Spoiler Warning: This post explicitly discusses the March 31 finale of How I Met Your Mother. If you are interested in the series finale at all, and have not watched the episode yet, do not continue reading. You have been warned.
Well, now that the mandatory spoiler alert is out of the way, let me just begin with "Wow". After nine long seasons (some great, most good, and couple that were borderline bad), the (arguably) most successful Friends clone, How I Met Your Mother, is over. And what a ride it was. Despite what anyone says about this episode (which is bound to be polarizing), there is no denying the series’ on pop culture significance over the past decade. No, it was not groundbreaking like Breaking Bad, or consistently smart like Parks and Recreation. Nevertheless, it helped to revitalized Neil Patrick Harris’s career,1 spawned a “Legendary” catchphrase, and had many genuinely clever, funny, and indeed, nerdy moments. Ultimately, however, it told a sweet (albeit longwinded) story about love.
This love, of course, is bound to be the most controversial part about the finale. I was never really bothered by the whole Robin-Ted dynamic. I am sure there are those who are opposed (a quick search on Twitter should confirm this), though ultimately their reticence is the fault of the studio than the writing. Consider if the series ended, with the same ending, after five or six years. There would be far fewer “Ted/Robin” stories, far less resistance to the relationship, which might have led to it being far better received (again, a half hour after the finale aired the online response has been mostly negative).
Then again, perhaps it was just a poor choice of naming. If the series had been named something else, if the mother had not been teased so much (though this choice would have significantly altered the motivation and structure of the show), people might have been more accepting. As it was, we know that Robin was not the Mother, and so we did not care about her relationship with Ted,2 or, indeed (in some internet circles), her.
Before we examine the final sequence, however, let’s look at the rest of the episode leading up to it. I have to admit, the first fifteen minutes did not grab me. The scene outside of Barney and Robin’s wedding felt a bit stiff, and trying to be a bit too “finale-ish”. Many of the other early scenes fell flat as well. While the announcement of Barney and Robin’s divorce was surprising,3 it was not until the rooftop party that I felt the episode truly hit it’s stride. Robin and Lily’s tearful exchange was one of first scenes that I found truly fitting a finale, serving as an nice balance to Barney’s antics.
Speaking of Barney, his arc in this episode was truly strange. It was hard for me to believe that after two deep and meaningful relationships (Norah and Robin), he could just return to his womanizing ways. His explanations that “if it couldn't work with Robin, it couldn’t work with anyone” sort of fell flat, and his friend’s acceptance of this behavior seemed equally strange to me, as well as their seeming aloofness in regards to Robin.4 Even his turnaround after the birth of his daughter seemed stiff, perhaps because it occurred too quickly to be believable.
Turning to Robin for a second, the tone of this episode was quite low-key, and at time downright depressing. Not the nostalgia tainted melancholy commonly associated with series finales, but a truly dreary sort. Most of this tone is due to this episode’s treatment of Robin. As she states in the episode, she never sees her best friend anymore, her ex-husband is out picking up nineteen year olds, and the man she “should have” been with is getting married to the mother of his children. Robin had it rough in the years following her divorce, and apart from some cursory remarks by Lily, it seems like her friends have moved on (Marshall even makes a joke at her expense comparing her to the Abominable Snowman).5 That is one of the main reasons I feel that this was the ended we needed for the series but, again, more on that in a bit.
Taking a quick segue to talk about Lily and Marshall before moving on to Ted and the final scene, this episode continued of the theme of the rest of the season (and indeed for a couple years now), of pushing them further into the background. Apart from Marshall’s announcement of his judgeship, and Lily’s third pregnancy, I’m having a hard time thinking of a significant incident about them this episode. Perhaps the producers felt that they had just run out of ideas for these two, but it would have been nice to see them have a bit more to do here.
And now we have come to the end. Some early reaction I’ve seen is that the finale was unfair to the mother,6 and I’m sure many felt that the series meant nothing, since they ultimately ended up where they began, with Ted stealing the blue french horn to give to Robin. I would, however, disagree. In fact, looking back and considering the series as a whole, I would argue that this was the ending that had to happen. In fact, my immediate reaction as the scene shifted to the “present”, was that I finally understood it all. If Ted and the Mother were to ride happily into the sunset, then his reactions when talking about her over the past couple seasons would seem overly dramatic, even for Ted. If she just died, and Ted was in mourning, then the story he had been telling his children over the past nine years would have been extremely inappropriate, and depressing in an altogether different sort of manner. There had to be a way to reconcile Ted’s sorrow with the story that he was telling. This reconciliation was, as pointed out by his daughter,7 that this was not a story about Ted and the Mother. It was a tale of Ted and Robin.
And I’m OK with that. I again maintain that it was the length of the series (and trouble with the title), not the fundamentals of the relationship itself, that made their courtship repetitive.8 Ultimately, what I appreciated about the finale, was that in the end it did not have the nostalgic melodrama of most endings. The ending, rather than be moody and depressing, was exhilarating and uplifting, which is why I watched this sitcom in the first place.9 Ultimately, this will be a series that I will be able to watch from the beginning, and eagerly await the satisfaction of the finale, rather than dread the end of the series as it approached. Since in the end, though there were tears, and deaths, and goodbyes, this series was indeed about Ted and Robin. And Love. And a Blue French Horn.
1 Consider that between the end of Doogie Howser in 1993 and the beginning of How I Met Your Mother in 2005, NPH only had two relatively significant roles: Starship Troopers in 1997 and Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle in 2004.↩
2 Though I understood the complaints, I got especially annoyed when viewers started clamoring for the mother to “show up already”, especially in the early seasons. If they showed the mother in the first few seasons, the show would have to end. It was in the title, people. After the show started to outgrow it’s welcome, however, I concede that they had a point. ↩
3 Though surprising, I guess you could argue that their divorce was realistic. One problem I that I had though (which many viewers probably share), was that it made this entire season pointless. All the growth that Barney, Ted, and Robin underwent seemed to be thrown under the rug for most of the episode. I guess some could argue that the last scene invalidates the series as a whole, but on that point, I disagree. More on this later.↩
4 I guess this lack of contact with Robin is explained a bit by her successful career, ↩
5 Maybe I’m being too hard on the gang. Since the episode is told in time jumps, it is impossible to see how hard they fought to keep Robin in their lives. ↩
6 Whom many correctly predicted was going to die. I would argue that the finale would have been even more unfair to Robin if she did not get her happy ending, which I must admit would have bothered me a lot more. Ultimately, I think it was more important that a character we knew for nine seasons have a happy ending rather than a character we’ve know for one. ↩
7 Speaking of the daughter, I like it how Lyndsy Fonseca was essentially unknown when the series started, and now she is both Kick-Ass’s girlfriend and a kick ass assassin in Nikita. ↩
8 Also remember that many argued that the Ross/Rachel dynamic had growth stale by the tenth season of Friends. Now it is mostly remembered fondly. ↩
9 I go to Game of Thrones for my depressing melodrama. ↩
