There has been a lot of controversy over the How I Met Your Mother finale and weighing in at this point may seem a bit redundant but as a diehard fan who proudly owns a bright yellow umbrella; there are some things that need to be said.
My colleague Victoria Nelli wrote a very eloquent essay on why the finale worked. It was was well reasoned, justified, and by all accounts a fair assessment of the shows final bow…but to me it was just all wrong.
The finale we watched last night was conceived from the HOW I MET YOUR MOTHERS earliest days and if the show had ended in season 2 or 3 than this finale would have been very strong ( I can’t say brilliant because there were too many pacing issues) but here is the cold hard truth: The show outgrew its ending.
I fully understand how hard it is to let go of your vision. This is especially true for a sitcom as meticulously thought out as HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER but that doesn’t mean you should ignore the natural progression of your show. Characters have a tendency to take on a life of their own, that’s simple a happy side effect of good writing, but the finale felt entirely too much like a rushed effort to accommodate an end game that simply no longer fit into the mythology. [Read more…]