How I Met Your Ending

The best and worst of Television endings.

Think of the greatest TV show in the world, a show that made you laugh, made you cry, and made you sit on the edge of your seat with anticipation because it is just “that good.” Think of the years you devoted waiting and watching the characters that captured your heart and the ones you couldn’t wait to be killed off. This show, this glorious, mesmerizing show, isn’t just a show to you! This show is one you defend with your life to those who don’t like it, that you go crazy about with others who are in love with it. This show is your loyal friend that you know you can turn to on your greatest or roughest days.

And then the ending comes, the conclusion to one of the greatest things in your life.

And it sucks.

Someone has just punched your best friend in the face, and you are pissed. All that anger and frustration rushes over you like a tsunami, and you lose it.

Television shows spend endless hours of production, writing, filming, and entertaining to create loyal audiences and a following that can generate a large income. So why do they, after all this hard work, just betray everything you knew and loved? Quite simple, actually: Television writers believe that since they can’t please everybody, it is worthless to even try. While not every beloved show has a terrible ending, the ones that do are a simple fix. All it takes is faithfulness and integrity to make the show’s finale worthy enough of the television hierarchy's time.

The television show Smallville graced the small screen for ten years, and because of its loyal fans and terrific showmanship, it spawned many other superhero television series in its wake, such as The Arrow and The Flash. The story follows a young Clark Kent and his journey to becoming the Man of Steel, giving the series a much easier job than most on how to end it. The series finale of this show was the greatest in television history, spending the whole season to cover any plot holes that had ever snuck their way into the show. The finale itself was everything the fans could have hoped for. It honored the story and years of hard work the writers had put into the show and left no fan with any unanswered questions. This poses the question: If Smallville can do it, why can’t anyone else on television?

A possible answer could be that many shows people hold near and dear to their hearts get cancelled early or face a conflict with certain actors needing to leave the series. Glee lost their main star Cory Monteith to a drug overdose, causing the last two seasons of its run to be sporadic and aggravating. Then it was cancelled.

Another example would be the ABC Family shows Jane by Design and Bunheads, which each only ran for one season. These shows did insanely well with ratings and fan support. They had good writing and character development along with a fantastic storyline, but were surprisingly cancelled with what was supposed to be a season finale that instead was filled with questions that would never be answered. Outside forces like these are frustrating and are followed by the fans’ mourning period over their dear friend who died too soon.

Another answer can be lack of interest on the writer’s part when it comes time to wrap the series. How I Met Your Mother was a show that ran for nine years and forged many now-popular phrases such as “Challenge Accepted” and “Legend-wait for it-Dary,” created the Bro Code and the Playbook, and restored an entire generation's faith in love and friendship as these five friends navigated adulthood together while showing one man’s search for love. Nine years were spent convincing the audience that the Mother was not Robin Scherbatsky, the show’s main character Ted’s best friend and long-time love. Nine years were spent weaving between possible mother’s and building these characters. Three years were then spent convincing us that the show’s lovable player and supposed life-long bachelor, Barney, would be able to be married one day to the love of his life. Two years were dedicated to us watching Robin and Barney grow closer and better for one another. The entire last season was completely devoted to every hour of their wedding weekend, showing every possible issue that was present in Barney and Robin’s relationship, followed by then addressing and solving it.

And then came the finale.

Within just 24 minutes you see nine years of hard, exhausting, beautiful, once-in-a-lifetime work get completely pooped on. They unravel every single character into completely different people, undoing years of progress and devotion in one fatal swoop of divorce, death, and finally, betrayal. This betrayal is of the worst kind when Ted and Robin end up together after making a big show- a very, VERY big show- of how they are never ever supposed to end up together. Simply because one writer or producer or whoever wanted it so, it was done, and millions of current and future fan’s of this monumental show were left sobbing, outraged, and resentful in the wake of this treachery.

Not every show needs a happy ending, and not every show will have one, and this is okay as long as an ending is written well and gives closure to the story so that it honors its audience. But to completely change characters and the entire point of a show in a finale is like writing a paper all with one point and pulling out a conclusion coming from left field that smacks the first basemen right in his face and leaves him with a broken nose. It’s wrong, it’s insulting, and most of all, it is an abomination when shows do this to their devoted fans.

It doesn’t need to be this way. It is a simple solution to ending shows well: just write that good ending that isn’t thoughtless towards all that has been worked for in the series. Just honor the characters, like in the bittersweet Friends finale, where all six best friends part ways having grown and changed. Or do it the way they did, in Smallville where Clark Kent becomes Superman. An ending can be happy, sad, inspiring, ambivalent, or all of these things molded together into a world-class end. But an ending cannot abandon everything it is and stands for, and when it does, that really grinds your gears.

It’s an easy fix. How I Met Your Mother could still have the sadness of death in the finale, but it should not have shoved a knife in the back of its audience by forcing a Ted/Robin romance that fans had let go of years before. Barney and Robin being divorced was an unraveling of a three year plot that was the most perfect match of all time, followed by a divorce that wasn’t justified and was only present to shove another ending in the faces of its viewers, an ending like the brussel sprouts shoved in every kid’s face.

After a long day of working, walking, eating, talking, and writing, people like to come home and relax. For many, that means lying in your bed and watching TV. Television shows are the easiest friends in the world since nothing is required. You don’t even have to do anything for that relationship other than relax and enjoy and love. Some shows last only for a season, others for ten or more years. However, one thing I have noticed with my semi-professional and frequent television watching is that the endings of these shows which have gained such devoted audiences are nine times out of ten absolutely terrible. Suddenly, the writers do not care anymore to honor the show they have created because they are convinced that since you can’t please everybody, it isn’t even worth trying.

While not every show is guilty of having an ending that makes me want to pull my hair out, a large majority do, which is quite a fixable inconvenience. So as a call to action, rally together the writers, producers, sponsors, and television networks and give them your two cents because they’re out of a faithful audience member if they don’t listen to their fans. By doing this, maybe, then TV can be okay again.

#Smallville #TheArrow #theflash #superman #howimetyourmother #himym #glee #barneystinson #friends #janebydeisgn #bunheads