What did you expect?
this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2025
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I remember during early seasons a friend of mine saying "I think the mother is not Robin but he'll end up with Robin" and I said lol that would be so lame
Which wouldn't be a problem, if the show was any good.
I hated Ted. Were you supposed to hate Ted?
AKA why I never ask my in-laws about their day.
Remember when the marketing team posted the reveal of the mother on social media before the episode had even aired on the West Coast, ruining the 8 years build up for like half the country?!?
I think the joke is that there was not really any actual build up to it. It's more like this is what I did the years prior to meeting your mom.
I watched like 90% of the show and I've still never seen the end and I don't care.
...except there was. At least once they'd had multiple seasons under their belt and knew when they wanted to end the show. Before that each season they set it up so Ted's current gf could have been the mother, in case they got cancelled.
As someone who was watching it live at the time, there was a lot of hype built around who the mother was.
I'm not talking about OP's joke
If what you loved about it was the form of storytelling (older protagonist telling a slightly embellished version of real events when he was young), I'd recommend checking Acapulco. Less of the dating, more work drama at a ridiculous 80s resort and they wrapped it up better than I thought they could in 4 seasons. Also, I can never have enough of Don Pablo. The guest gets what the guest wants.
Acapulco is great! Always love hearing a new Spanish version of 80s classic hit each episode
At the end of the very first episode Robin was called "Aunt Robin", season 2 was Ted dating Robin, who we already knew wasn't their mother.
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Honestly, I loved that show. But this picture is still so damn true.
Great show, loved the show, would have been better without the premise.
The twist should have been that the mother was indeed the stripper from season one.
I'd also remove the frequent transphobic jokes
Oh yeah a lot of the jokes both haven't aged well and were bad for their time as well.
This show still makes me salty when I think about it. It's not the only show to undercut it's own narrative, but it's the one that hurt me the most because I believed in it's message.
The message: we are flawed people but we grow and who we are tomorrow isn't who we are today. This is good.
The ending: Nah we just pretend to change and any growth you think a person makes is just cope.
-Trash.
Edit: and yes, I know the ending 'makes sense' that just makes it worse. It went from one of my favorite teen shows to one of my most hated in a matter of 45 minutes. Impressive.
The complete reversal of character development is what killed it for me as well. With the same ending and removing the reversal the ending is 100x better. Just let their growth mean something instead of pissing it all away.
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The ending: Nah we just pretend to change and any growth you think a person makes is just cope.
That’s true but I didn’t care for new character at the end is the mom, let’s make you like her, then haha just go for Robin.
didn't take a genius. i was already bored by season 3.
The laugh track adds up to two whole seasons
You can probably say that about any show with a laugh track. I usually don't mind it if the show has jokes. But then there are things like Big Bang Theory where they just pasted the laugh track over the dialogue in regular intervals without the jokes. I also don't remember How I Met Your Mother being funny.
The story was never about getting from point A to point B. It was about every little distraction or detour in between that allowed getting to point B to have the impact that it had.
So a regular story told by somebody with ADHD
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How I stretched a 15 minute story into 9 fucking years
Tap for spoiler
because I’m still simping for your Aunt Robin and want to let you know that she’s about to become your new mother
(Also still salty)
I was annoyed through all of season 2 when he was dating Robin. At the end of the very first episode of season 1 she was called "Aunt Robin" and then we had all of season 2 wasting an entire season with a relationship we were already told didn't work out.
(And that's ignoring the meta situation of "today kids I'm going to tell you about all the sex I had with your Aunt Robin")
I stopped watching a season or two before that and do not regret it. I do regret watching all the seasons before that. The premise just got stupider and stupider.
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“Kids, did I ever tell you about all the women I banged, including the time I pulled two hot chicks for a threesome?”
Don't watch for the ending. Enjoy the journey.
There was actually an alternative ending where the mom lived. It's on YT. I prefer to think about it as the real ending
I was fine with the mother dying. It was just the immediate twist of "Mom's dead, and this is me now spending 9 years explaining to you why I want to go bang your aunt".
I think the bittersweet ending of finding out that the mother was dead all along and Ted was telling the story to his kids would have been a great ending without the add-on Robin double-twist.
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Skip the whole last season.
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The 15 minutes includes also all the jokes they told over the seasons.
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