'How I Met Your Father' Tries To Defend 'How I Met Your Mother's Awful, Trash Finale

As anyone who had to replace the TV they angrily whipped their remote at remembers, the How I Met Your Mother finale was … not so great. After years of boring/scarring his children with stories of his past sexual exploits, old Ted Mosby finally revealled how he met the kids’ mother – only for her to die alarmingly quickly. Like, literally a minute after recounting their wedding ceremony, he describes her tragic demise. 

Even within the world of this show that’s pretty damn insulting; Ted’s story glosses over most of his marriage but weirdly includes multiple anecdotes about group slap fights? And he talks at length about the time he exposed himself to a woman without consent? Those poor kids got more details about Ted’s crappy architect boss and his penis-shaped skyscraper than they did about their deceased mom. Then in the last few minutes of the show, Ted bails on his family and hits on a now-divorced Robin.

Well, now there’s How I Met Your Father – which sounds like an alternate name for The Maury Povich Show, but is actually a spin-off series starring Hilary Duff. So far, the show’s main connection to the original has been in its tone, structure, and the return of the same, surprisingly affordable, Upper West Side apartment. That is until this week’s episode, which featured the return of Cobie Smulders’ Robin, now a successful reporter like we briefly glimpsed in the finale. 

While this scene takes place before the flashforward at the end of the series, it takes place after the bulk of the original series. Robin even makes reference to Ted, which seemingly lays more narrative groundwork for the romantic twist everyone hated back in 2014. This may not be a one-off either, How I Met Your Father’s showrunners are hoping that other original characters will pop by the new show, which could provide even more opportunities to try and retroactively make sense out of the dumpster fire of a finale. Then again, maybe Neil Patrick Harris will show up to tell these random strangers about a nightmare he once had featuring his ex, a blue french horn, and his old friend who inexplicably sounded like Bob Saget for no logical reason. 

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Top Image: 20th Television