The Last One Lasts Forever

SPOILER ALERT: this article reveals important twists from both HIMYM and Friends

The final episode of How I Met Your Mother could be the most intense life lesson one could ever experience. People never change, there is a difference between soul mate and love of someone’s life and life is not perfect forever are only some of these lessons. The question arises though: is this why most of the fans were deeply disappointed and are now signing petitions to reshoot the ending? Is the last episode too lifelike to be fully appreciated?

I started watching HIMYM because of the 90s sitcom Friends, and for a long time I thought of it as a bad copycat of the second one. With time I started to appreciate HIMYM for its originality and its unforgettable characters, however after watching the last episode I could not help myself. I started to compare it to the series finale of Friends which was similar but easier to enjoy even if much harder to cope with emotionally. In the episode The Last One all the characters start a new chapter of their lives: some by destroying a football table to save a chicken and a duck, others by abandoning the plane because there is something wrong with the left phalange and others by having twins. In the end though, they all meet in the same apartment where everything started and so much happened, they leave their keys and close the door. My first reaction to Last Forever on the other hand was very negative but after analyzing it and reading reviews online I started to understand its importance. It was the ending that HIMYM needed even if not necessarily the one the audience expected or wanted.

We should start from the beginning: HIMYM was a very good sitcom that distinguished itself from the others thanks to its original style. Many have acknowledged this show as Friends’ legacy because of the large amount of similarities, especially those concerning the characters. It is obviously legitimate to compare Ted Mosby (Josh Radnor) to Ross Geller (David Schwimmer): both are passionate (even some would say obsessed) by their work, they both share fun facts with their friends and are grammar fanatics, they are desperately romantic and looking for the love of their lives but also in love with one and only woman since the beginning of the show; Robin (Cobie Smulders) for Ted and Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) for Ross.

Barney Stinson (Neil Patrick Harris) could be considered as a better Joey Tribbiani (Matt Le Blanc) but they still share a lot of qualities like the fascination for short relationships and success with women by means of strategies or pick-up lines. They are also both really likeable and unconsciously looking for the perfect woman (Robin for Barney and Phoebe (Lisa Kudrow) for Joey, even if they never end up together) but in the end they never seem to adhere to a radical change of their nature. A significant difference between these two characters is how we see them in the end. While Joey stays the same, Barney in the last seasons of HIMYM has an unnatural change that shocks the fans: he gets engaged to Robin. We spend so much time focusing on Barney’s relationship that we finally end up thinking that it could really happen. Unfortunately in the end he gets divorced thus enraging the audience who spent several seasons trying to convince itself that Barney could really become a decent man/husband/father. The audience does not know whether to be relieved because Robin and Barney were not made for each other or sad because of what happens next. Barney becomes a ridiculous character who lives by the rules of another playbook and keeps having meaningless relationships. Even if the writers try to redeem their character by making him an accidental father, in our mind, he became nothing more than a more human version of Stifler from American Pie.

We could say that Marshall Eriksen (Jason Segel) is Chandler Bing (Matthew Perry) a couple of years after Friends: he is already in his perfect relationship with Lily Aldrin (Alyson Hannigan), who is a mix between Monica (Courtney Cox) and Phoebe, but we can imagine from his special personality that he was not a Don Jon in his pre-Lily era. Marshall is also funny but normally enjoys more his jokes than everybody else in the room. Plus his long lasting relationship with Lily shares many resemblances with the one between Monica and Chandler which is in one word destiny.

Robin Scherbatsky is Rachel Green who from the beginning decides to focus on her career and can build a relationship with the love of her life (Ted and Ross) only after having achieved her goal.  A significant difference between these characters is that Rachel and Ross seem to both need each other and are drawn together several times during the whole series while Robin lost her place in Ted’s heart after the fourth season. The audience was completely deceived that they would not end up together even if I always had my doubts. The ending of HIMYM was confusing because of this as well, it ignored everything the two characters had been through the past seasons. They matured apart of each other and the ending, even if a full circle as many claim (think about the blue French horn), it felt as a conclusion to the first seasons and not a matured closure which took account of the characters changes in those nine years. 

Despite the similarities between Friends and HIMYM, it was a really good show for many seasons, until it started to decline, becoming a decent show which still had its moments and that we only watched because we wanted to see Ted get the happy ending he deserved. Is this why many people hated the final episode? Is it because his wife dies and then he conveniently starts dating Robin as if the mother never existed? Casting Cristin Milioti, for instance, as the mother, was probably the best choice made by the creators of HIMYM. The chemistry between her and Josh Radnor was definitely the only thing that had to work for the sake of the whole series. What is then the purpose of creating such unforgettable moments between them, as their meeting on the train platform, only to kill her with a voice over in 30 minutes?

My first reaction to Last Forever was very negative but it was the ending that HIMYM needed, even if not necessarily the one the audience wanted.

In a survey that I ran, when the audience was asked to answer whether they enjoyed the last episode of HIMYM, the answers were equally split between ‘I am not either disappointed or completely satisfied’, ‘it destroyed the whole journey’ and ‘it was ok but I still got to say goodbye to the show’. And when the audience was asked about the Friends final episode over 50% answered that it was really good and the rest that it was better than HIMYM’s. While HIMYM’s final episode tries to be overly realistic and provide closure to the lives of the gang the one of Friends seems to close a chapter and open another one. HIMYM in the last episode covered 20 years of the character’s lives thus not giving us the time to handle the changes emotionally. In my opinion they could have killed all the characters in the end and it would have made the same impact to me. This ending was written eight years ago for the fans of the Ted/Robin chemistry of the initial seasons who unfortunately have matured with the series as well and expect more from the show.

People have children and start hanging out only with other couples, eventually you have to move to a bigger house and stop going to the bar every night, people die, other people are born and as a single parent you feel the need to explain to your children why it is perfectly ok to move on with your life and fall in love again: all the themes are too real to be true. The audience asks itself: what does this ending mean? How are we supposed to feel about it? Is it a tragic ending with a happy twist? Is it how life works? Does it mean that people like Robin and Barney, Ted and Tracy, who are perfect for each other, are still not destined to be together?

The choices of the writers are not though completely illogic, if you think about it, Ted and Robin promised to each other that if they were single at the age of 40 they would get married or even Ted in the first season said “I don’t want perfect. I want Robin”. The true reason why the audience did not enjoy the final episode is because television became too close to reality and because it felt rushed. Several years passed and the audience could not cope with the characters’ choices which seemed illogical on the surface. Behind all this disappointment though there are good news since the producer of the show revealed on twitter that there is an alternative ending (that apparently lasts only 18 minutes) and it will be added to the complete series DVD. Until then, fans can only hope that the new project How I Met Your Dad will have a better ending and a different wonderful start.