Displeasure over the HIMYM reaction

Some time has passed since the How I Met Your Mother finale and much of the fuss over the ending has quelled. Still, I was bothered and am still a little perturbed with the reason many fans did not like the last episode. If you ask those people, Ted finds love, has children, and then mourns her life before deciding he wants to be with Robin. They basically called the mother a uterus that served no purpose other to gratify Ted in helping him get everything he wanted out of life since Robin is not able to have children.

This scenario bothers me because it assumes that Robin is the victim. It postulates that Ted is the only one who fulfilled his dreams before settling for the other. It assumes that all women must want children and if you can’t have them you are damaged goods. In reality, Robin did not want to have babies. She wanted to follow her career to exotic places. Ted wanted children and wanted to settle down. So, why is everyone assuming that Ted is the only one who got what he wanted? The final HIMYM episode made it clear that both got what they wanted before they decided they wanted to be together. We see Robin’s face on a bus and find out that she has gone on assignment in many foreign lands. She is definitely not a victim.

In the episode the children accuse their father of telling the story of how he met their mother when in fact he was telling his love story with Robin. I thought it was a very fitting end to the series to see Ted show up on Robin’s stoop with the blue french horn. Sometimes we find what we need right when we need it. Both Ted and Robin were able to accomplish the aspects of life that each other viewed as barriers. Career and children. When you think back, the story really was a love story. It was about the evolving relationship of Ted and Robin.

There were other parts of this finale that bothered viewers, not me. For instance, people did not like how the relationship between all of the characters fell to a very loose semblance of friendship. I felt that those critiques were unrealistic in light of the major life changes the characters went through and the varied directions they took in life. I will not continue to elaborate my view on this issue, because I feel the far greater issue is how America has victimized Robin and villainized Ted. As a career woman, I find this to be anti-feminist and old fashioned. I was surprised by the outrage and petition of the show’s ending. I thought our country had advanced beyond a point where we typecast all women to fit in the molds that traditional men and mothers decide they should fit in. I applaud the writers for effectively tying up a long and complicated series, and doing it well through bringing everything full circle.