sure as many other people as possible know about what you pulled so they won't make the same mistake in the future.
And if you pull something like that off after 10 years of TV show, and claim to be blindsided by the overwhemingly negative reaction, I just don't think there is any sort of hope left for you as a professional writer and you better start thinking about a career change.
The shipping is part of the issue, sure, but the bigger one is the misdirection of the audience, and the claiming that they had no idea the reaction would be like this, oh silly silly audience. Um, no. Come for the upbeat romance that tells us everybody has their perfect match out there somewhere, do not stay for the harsh lesson that the universe can rip that match away through divorce or death at any moment and even if the perfect one does stay, wave bye-bye to lifelong dreams. That's not what romantic comedy is for, and I would be very much surprised if this creative team got another shot at bat after this.
The tone of the show and the promises they made were the exact opposites of what happened in the failnale. If they wanted reality of life than use that at the characters expenses not against them. They weren't at all smart or talented enough to pull off that kind of "twist" ending since it's what they wanted all along. If they wanted that they should have change the entire tone of the show into a dramatic/sad memorial for the mother who was the big draw for the audience of the last season. Completely making her the scapegoat/copout of the show and the very meaning of it wasn't smart nor was it shocking it was just plain stupid.
The beginning of the series needed to reflect the end and it just didn't. The audience is still mad because of so many reasons but the tone of the series was about finding the person you've been waiting for your whole life but just didn't know it YET. When that happiness of finding the one for Ted was taken from him it meant he did not get a happy ending or a bittersweet one cause even the tone of the last scene was completely off from what just happened prior to that when he talked about the mother.
People who defend it seem to constantly argue that it's a 'realistically happy' or bittersweet ending fitting to the tone of the series, but (leaving aside how it can't end the way it did and be good writing for fucking insurmountable structural reasons) there was nothing happy about the ending. The characters are 0 for 5 on getting what they wanted out of life.
Ted's wife dies, he spent more time dissatisfied, losing hope, and desperately searching for her than he did actually being with her; his dream of being old and settled with his 'right person' will never be fulfilled. Marshall never becomes an environmental crusader. Lily ends up exactly the way she was terrified she would, with more and more kids and no career or personal achievement. Robin never gets over her emotional issues and drives away the only real family she ever had, she's alone and makes her whole life travel and work in exactly the way they established her realising she didn't actually want. Barney is abandoned by the most important person in his life for the billionth time and falls back into the lifestyle we were repeatedly, explicitly shown means he's a miserable, broken husk and trying to turn his soul off; then he becomes the last thing he ever wanted to be in a way that's clearly dysfunctional and blots out the positive aspects of his personality as well as the negative.
The suggestion that maybe Ted and Robin will get back into a doomed, dissatisfying, passionless consolation prize of a relationship is hardly an indication of an upturn. In fact, the scene patently illustrates that neither of them have changed and neither of them have learned anything from the past forty years of their lives.
It's not happy, and I wouldn't say it was realistic, either.
ETA: I'm so sorry, I only realised after I posted this that you basically said exactly this in another comment. #'_'#
Ted and Robin will get back into a doomed, dissatisfying, passionless consolation prize of a relationship is hardly an indication of an upturn.
They obviously don't see it that way because everyone knows a relationship based on empty and impersonal gestures are always the best ones that will last forever (pun intended.) I blame Hollywood that so many people have that outlook because all they ever do is write it that way and put it in the theatres for everyone to see. Of course everyone with half a brain knows that this is rubbish and those relationships are in reality usually the first ones to go down like the Titanic (if, and that is a big IF, those relationships ever come to be obviously and the girl isn't just all kinds of creeped out by the guy who pulls that), and the reason this stings so badly even after a year is (as you so perfectly stated in your post down in this thread) that with the promise they made in the beginning, that Ted simply isn't supposed to end up with Robin they made it look like they're going to reverse all those clichéd tropes and do a realistic romantic comedy for once (this is what got me interested in the show, I usually don't do romantic comedy for aforementioned reasons but this one was different...), and it works all the way up to the last episode when they take this fundament down because they were lying about the shows premise since episode 1 (again, as was already mentioned in this thread.) And I find it absolutely infuriating that these people who buy into the Hollywood tropes, including Carter Bays are running around trying to play the realism card of all things in defense of the last episode.
All the people defending the finale are on the same page as Carter Bays, all they wanted was Ted ending up with the person from the pilot simply because that's what those tropes dictate (and Carter Bays himself is probably obsessed with Cobie Smulders , which was also already stated in this thread), they all don't care that the character dynamic and the ongoing writing process of 9 years of show, 8 years after this ending was written simply didn't end up supporting this relationship. They got what they wanted and they love it just too much that they would ever admit that the T/R relationship and Ted's supposed feelings count towards the most forced and unbelievable things in a sitcom to date.
Great minds think alike, and beautifully put. Nearly a decade is far too long to spend in a flat arc, and coming back to square one, with the characters not having learned a blasted thing is a disservice to both characters and audience.
By the end of a romantic comedy, every single one of the main cast is miserable, and by the creators' own words, only surviving. Yeah, that's not optimistic or emotionally satisfying. Ted and Robin's relationship would not have been "oh ,my love, at last," but "eh, you'll do, whatever." We saw that on "The Front Porch" and having that intimated as what actually would happen, is neither happy nor realistic.
I agree, it's all classic Hollywood tropes those standard ways of showing romance in a different way. They not only flipped the true story around to make two people who never worked in a romantic ways and who have nothing but objects as a way of showing love in common. They have no passion and are clearly reaching for something that is far from their reach, the whole series showed that Ted was searching for the right woman which he found but at the right time.
All they wanted to do was pull a classic Hollywood twist when the first girl the guy sees who was all sorts of wrong for him and still is if nobody had changed or learned anything it means Ted and Robin will not last because they are still two very different people who want different things. Two lost souls are too broken to make a long term commitment/relationship last. If we go by what happened to B/R who are the most broken, alone and sad characters who found something so unique and wonderful with each other and were too broken to make a relationship even a marriage last there is no way T/R would ever last in a long term relationship.
Look at it this way, by the time Tracy dies and the time of six years after that it seems to me that Ted never truly loved her but when you go by the series with the light and sweet way the tone of it was. Ted was far too happy that his beloved wife dies even when he talks from the future about her. It's far too happy for my tastes, for a romantic comedy that plays with many of those stereotypical romance tropes using your wives memories and your children to get with their aunt after many years of searching and then finding the right woman. To pull twists like that, you need to have more time and they didn't. They used the last seasons for the wedding and Tracy and there was nothing in the series that showed why anything romantic or even platonic would work between Ted and Robin.
The ending was forced together just like the T/R relationship and it flat out did not work and in fact screwed everything up. The only way that ending would work is if they showed why they work as a couple and why they want to be together but they never showed us reasons for them to work as a couple.
There's a difference between searching for the one and simply meeting the one the minute you decide you want to settle down but that latter is still not the one for you. You eventually find The One, your soulmate to only lose her and not give a damn about her death because you just didn't love her enough to make your long exhausting and pointless story about her so you make it a happy one because you're still obsessed with a woman who still isn't remotely attracted or emotionally attached to you. Ugh, now I'm getting mad again so I will stop here.
It's not really that simple, though. I mean, yes, you should never be disrespectful or condescending towards your audience, but you can't just bend blindly to its whims. As often as not, the loud minority want something that would never actually work on the show. Or the fans want nothing to ever change, but that's not sustainable in any series with realistic characters. Things have to change, things do change, but on a well-written show, the change is natural and logical. Lots changed on HIMYM in a good way that people enjoyed, even though they would never have asked for it.
The problem with HIMYM wasn't that they didn't bow to the wishes of the fandom, it was that they didn't fulfil the promises of their own story. If they wanted to write that ending, it was up to them to make it feel appropriate and inevitable.
It was two completely different shows that we were given but only one made the audience take notice. If they wanted that ending they needed to stick to that story all the way through without many of the plot twists they used. What we got as an audience is what we expected but what they wanted was why it didn't work.
The fandom was what made this show what it had become so they could have rethought about using that original ending after that story had run its course years earlier. They flipped the audience the finger and flat out had no respect not only for their characters but the actors and their audience. Changing the tone of the series after season 2 wasn't a giant misdirection it was just the wrong way to go if you as the creator/producer/director don't want your original story to be overlapped with another more popular story than it's best to not go back to the original that no longer works.
If you're writing for an entertainment purpose in which people actually see and your merchandising shows something totally different than your original merchandised plan in which the audience relies on and likes it's best to not use something that doesn't work anymore. It simple did not fit with the changes of the show so their original ending should've never seen the light of day. Branding is the makers most important thing to do in something that's for entertainment of an audience don't show us one thing but end up giving us something utterly different in the end.
If I were in TV, if I produced or did something for entertainment views I would raise a hand and put my foot down saying this type of ending for this type of show (a comedy/sitcom) should have had a funny but lighthearted ending if this was a drama or dramady it might have had a different reaction from the audience. This show represented a lot of real people life issues but staying true to life wasn't one of the things people watched the show for.
For me, I watched because I found it funny at first and different from most of the shows I've seen before. But, they made this show the same old stereotypical show that I've seen many times. Classic sitcom tropes for a show that felt totally different from that typical TV show of the past.
And, also don't use a popular couple who the audience adores as your scapegoat to the original. When your audience likes where the show goes from the changes it makes it's best to not go back on the original that no longer works. Using cheapt trick tropes for the failnale is why that failed so badly and those idiots careers are still being laughed at by the audience.
People still talk about this almost a year later this things will not end anytime soon it's still a present issue that everybody loathes.
That's exactly what I mean by fulfilling the promises you made to the audience. The pilot episode sets up a future where everything has worked out. Future Ted is looking back on his search for love with the sagacity and wry good humour of someone who has come out the other side and learned his lessons and finally achieved all those things he worried would never happen for him. The solemn promise to the viewer implicit in the style of the narration is that this story has a happy ending. We know Ted found love and happiness before we even start.
The other set up in the pilot is that the show will reverse and mock clichés. Ted tries to pull off a fairytale meeting, love at first sight thing with Robin, and it is instantly ruined by Barney. It's then further deconstructed and dismantled by Robin's realistic reaction to Ted's starry-eyed attempt to make his life into a scene from Romeo and Juliet. Finally, the ultimate subversion, the narration promises us that the first girl we meet and who Ted fixates on is not the girl he will end up with.
So the show has therefore promised- right from day one- to be light-hearted, ultimately happy, optimistic, not take itself too seriously, and to poke fun at romance tropes. It's saying it will inject a little reality into its idealism for comic effect, but it will not be cynical and no one will be 'settling'. The message set up at the beginning is that the journey won't be easy or smooth or storybook, but you will absolutely get to your 'perfect' ending if you're willing to keep waiting and keep trying. Don't force it, don't settle: you'll be in the right place at the right time when you're ready, and it'll be worth it.
The thing that's unforgivable about the finalé is that it broke all of those promises. It broke a lot of other promises the show made along the way, but it's the fact that it completely and totally fails to give the audience what the whole structure of the show should have guaranteed that makes it utterly unacceptable. And there was never a time in the series when that ending would have been acceptable for the same reason. It's really not even about ships or character compatibility or what became most popular, it runs deeper, to the very core of the story that was supposedly being told.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes. :climbs on chair, waves lighter: All of this. The rules of storytelling aren't that complicated. The storyteller can tell whatever story they want, but the rules of the story world are set up in the start of the story, and that becomes a promise to the audience. In the pilot, we are given the promise that Future Ted is happy, comfortable, and has come out the other side of all his single tribulations better than he went into them. We can allow almost anything in the interim, because we have the promise that Ted is living his happily ever after.
We get a subversion on the usual romantic comedy tropes, because Ted spots his dream girl, sets his sights on her, and Barney ruins the big moment. This also serves to set us up to allow that, while Robin is absolutely not Ted's dream girl, (witness the kids' shocked reactions that Ted was scoping out Aunt Robin - does that even come close to fitting their enthusiastic approval of his going after her in the "now" of the framing story? Um, no. No, it does not.) she may end up being Barney's. We're not hit over the head with this; it's more subtle than that, but it's there.
No matter what hardships our three couples (because that's the setup, folks) go through over the course of the series, we are prepared that Marshall and Lily will, of course, end up happily ever aftering (despite her breaking the engagement and moving to San Fransisco) and Ted will eventually see that all the wrong girls were necessary steps to finding the right girl, Tracy, at the right time. Barney and Robin serve as single wild cards for a while, but from "Zip Zip Zip," we see how well they are suited (pun intended) for each other and isn't the wildest gamble of all that these two committmentphobes can't live without each other? We can deal with broken engagements and being left at the altar and getting dumped and infertility and insecurity and all of the muck our gang goes through over almost a decade, because we are assured, from the start, that everything is going to be okay. This story is told from a happy and secure future. If we stop watching at 9.22, that's exactly what we get.
If we go into the AUE of the aired finale, they smash it all to pieces. Tracy dies, leaving Ted a single parent of young kids, Barney and Robin divorce for no reason, she spends over a decade in limbo, he becomes a single parent (trend here?) to the exclusion of all other character traits (oh sure, that's not going to give his kid daddy issues.) Even Marshall and Lily get derailed; still together, but what happened to both of Lily's career paths, and Marshall's dreams of saving the planet? Nah, raising a bunch of kids and prestigious legal position, that'll do. Only, it won't. None of it fulfills the promise we were made in the beginning of this series ,and that is going to leave a sour taste in viewers' mouths that, like Barney and Robin's chemistry, is just not going to go away.
Seriously. They made the rules. It's their own narrative groundwork that makes their ending untenable. It has nothing to do with it being sad or not fanservice-y or whatever else people say.
I see it constantly argued that it was 'always about Ted and Robin' and therefore the ending is justified, but that not only misses the well-established premise of the series (which makes T/R impossible right there in the pilot, not because she's not the mother, but because Ted is wrong about their having a connection and wrong about her), but just isn't at all true.
There was a time in the first season when Ted was completely over the whole Robin incident. Why? Because they were never supposed to be a thing, that was obvious from how she was used to set up the show. They changed their minds and retconned Ted's feelings to be a lot more legitimate than originally depicted and exaggerated how seriously her rejection affected him so they could mine the lame duck for drama. Robin never felt the same way. Ted forgot about her whenever he found someone else. Robin suddenly starts pining for Ted for literally no reason whatsoever and eventually they date. Their dating painstakingly illustrates why they will never, ever work as a couple. From season two to season seven, they have no romantic feelings for each other. There's no tension between them. There is so little tension between them that they can have a FWB arrangement without the slightest emotional quaver on either side. When they unthinkingly kiss outside the bedroom, both immediately think 'nope' and want to kibosh the whole thing. The pairing is deader than disco. It started dead and got deader.
When Ted does go back to pining in season seven, there is no build up, no logic, and no evidence for it. It comes utterly out of left field and makes sense only as a manifestation of his depression and desperation, not at all as legitimate feelings for Robin as a person. Robin the person annoys him, undermines him, and doesn't give him any of the things he wants from a romantic partner. They have none of the same values, none of the same passions, and are frequently disgusted by each other's life decisions. They're not compatible, not just because Robin wasn't looking for marriage and kids and Ted wanted to settle down in the suburbs, but because they can't be themselves with each other as a couple.
Meanwhile, the idea that Robin and Barney are compatible is elaborately illustrated and then explicitly stated in episode fourteen. That's not a late addition. Season three spends considerable energy building towards them hooking up, and from then until the end of the series the door is never closed on them and their ongoing romantic entanglement is a prominent part of the plot. Even when they break up, it's never over anything permanent or inherent to their characters. They never fall out of love with each other, are always more comfortable with each other than anyone else, and always support each other. Way, waaaaaay more time is actually spent on their relationship and why it works than on T/R or Ted's obsession.
Like, if we're going to say the series was 'always about Ted and Robin', then we're going to have to say it was 'always about Ted and Robin being horribly wrong for each other. And there's literally nothing in the series to refute that. The writers never put in a single reason to root for this relationship or even understand it. There's no motivation for these people to want to be together. The only thing we get are the same misguided, generic 'romantic' gestures that have nothing to do with them as individuals and which the pilot set out to mock.
This is so very true, they continually illustrated for the entire series why T/R do not work on a romantic or even in a realistic matter. They always shown how wrong they were for each other and how right B/R was for each other. Who, yes never fell out of love with each other and for the entire series we were shown how good B/R were/are/will always be right for each other.
For crying out loud Barney and Robin are soulmates that wasn't just thrown in there to see what couple work best it was there to show how great the relationship really is and by the time they did get into a romantic relationship it wasn't just thrown in there out of the blue there was build up the entire season 4. Ever since Zip, Zip, Zip it was clear that these two were meant for each other. No matter what they went through they were shown to still be in love and there was build up in each season for them to be together.
They established during season 1 why B/R work and why their relationship was a healthy one. They went from not wanting a relationship at all to wanting one with each other (and not looking back) they were solid. The only thing that wasn't great was their communication but that shouldn't have been a bigger issue than it was by the time they want to be with each other and only each other.
The writing for B/R was wonderful and it proved that they are each other's one. The writing literally made them the IT couple while from the start we were shown how wrong T/R were. The light tone of the show was all one way which made that AUE even more unrealistic to the storytelling and the writing. I agree it's not about how sad it was it was how everyone ended up at square one which was a time when things weren't right for the characters but by the end it was all right and everyone got what they set out for by taking all of that away it made everything we saw mean nothing.
The series might have started with Robin and Robin and Ted but it was not about them. The show highlighted why they do not work and never will as a couple. They work well as friends not lovers.
The article is absolutely right that once a show gains an audience it no longer belongs to the showrunners alone. That's just the nature of the business if you want to have a popular show on television. If that's what you want then you can't just be disrespectful to your audience or you're not going to have any audience left. It's an astonishingly simple concept. No one wants to hear Beyonce sing opera or Justin Timberlake sing country. Sure, they could do that and call that their right as "artists", but then they better not expect to sell any records. They better expect that to be the end of their careers.
A child could understand it. You're a brand and the public expects you to serve what you've always served. That's what they want. That's why they come to you. No one goes to McDonald's for a taco. They expect a burger because that's what McDonald's advertises and that's what McDonald's has always peddled and that's what people want of McDonald's. So when they go to McDonald's expecting another burger and they order that burger but get served a taco instead then obviously there is going to be an angry uproar. End of story.
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I'm not sure how many in this community would remember when Garth Brooks tried to launch his Chris Gaines alter ego, but that's pretty much the whole point. :crickets:
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It's as if someone made a horror movie, one of the most gritty, scary and disturbing ones of all time, but then reveal in the last 10 minutes that the monster wasn't actually killing its victims but always just invited them over in her well to play some Texas HoldEm (or whatever) and turn the gritty, scary and disturbing horror movie into silly Scary Movie-esque comedy in its final moments. Make a movie like that and a huge chunk of the people who paid money to see it will not only never watch anything related to you again, but make sure as many other people as possible know about what you pulled so they won't make the same mistake in the future.
And if you pull something like that off after 10 years of TV show, and claim to be blindsided by the overwhemingly negative reaction, I just don't think there is any sort of hope left for you as a professional writer and you better start thinking about a career change.
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The shipping is part of the issue, sure, but the bigger one is the misdirection of the audience, and the claiming that they had no idea the reaction would be like this, oh silly silly audience. Um, no. Come for the upbeat romance that tells us everybody has their perfect match out there somewhere, do not stay for the harsh lesson that the universe can rip that match away through divorce or death at any moment and even if the perfect one does stay, wave bye-bye to lifelong dreams. That's not what romantic comedy is for, and I would be very much surprised if this creative team got another shot at bat after this.
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The beginning of the series needed to reflect the end and it just didn't. The audience is still mad because of so many reasons but the tone of the series was about finding the person you've been waiting for your whole life but just didn't know it YET. When that happiness of finding the one for Ted was taken from him it meant he did not get a happy ending or a bittersweet one cause even the tone of the last scene was completely off from what just happened prior to that when he talked about the mother.
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Ted's wife dies, he spent more time dissatisfied, losing hope, and desperately searching for her than he did actually being with her; his dream of being old and settled with his 'right person' will never be fulfilled. Marshall never becomes an environmental crusader. Lily ends up exactly the way she was terrified she would, with more and more kids and no career or personal achievement. Robin never gets over her emotional issues and drives away the only real family she ever had, she's alone and makes her whole life travel and work in exactly the way they established her realising she didn't actually want. Barney is abandoned by the most important person in his life for the billionth time and falls back into the lifestyle we were repeatedly, explicitly shown means he's a miserable, broken husk and trying to turn his soul off; then he becomes the last thing he ever wanted to be in a way that's clearly dysfunctional and blots out the positive aspects of his personality as well as the negative.
The suggestion that maybe Ted and Robin will get back into a doomed, dissatisfying, passionless consolation prize of a relationship is hardly an indication of an upturn. In fact, the scene patently illustrates that neither of them have changed and neither of them have learned anything from the past forty years of their lives.
It's not happy, and I wouldn't say it was realistic, either.
ETA: I'm so sorry, I only realised after I posted this that you basically said exactly this in another comment. #'_'#
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They obviously don't see it that way because everyone knows a relationship based on empty and impersonal gestures are always the best ones that will last forever (pun intended.) I blame Hollywood that so many people have that outlook because all they ever do is write it that way and put it in the theatres for everyone to see. Of course everyone with half a brain knows that this is rubbish and those relationships are in reality usually the first ones to go down like the Titanic (if, and that is a big IF, those relationships ever come to be obviously and the girl isn't just all kinds of creeped out by the guy who pulls that), and the reason this stings so badly even after a year is (as you so perfectly stated in your post down in this thread) that with the promise they made in the beginning, that Ted simply isn't supposed to end up with Robin they made it look like they're going to reverse all those clichéd tropes and do a realistic romantic comedy for once (this is what got me interested in the show, I usually don't do romantic comedy for aforementioned reasons but this one was different...), and it works all the way up to the last episode when they take this fundament down because they were lying about the shows premise since episode 1 (again, as was already mentioned in this thread.) And I find it absolutely infuriating that these people who buy into the Hollywood tropes, including Carter Bays are running around trying to play the realism card of all things in defense of the last episode.
All the people defending the finale are on the same page as Carter Bays, all they wanted was Ted ending up with the person from the pilot simply because that's what those tropes dictate (and Carter Bays himself is probably obsessed with Cobie Smulders , which was also already stated in this thread), they all don't care that the character dynamic and the ongoing writing process of 9 years of show, 8 years after this ending was written simply didn't end up supporting this relationship. They got what they wanted and they love it just too much that they would ever admit that the T/R relationship and Ted's supposed feelings count towards the most forced and unbelievable things in a sitcom to date.
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Great minds think alike, and beautifully put. Nearly a decade is far too long to spend in a flat arc, and coming back to square one, with the characters not having learned a blasted thing is a disservice to both characters and audience.
By the end of a romantic comedy, every single one of the main cast is miserable, and by the creators' own words, only surviving. Yeah, that's not optimistic or emotionally satisfying. Ted and Robin's relationship would not have been "oh ,my love, at last," but "eh, you'll do, whatever." We saw that on "The Front Porch" and having that intimated as what actually would happen, is neither happy nor realistic.
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All they wanted to do was pull a classic Hollywood twist when the first girl the guy sees who was all sorts of wrong for him and still is if nobody had changed or learned anything it means Ted and Robin will not last because they are still two very different people who want different things. Two lost souls are too broken to make a long term commitment/relationship last. If we go by what happened to B/R who are the most broken, alone and sad characters who found something so unique and wonderful with each other and were too broken to make a relationship even a marriage last there is no way T/R would ever last in a long term relationship.
Look at it this way, by the time Tracy dies and the time of six years after that it seems to me that Ted never truly loved her but when you go by the series with the light and sweet way the tone of it was. Ted was far too happy that his beloved wife dies even when he talks from the future about her. It's far too happy for my tastes, for a romantic comedy that plays with many of those stereotypical romance tropes using your wives memories and your children to get with their aunt after many years of searching and then finding the right woman. To pull twists like that, you need to have more time and they didn't. They used the last seasons for the wedding and Tracy and there was nothing in the series that showed why anything romantic or even platonic would work between Ted and Robin.
The ending was forced together just like the T/R relationship and it flat out did not work and in fact screwed everything up. The only way that ending would work is if they showed why they work as a couple and why they want to be together but they never showed us reasons for them to work as a couple.
There's a difference between searching for the one and simply meeting the one the minute you decide you want to settle down but that latter is still not the one for you. You eventually find The One, your soulmate to only lose her and not give a damn about her death because you just didn't love her enough to make your long exhausting and pointless story about her so you make it a happy one because you're still obsessed with a woman who still isn't remotely attracted or emotionally attached to you. Ugh, now I'm getting mad again so I will stop here.
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The problem with HIMYM wasn't that they didn't bow to the wishes of the fandom, it was that they didn't fulfil the promises of their own story. If they wanted to write that ending, it was up to them to make it feel appropriate and inevitable.
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The fandom was what made this show what it had become so they could have rethought about using that original ending after that story had run its course years earlier. They flipped the audience the finger and flat out had no respect not only for their characters but the actors and their audience. Changing the tone of the series after season 2 wasn't a giant misdirection it was just the wrong way to go if you as the creator/producer/director don't want your original story to be overlapped with another more popular story than it's best to not go back to the original that no longer works.
If you're writing for an entertainment purpose in which people actually see and your merchandising shows something totally different than your original merchandised plan in which the audience relies on and likes it's best to not use something that doesn't work anymore. It simple did not fit with the changes of the show so their original ending should've never seen the light of day. Branding is the makers most important thing to do in something that's for entertainment of an audience don't show us one thing but end up giving us something utterly different in the end.
If I were in TV, if I produced or did something for entertainment views I would raise a hand and put my foot down saying this type of ending for this type of show (a comedy/sitcom) should have had a funny but lighthearted ending if this was a drama or dramady it might have had a different reaction from the audience. This show represented a lot of real people life issues but staying true to life wasn't one of the things people watched the show for.
For me, I watched because I found it funny at first and different from most of the shows I've seen before. But, they made this show the same old stereotypical show that I've seen many times. Classic sitcom tropes for a show that felt totally different from that typical TV show of the past.
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People still talk about this almost a year later this things will not end anytime soon it's still a present issue that everybody loathes.
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The other set up in the pilot is that the show will reverse and mock clichés. Ted tries to pull off a fairytale meeting, love at first sight thing with Robin, and it is instantly ruined by Barney. It's then further deconstructed and dismantled by Robin's realistic reaction to Ted's starry-eyed attempt to make his life into a scene from Romeo and Juliet. Finally, the ultimate subversion, the narration promises us that the first girl we meet and who Ted fixates on is not the girl he will end up with.
So the show has therefore promised- right from day one- to be light-hearted, ultimately happy, optimistic, not take itself too seriously, and to poke fun at romance tropes. It's saying it will inject a little reality into its idealism for comic effect, but it will not be cynical and no one will be 'settling'. The message set up at the beginning is that the journey won't be easy or smooth or storybook, but you will absolutely get to your 'perfect' ending if you're willing to keep waiting and keep trying. Don't force it, don't settle: you'll be in the right place at the right time when you're ready, and it'll be worth it.
The thing that's unforgivable about the finalé is that it broke all of those promises. It broke a lot of other promises the show made along the way, but it's the fact that it completely and totally fails to give the audience what the whole structure of the show should have guaranteed that makes it utterly unacceptable. And there was never a time in the series when that ending would have been acceptable for the same reason. It's really not even about ships or character compatibility or what became most popular, it runs deeper, to the very core of the story that was supposedly being told.
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We get a subversion on the usual romantic comedy tropes, because Ted spots his dream girl, sets his sights on her, and Barney ruins the big moment. This also serves to set us up to allow that, while Robin is absolutely not Ted's dream girl, (witness the kids' shocked reactions that Ted was scoping out Aunt Robin - does that even come close to fitting their enthusiastic approval of his going after her in the "now" of the framing story? Um, no. No, it does not.) she may end up being Barney's. We're not hit over the head with this; it's more subtle than that, but it's there.
No matter what hardships our three couples (because that's the setup, folks) go through over the course of the series, we are prepared that Marshall and Lily will, of course, end up happily ever aftering (despite her breaking the engagement and moving to San Fransisco) and Ted will eventually see that all the wrong girls were necessary steps to finding the right girl, Tracy, at the right time. Barney and Robin serve as single wild cards for a while, but from "Zip Zip Zip," we see how well they are suited (pun intended) for each other and isn't the wildest gamble of all that these two committmentphobes can't live without each other? We can deal with broken engagements and being left at the altar and getting dumped and infertility and insecurity and all of the muck our gang goes through over almost a decade, because we are assured, from the start, that everything is going to be okay. This story is told from a happy and secure future. If we stop watching at 9.22, that's exactly what we get.
If we go into the AUE of the aired finale, they smash it all to pieces. Tracy dies, leaving Ted a single parent of young kids, Barney and Robin divorce for no reason, she spends over a decade in limbo, he becomes a single parent (trend here?) to the exclusion of all other character traits (oh sure, that's not going to give his kid daddy issues.) Even Marshall and Lily get derailed; still together, but what happened to both of Lily's career paths, and Marshall's dreams of saving the planet? Nah, raising a bunch of kids and prestigious legal position, that'll do. Only, it won't. None of it fulfills the promise we were made in the beginning of this series ,and that is going to leave a sour taste in viewers' mouths that, like Barney and Robin's chemistry, is just not going to go away.
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I see it constantly argued that it was 'always about Ted and Robin' and therefore the ending is justified, but that not only misses the well-established premise of the series (which makes T/R impossible right there in the pilot, not because she's not the mother, but because Ted is wrong about their having a connection and wrong about her), but just isn't at all true.
There was a time in the first season when Ted was completely over the whole Robin incident. Why? Because they were never supposed to be a thing, that was obvious from how she was used to set up the show. They changed their minds and retconned Ted's feelings to be a lot more legitimate than originally depicted and exaggerated how seriously her rejection affected him so they could mine the lame duck for drama. Robin never felt the same way. Ted forgot about her whenever he found someone else. Robin suddenly starts pining for Ted for literally no reason whatsoever and eventually they date. Their dating painstakingly illustrates why they will never, ever work as a couple. From season two to season seven, they have no romantic feelings for each other. There's no tension between them. There is so little tension between them that they can have a FWB arrangement without the slightest emotional quaver on either side. When they unthinkingly kiss outside the bedroom, both immediately think 'nope' and want to kibosh the whole thing. The pairing is deader than disco. It started dead and got deader.
When Ted does go back to pining in season seven, there is no build up, no logic, and no evidence for it. It comes utterly out of left field and makes sense only as a manifestation of his depression and desperation, not at all as legitimate feelings for Robin as a person. Robin the person annoys him, undermines him, and doesn't give him any of the things he wants from a romantic partner. They have none of the same values, none of the same passions, and are frequently disgusted by each other's life decisions. They're not compatible, not just because Robin wasn't looking for marriage and kids and Ted wanted to settle down in the suburbs, but because they can't be themselves with each other as a couple.
Meanwhile, the idea that Robin and Barney are compatible is elaborately illustrated and then explicitly stated in episode fourteen. That's not a late addition. Season three spends considerable energy building towards them hooking up, and from then until the end of the series the door is never closed on them and their ongoing romantic entanglement is a prominent part of the plot. Even when they break up, it's never over anything permanent or inherent to their characters. They never fall out of love with each other, are always more comfortable with each other than anyone else, and always support each other. Way, waaaaaay more time is actually spent on their relationship and why it works than on T/R or Ted's obsession.
Like, if we're going to say the series was 'always about Ted and Robin', then we're going to have to say it was 'always about Ted and Robin being horribly wrong for each other. And there's literally nothing in the series to refute that. The writers never put in a single reason to root for this relationship or even understand it. There's no motivation for these people to want to be together. The only thing we get are the same misguided, generic 'romantic' gestures that have nothing to do with them as individuals and which the pilot set out to mock.
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For crying out loud Barney and Robin are soulmates that wasn't just thrown in there to see what couple work best it was there to show how great the relationship really is and by the time they did get into a romantic relationship it wasn't just thrown in there out of the blue there was build up the entire season 4. Ever since Zip, Zip, Zip it was clear that these two were meant for each other. No matter what they went through they were shown to still be in love and there was build up in each season for them to be together.
They established during season 1 why B/R work and why their relationship was a healthy one. They went from not wanting a relationship at all to wanting one with each other (and not looking back) they were solid. The only thing that wasn't great was their communication but that shouldn't have been a bigger issue than it was by the time they want to be with each other and only each other.
The writing for B/R was wonderful and it proved that they are each other's one. The writing literally made them the IT couple while from the start we were shown how wrong T/R were. The light tone of the show was all one way which made that AUE even more unrealistic to the storytelling and the writing. I agree it's not about how sad it was it was how everyone ended up at square one which was a time when things weren't right for the characters but by the end it was all right and everyone got what they set out for by taking all of that away it made everything we saw mean nothing.
The series might have started with Robin and Robin and Ted but it was not about them. The show highlighted why they do not work and never will as a couple. They work well as friends not lovers.
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