Why I'm Fine with the How I Met Your Mother Series Finale

**Note:  this post will contain spoilers about the How I Met Your Mother series finale, so if you haven't seen it or don't want to know about it, you probably shouldn't read this post.**

I was (and still am) a fan of How I Met Your Mother.  I came into it a year or two after it started, but between first-runs and reruns, I think I have seen just about every episode.  As you may know, the show's series finale was this past Monday night, and from the way people are reacting, you would think Ted Mosby murdered his wife and kids.  I've seen people go so far as to say that the finale ruined the entire show for them.  That's a bit of an overreaction, and I stand before you today to explain why I am completely fine with the finale.

If you didn't see it, here's what went down.  Ted leaves Barney and Robin's wedding reception early to take the train back to Manhattan, since he was supposed to be moving to Chicago the next day.  On the train platform, he meets Tracy (who will, in fact, birth his children at a later date), the bass player from the wedding band.  Thanks to the yellow umbrella she is holding, they realize they have crossed paths many times, and they are both taken aback a little, realizing they were destined for each other.  We learn that they go on to have two kids, but didn't get married until after the first kid was born.  In 2024, she dies of an unnamed illness.

In other news, three years after their wedding, Barney and Robin announce to the group they're getting divorced, but it's amicable.  Things just didn't work out with Robin's work schedule.  Barney then goes back to his womanizing ways, completes a "perfect month" (bags 31 women in 31 days), only to find out that the 31st girl becomes pregnant, but it's all good because Barney finally falls in love the first time he ever sees his infant daughter.  Robin kind of separates herself from the group, but manages to show up for Ted and Tracy's wedding.

Marshall and Lily continue to make babies, and, as we already knew, Marshall becomes a judge and, eventually, a New York state "supreme court" justice.  As any lawyer can tell you, in the New York state court system, the Supreme Court is actually the county-level trial court, and the highest court is called the Court of Appeals, but I think we can all gloss over that for the sake of avoiding confusing the masses who are not as familiar with the terminology of the New York state court system.

After we find all of this out, Ted is finished telling his kids the story of how he met their mother.  His daughter expresses skepticism that the real purpose of the story was to tell them how he met their mother, since she was only a small part of the story.  Rather, his daughter says that she thinks the real purpose of the story was to explain that Ted still had feelings for Robin and to see if his kids would be okay if he asked Robin out.  After all, this is 2030, and it's been six years since their mom died.

In the last scene, we see Robin –- with a horrible haircut -- walking her many dogs into her apartment.  The buzzer buzzes, and she can't get her fancy security system to turn on, so she goes to a window overlooking the sidewalk.  She opens the window to see Ted below, holding the blue French horn he stole for her on their first date (in the pilot episode).

I am completely fine with this ending.  How I Met Your Mother ended the only way it could:  with Ted making a romantic gesture to Robin.  Ted and Robin's feelings for each other (and how their relationship affected other relationships) was the underlying theme throughout the entire show.  Here's what I mean:

• The show -– and, therefore, Ted's story to his kids -- starts as Ted decides he needs to meet "the one," and he then meets Robin.
• In the beginning of the show, Ted tells Robin he loves her on their first date.
• At the end of the first show, the kids express confusion by the fact that the first thing their dad told them is how he met Robin, and not their mother.
• Ted breaks up with his longtime girlfriend Victoria to be with Robin.
• One of the reasons Ted and Robin broke up initially is because Robin never wanted to have children (and it is later revealed that she cannot have kids).  Thus, going on to meet Tracy and have children fulfilled that for Ted.  Then Tracy died, and now Robin can be back in the mix.
• Stella (Sarah Chalke) didn't want Robin at Stella and Ted's wedding because she was worried Ted and Robin might rekindle their old feelings for each other.  Stella was apparently right, since Robin essentially tried to get Ted to call the wedding off.
• Ted tries to break up Robin and Barney when they both become fat.
• When Robin dates her co-worker Don, Ted professes his love for her and tries to get her back.
• It was Ted who comforted Robin (and erected an intricate display of Christmas lights in the apartment) when she found out she was unable to have kids.
• After Robin and Kevin (Kal Penn) break up, Ted confesses his love to Robin.
• When Ted proposes to Victoria, she says yes, only on the condition that Ted sever his relationship with Robin, because Victoria thought Robin was an impediment to their relationship.  Ted refuses, and Victoria leaves, saying she hopes he and Robin end up together one day.
• Throughout Robin and Barney's entire engagement, Ted struggled with his feelings towards Robin.
• Ted dug up and found the locket that Robin planted in Central Park when she was 15 (and wanted to wear as the "something old" at her wedding), and then went to great lengths to find it after he misplaced it, so that he could give it to Robin as a wedding present.
• Ted gave the blue French horn back to the restaurant from which he stole it, and then he stole it back as a sign of affection for Robin.
• In the second-to-last episode, Robin was freaking out and thinking about calling off the wedding, but it was a grand gesture by Ted (giving Barney Robin's locket to give to Robin) that saved the day (kind of) and got Robin thinking that she should have been marrying Ted.

You can't look at the show as a typical sitcom (i.e., an objective story told solely for the sake of telling a story).  You have to look at the show from the perspective of Ted's children being told a story by their father.  If you do that, the ending makes perfect sense.  Ted's story to his children started when it did –- right before Ted met Robin -- for a reason:  because the story was about Robin.  It came full-circle.

That might not sit well with a lot of viewers, since it seems to diminish what the objective, outside viewer thought the show was about:  Ted meeting and falling in love with Tracy.  Yes, the show was entitled "How I Met Your Mother," but it had to be named that, not only because it's clever and fit with the premise of the show (and built anticipation), but also because if the show was called How I Fell In Love With Robin, it would have been over after Ted and Robin's first date.

It may feel cheap that the story of meeting The Mother was a vehicle for Ted to work out his lingering feelings for Robin, but I don't see it as cheap.  It's still clear that Ted loved Tracy.  Tracy was essential, not only for Ted's catharsis in 2030, but also because there was genuine chemistry there, and Ted needed that love and relationship.  Sure, she died too soon after she was introduced, but that's how it had to be.  Plus, there were plenty of flash-forward scenes this season that let us see Ted and Tracy as a couple, so it's not like we just met her in this last episode right before she was offed.

I've seen a fan's reworking of the end of the finale, in which Tracy doesn't die and the credits roll after Ted and Tracy have their "umbrella" moment on the train platform.  I don't think that would have worked.  If you know Ted Mosby, there has to be more to the story than that.  Throughout the show's run, I was worried that the show would end at the moment Ted met his children's mother, with Ted (in Bob Saget's voice) saying "And that, kids, is how I met your mother."  Blackout.  I'm glad that wasn't the ending.

When you invest time and emotion into a TV show, you want the finale to have both finality and the knowledge that the characters went on to live happy lives.  That's why the ending of The Sopranos sucked.  You got neither.  With How I Met Your Mother, you got finality because Ted finally met The Mother (and because Tracy died and Ted finished his story to his kids), and you know that Ted and Robin are probably going to get together, and it will finally last.  You don't want Ted to be a miserable widower who never tries to love again, and you don't want Robin to be a miserable old maid.  It's the way it had to be.  Lawyered.