Whereas Tracy can basically just jump in and be a walking set of surrogate ovaries for Robin.

It wouldn't exactly have been out of form for the show to abuse the use of stock footage or pull some kind of green screen effect there. Heck, Robin and Barney's wedding green screened all the guests into the crowd from stock footage.

The final fight was precipitated by her as a TV reporter having a hotel room without wi-fi from which Barney could post dick jokes to the internet, in a pretty jarring reversal of his character growth. How a TV reporter doesn't have wi-fi or a 4G hub or how a couple of multi-multi-millionaires could have such petty…

I think I could have bought it as magical realism if they mixed their voices together, culiminating in Radnor delivering the line "that's how I met your mother." Saget's voice morphing into Radnors. It wouldn't make literal sense but the best elements of the series don't.

The real story is Marshall's. After giving up everything for Lily, his career, his pride… She left him, ruined his credit and forced him into one lousy job after another, suffering constant insults and physical degradation, he had enough. He needed to win. To win at everything.

They got divorced because neither of them had a 4G hotspot. Cue commercials to upgrade your cell phone plan.

Others have said it but this is why you don't plan endings nine years in advance. It would have worked as a Season 2 or 3 ending but they'd thoroughly outgrown it, to a point where many of us entered a rage whenever they even had Ted and Robin onscreen alone together. They had built up this story about growth: Barney…

Bring Dan Harmon back and have him do Season Ten.

He could be Ted's brain in a computer. Remember HIMYM's 2020s are a world of Time Travel and lightsabers.

Which was remade as an episode of Star Trek TNG with Riker by staff writers from the G.I.Joe cartoon during a season when the writer of the Joe episode was a producer on TNG.

The kids hear the story in 2030. The last time we've ever seen Ted was 2026 when he and the mother are at the inn.

I think it was about Ted knowing he's got cancer or heart disease from years of being a smoker. Since the mother being discussed isn't what the subtext is about, the subtext could be about a FATHER who won't see his daughter's wedding.

Rewatch that scene. I'm convinced TED is the one who's sick there. And Bob Saget isn't Ted. He's reading a letter FROM Ted. We've seen Ted as late as 2026 and he never sounds like Bob Saget.

I suggest watching Last Cigarette Ever because I expect a major callback to that one.

Or maybe Tim Gunn is a ghost!

Speaking as a guy who's been in a bridal party, you'd almost think that would make sense for Robin. Ted or Marshall in the bridal party, toss in Billy Zapka.

I can get on board with this.

I think you mean Larry.

I think it's somewhat more nuanced than how you word it (I think you're bordering on internet culture absolutism, ala Tumblr and Reddit to cite opposite extremes) but the examples you cite are spot on annoying.

"So, kids, I was on my first date with your mother and I was telling her a story about how I was trying to have sex with this one girl at a party by talking about Teddy Roosevelt."