Remember when the marketing team posted the reveal of the mother on social media before the episode had even aired on the West Coast, ruining the 8 years build up for like half the country?!?
this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2025
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I think the joke is that there was not really any actual build up to it. It's more like this is what I did the years prior to meeting your mom.
...except there was. At least once they'd had multiple seasons under their belt and knew when they wanted to end the show. Before that each season they set it up so Ted's current gf could have been the mother, in case they got cancelled.
As someone who was watching it live at the time, there was a lot of hype built around who the mother was.
I'm not talking about OP's joke
If what you loved about it was the form of storytelling (older protagonist telling a slightly embellished version of real events when he was young), I'd recommend checking Acapulco. Less of the dating, more work drama at a ridiculous 80s resort and they wrapped it up better than I thought they could in 4 seasons. Also, I can never have enough of Don Pablo. The guest gets what the guest wants.
Acapulco is great! Always love hearing a new Spanish version of 80s classic hit each episode
At the end of the very first episode Robin was called "Aunt Robin", season 2 was Ted dating Robin, who we already knew wasn't their mother.
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I watched like 90% of the show and I've still never seen the end and I don't care.
This show still makes me salty when I think about it. It's not the only show to undercut it's own narrative, but it's the one that hurt me the most because I believed in it's message.
The message: we are flawed people but we grow and who we are tomorrow isn't who we are today. This is good.
The ending: Nah we just pretend to change and any growth you think a person makes is just cope.
-Trash.
Edit: and yes, I know the ending 'makes sense' that just makes it worse. It went from one of my favorite teen shows to one of my most hated in a matter of 45 minutes. Impressive.
The complete reversal of character development is what killed it for me as well. With the same ending and removing the reversal the ending is 100x better. Just let their growth mean something instead of pissing it all away.
GoT has entered the chat
GoT was more about execution. The show runners forced 3 seasons worth of character development and plot into 1 mini season. The ending makes sense when you take the whole of the series.
The framing was bad too. With characters like Bran. His end is fine if they had framed it correctly.
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Honestly, I loved that show. But this picture is still so damn true.
Great show, loved the show, would have been better without the premise.
I'd also remove the frequent transphobic jokes
Oh yeah a lot of the jokes both haven't aged well and were bad for their time as well.
The twist should have been that the mother was indeed the stripper from season one.
I remember during early seasons a friend of mine saying "I think the mother is not Robin but he'll end up with Robin" and I said lol that would be so lame
I hated Ted. Were you supposed to hate Ted?
The story was never about getting from point A to point B. It was about every little distraction or detour in between that allowed getting to point B to have the impact that it had.
So a regular story told by somebody with ADHD
Any sitcom plot is just a shell to tell jokes And funny situations. Hearing people flip their shit about that is funny
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AKA why I never ask my in-laws about their day.
The 15 minutes includes also all the jokes they told over the seasons.
What did you expect?
didn't take a genius. i was already bored by season 3.
ADHD by any other name.
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