Quite a few people were not amused with it: The How I Met Your Mother Finale Bailed on the Entire Show Since I wasn't super in to the show, I guess I wasn't as hurt as a lot of real super fans were, but yes, they did bail on the premise. Or as I saw on twitter, the show should have been called How I Met Your Step-Mother. Maybe finales have so much expectations that they can never satisfy, but it seems like they are disappointments more often than not.
From what I've read it's not as bad an ending premise as it could have been. At least nobody discovered that they were actually in purgatory (Lost) or that it was all just the extended fantasies of a patient (Saint Elsewhere). So it could have been worse . . . which is a rather sad indictment of a television show ending when you get right down to it . . .
Enigma is both the easiest and hardest thing to write. Easy because it keeps the reader/viewer engaged out of pure curiosity, if nothing else, hard because you must eventually end it, or the audience grows frustrated, and ending an enigma must be the most difficult thing to do there is. You either disappoint the viewer, as in Philip Jose Farmer's "Riverworld" Trilogy, or you cheat them, as in "Lost". The ONLY story that I've ever seen that honestly carried it off was the Patrick MacGoohan version of "The Prisoner". A show that ran for 17 episodes in the 60's (and I believe was brought back briefly in the 90's, can anyone tell me where I might find it on the Net?) Just on those 17 episodes alone it remains popular today and I've always thought the ending was a main reason. All the questions were answered, with more questions, but nothing was just ignored or trivialized in the final episodes. All sorts of rumors circulate around it. The best one I've heard is that the original idea was a collaboration between Ian Fleming and Aleister Crowley, (Crowley apparently knew everybody in diplomatic circles of the 30's and 40's, he had ins through Himmler's mysticism). But Bond became successful and no agent wanted anything to do with Crowley. Now that I think the end of Breaking Bad was satisfying, but predictable and it was not really enigma based.
I agree that it could have been worse. And this apparently was the ending they had decided on in the beginning from what I've read. And certainly the fact that they had pre-taped the "kids" lines in the first season indicate that. But I do think they contradicted their entire premise. Frankly, I was hoping it was some sort of ending in which Ted is talking to his kids in a bomb shelter due to WWIII or Alien invasion and is just trying to pass the time till they get the all clear.
On the net, no; but you can find The Prisoner for between 25 and 55 dollars here: http://www.amazon.com/The-Prisoner-Complete-Series/dp/B002NB421C
I would have been fine if they had ended the show in a happily ever after way. I was so sick of the Ted & Robin dynamic that at the end I was grateful they were marrying her off.
