When a TV show manages to remain on air for nearly a decade, you can expect there to be some pretty major character development from the first to final season, and for the show to change directions multiple times. This is why it is wise for show producers to not have a concrete set plan for how their show will end. Sure, you need a plan in case the show is axed after its first season, but you don’t want to locked into one path from the outset. The US show, How I Met Your Mother (HIMYM) is a perfect case study for this argument.

The reason I’m currently talking about a show that’s run ended two years ago now is that we were discussing it in my Cinema Studies class. Majority of us who had seen the show could agree that it had clever writing and played with time in a sophisticated way, however no one wanted to talked about the finale season, particularly the last episode.

So naturally, that’s what I now intend to do.

*In case you didn’t already pick up on it, this post will be filled with spoilers*

The way HIMYM ended frustrated fans for a number of reasons, but most of them can be summed up in one idea: character development. The finale essentially threw beautifully crafted character development that had slowly evolved over the first eight seasons in one hour long episode. Barney and Robin get divorced, after years of encouraging audiences to become invested in their relationship, and dedicating the entire final season to their wedding weekend. Then Barney reverts back to season 1 Barney, as if he has never been in a committed relationship and isn’t capable of being in one. Despite Ted deciding to move to Chicago at the end of season 8 and leaving the wedding early to do so, he just doesn’t because he meets Tracey (the mother).

From a more technical standpoint, the use of the 2005 scripting ending just looked uncomfortable. One of the final scenes involves Ted having a conversation with his kids. Only the kids side of the conversation was filmed in 2005, and Ted’s in 2013. The two sets looks so different it doesn’t really look as though they’re in the same room. Not to mention that the scene completely ignore the 180 degree rule, as every speaks directly to the camera. Of course, they couldn’t have re-shot the ending with the same actors now, as they are now longer teenagers. But by only filming one ending in 2005, the show was limited in where it could possibly go.

And perhaps all of this wouldn’t have been so hard to accept if audiences had been given more time to see how the events in the finale develop. Fans were only given half an hour to jump from 2013 to 2030, after seeing the events of one weekend over an entire season. The shows creators decided to quickly backpedal to a place where they could use the ending they originally wrote back in 2005, instead of adapting the plan to a conclusion that better suited what the show had become, rather than what it used to be.