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 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.
Reply
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.
Reply
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. #'_'#
Reply
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.
Reply
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.
Reply
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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