"Kids, I know I just spent a billion hours telling you a story about how big an asshole I was before I met your mother, but now that she’s gone, I’d like your permission to go back to being that asshole. See, kids, sometimes the real lesson is that I haven’t learned anything or grown as a person even a little bit in the last 20 years, and, with your blessing, I’d like to start having sex with your aunt again."
#i think ted did grow up though #i mean he truly loved tracy but some of us can have two soulmates
If I may, I’d like to point out some of the narrative rules that were established by the series as a whole and the finale specifically.
First of all, the central conceit of the show is that everything leading up to the day you meet your “soulmate” is the day you stop being an incomplete work-in-progress and start being the person you’re supposed to be.
Now, that’s a really shitty message, but it’s a really prominent theme that runs through the show.
They emphasize this in the show. Barney’s marriage ends, and he reverts back to his old ways. It’s pathetic, and sad, and his friends are concerned about him. He claims he can never be “that guy” he wanted to be, and simply turns back into the worst version of himself: Season One Barney.
And then he meets his daughter, who he calls his “soulmate,” his brain clicks into place and he becomes the person he wished he could have been, but never thought he could be.
So when Ted goes to meet up with Robin, what does he do? He shows up to her house, having re-stolen the blue french horn, and uses that to make a grand confession of feelings. Does that sound like anyone? Because it’s Season One Ted.
Barney’s marriage ends, he undoes all his character growth, and it’s shown as pathetic.
Ted’s marriage ends, he goes back and does exactly the type of things he did in season one that led to all of his breakups, and it’s supposed to be a happy ending.
The problem isn’t that Ted was with someone after Tracy died. The problem is that Tracy died and took twenty years of Ted’s growth with her. The Ted shown in the last few minutes of the episode was the same Ted shown in season one. That’s the same Ted who I know I hated, and who on multiple occasions said he wasn’t yet ready to meet Tracy.
The problem is also that he ended up with Robin. Why exactly should we care about all those times he got back together with Robin, realized they could never make things work, ended things, and got over her, if he never learned anything?
Why did we spend nine seasons watching the ever-expanding laundry list of reasons why Robin is not Ted’s “soulmate” if he never actually took any of those reasons to heart?
If he’s going to revert back to the same unlikeable douche he was in the first season, who’s so obsessed with destiny and the idea of being in love that he’d rather be in a bad relationship and pretend it isn’t inherently doomed than be single, then why exactly should I care about his happiness?
I don’t want that guy to be with anyone until he’s grown up. That’s what this show was supposed to be about, him growing up and becoming the person who would one day meet Tracy and become “Dad.”
Except the thing is, he spends nine seasons superficially growing into that person, then promptly jumps back to the initial status quo. He admits that he and Robin don’t work together, he admits that there is no cosmic plan and that he has to make his own destiny, he admits that his grand romantic gestures are often all flash and no substance, and he eventually meets Tracy.
Then, Tracy dies, and he’s chasing after Robin and making grand gestures again, just like he was doing in season one, and that’s supposed to be a happy ending, when all it’s really shown me is that his unhealthy obsession with his ex-girlfriend and their inherently doomed relationship continued through his marriage, and that all that maturing he did was just superficial.