(I'm going to get slightly spoilery later in this post, FYI) Other than Doug, I have yet to find a single non-critic who has anything positive to say about it.
Going back to our previous thread about the episode where everyone suddenly realized that there was a possibility the mother was dead, someone mentioned that they would be surprised that no one at CBS wouldn't have stepped in and said, "Um, have you really thought how the fans are going to take this?" And when everything blew up, I have to imagine that Thomas & Bays (and everyone else involved) who knew exactly how this was going to go down suddenly realized the ship was pointing directly at the iceberg and it was too late to do anything about it, nor could they say "Of course we're not going to kill the mother!" I find it interesting that no one from the show is standing up at this point and defending it (unlike Robert and Michelle King on The Good Wife, who stepped up to the plate right away after killing off Josh Charles' character to fans uproar). I'm especially looking at Neil Patrick Harris, who was one of the staunchest defenders of the finale prior to it, bragging about how the fans were going to really like it. Um, Neil? Yeah...no. Having finally read a full recap (my comment from last night came from a bulleted list on events on EW.com), I'm even more baffled. I am not the HIMYM fan in my house (that would be my wife, who was still hot when I came home two hours after the episode), but I can tell you the moment when I would've lost it: when they presented the idea that after Barney and Robin divorce, the other three characters would bond around *Barney*, the one each has found to be grotesque at various points through the series. Seriously: Robin's the one who's going to be isolated by the group instead of rallied around? And after the Lily/Robin discussion, I'm pretty sure I'd have either turned the TV off or paused the DVR so I could go buy a gun to shoot it. One last thought: if there was ever an episode that proved the benefit of filming in front of a studio audience, this was it. What popped into my mind this morning was an old episode of Friends, "The One Where Everybody Finds Out" (where Phoebe finds out about Monica and Chandler, leading to a magnificent farce where Phoebe and Chandler try to seduce each other knowing the other person knows what's going on). The B plot on that was Ugly Naked Guy subletting his apartment, and Ross trying to get it. There's a scene where Joey, staring out the window, says "Hey, hey, check it out, check it out: Ugly Naked Guy's got a naked friend!" To which the audience lets out a loud scream of laughter as the four others head for the window. Marta Kaufmann, on the commentary track, said that was not supposed to be the laugh line: the laugh line was supposed to be when the five of them realise it's Ross over there (Rachel says "Oh my God, that's our friend! It's Naked Ross!"). But the audience put the pieces together far faster than the writers thought, and in that case it turned out magnificently. I wonder if Thomas & Bays would've realized that had the audience reacted to that final scene from that previous episode and at least given pause to their plan. On Tue, Apr 1, 2014 at 12:35 PM, David Lynch <djly...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Tue, Apr 1, 2014 at 3:26 AM, PGage <pga...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> On Mon, Mar 31, 2014 at 7:06 PM, Joe Hass <hassgoc...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> I did not see the HIMYM finale. But I did just read about it. And I >>> don't think I'm spoiling anything when I say this: >>> >>> Good news, Seinfeld! You're no longer the worst series finale in >>> television history. >>> >> >> I have never seen a single episode of HIMYM. But I have always felt that >> the suckiness of the Seinfeld Finale has been greatly exaggerated. It was >> not one of the top 25 episodes in the show's history, but Seinfeld was >> arguably one of the 3 best Sitcoms in the history of US television, so even >> an average episode was still pretty good. >> >> I think that the thing that people hate about the final episode of > Seinfeld is not just that it wasn't a particularly great episode of the > show on its own, but that the way it ended broke the series-long conceit > that none of the lead characters would ever have to face serious > consequences for being the horrible people that they were, which feels like > a bit of a betrayal. > > One thing that the Seinfeld finale has going for it (and I think the HIMYM > finale will have going for it as well) is that it's memorable because of > how it broke expectations, even if it's disliked for that. There are some > fairly long-running sitcoms where the finale doesn't particularly stand out > in my memory (e.g., The Cosby Show, where my recollection was basically > limited to "someone had some big life event" until I looked it up a few > minutes ago.) > > -- > David J. Lynch > djly...@gmail.com > > -- > -- > TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "TV or Not TV" group. > To post to this group, send email to tvornottv@googlegroups.com > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > tvornottv-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "TVorNotTV" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to tvornottv+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. 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