i know i'm one of the only people on ilx who watches *how i met your mother* on a regular basis, but did anyone else see the robin sparkles episode? where robin didn't want people to know that she had

mother lives, kids are ghosts

So I wasn't going to cop to it lest that became a tangential debate, but I didn't actually get to watch the finale until last night (my wife was out of town and wanted me to wait) - my opinion's basically the same, but there was a bit of nuance I lost:

1. I can't believe they didn't just end it with the train meet-up. Even if they felt weird about not showing the kids again, not staying true to their vision, whatever, it was such an earned moment, the moment promised by the very title of the show, that the postscript was guaranteed to be superfluous-to-offensive.

2. ...especially cuz following it, it's the kids that come off weirdly cavalier at the end. If you're going to hear that whole story, let it end with dad getting misty-eyed over your mom, I don't think you're going to go "Dad. What the fuck. You're in love with Aunt Robin" unless you're going to follow that with "I HATE YOU SO MUCH" rather than "go fuck aunt robin, it's been six years and you have such good chemistry when she comes over for big holidays. Which is a thing she does now despite how much time this episode was spent discussing her remove from your social circle."

3. If they WERE going to jump from "and that's how i met your mother" to "but i've been a widower for six years, yeah...guess i do still wanna bang the ex. thanks, kids!" Wouldn't it have made sense to cut down on some of the shoe-horned "marshall's journey to the supreme court" filler, have the kids' robin intervention come at the half-way point, and make the last half about future ted talking to future marshal, lily, and (probably climactically) barney about his trepidations re: hooking up with robin again? Like, actually give some weight to this theme-disrupting postscript? Then the point could be about there being more than one One rather than that there's a One but that's no reason to live without sex after a proper mourning period. You can always just have future Marshall in judge's robes, we'll figure out the middle period ourselves.

Which is a thing she does now despite how much time this episode was spent discussing her remove from your social circle.

TBH, Ted's stories pretty much end in 2024, when Tracy dies, the period between that and 2030 is hardly covered at all. So there's plenty of time for Robin and Ted become pals again, and it'd be understandable why the lone widower Ted would like to hang out with her. (Possibly he also feels the kids need a new mother figure, and judging by how much Robin appears in the kids' drawings, which were shown in the early seasons, she does appear to become that too.)

But that just brings us to your point 3, which I totally agree with. Instead of jumping from the mother's death to Ted dating Robin again in 2 minutes, and letting the viewers' imaginations fill in what happened in those 6 years, they definitely should've shown some of that. It's understandable Ted wouldn't want to talk to his kids about how lonely he was after their mom died, or how he still has the hots for Robin, but you're right that he could've told that to Marshall and Lily. It feels like the writers were unnecessarily constrained by their framing device (this a story Ted tells to his kids about their Mother, and it ends with him meeting her), and didn't want to break it even in the finale.

mother lives, kids are ghosts

Having future Ted interact with his future friends would have allowed someone to confirm that future robin may not have lived alone with her future dogs yelling "TV! Show security camera!" since her divorce.

She was probably getting strange ass all around the globe, but I don't know if we needed to see that

speak for yourself!

ring bear, classic for the ages

Why did I watch this all the way to the end??? The last season was so terrible.

to see if it was a real bear

we had to know who jacob really was

to give that villain from The Karate Kid a new lease on life

Did they ever release the supposed alternate ending?

Hannah sent me a picture of a Tim Horton's receipt from Leicester cos she was super excited to be there

The "How I Met Your Dad" pilot w/Greta Gerwig has surfaced.

https://www.avclub.com/after-watching-the-failed-how-i-met-your-dad-pilot-we-1847345513

I had to watch out of curiosity; weird to see. Already feels dated, and watching Greta Gerwig like this feels like peering into another universe. Not as terrible as feared, tough.