Why Fans Are Rejecting the Finale of How I Met Your Mother… Or Why You Shouldn’t Find the End in Beginning
The season finale of How I Met Your Mother aired last night, leaving many fans disappointed. Thomas and Bays, HIMYM creators’, have been good for the most part to their diehard fans, offering callbacks and in jokes for their enjoyment throughout the run. So where did they go wrong? Let’s dissect.
1. Lilly and Marshall
Lilly and Marshall’s fate was probably the one I had the smallest problem with, but that could also be because it was the most in character and predictable. Lilly and Marshall stay married and living in New York, they wind up having three kids. They outgrow their old apartment (cockamouse cameo!) and finally settle their family into a house, while Marshall succeeds professionally (no mention of Lilly’s professional status, which leads me to believe she gave up her career and ambitions to be a stay at home mom. I could rant on this as well, but I have too much already). However, due to their busy parenting schedule, they pull away from the old gang, only seeing them a few times a year or for the “big moments.” I have a problem with that.
Now the defense of this choice seems to be This is what happens in real life, people grow apart, friendships change, we gain new priorities.
Here is why that’s a crock of shit. With the birth of Marvin, Lilly and Marshall initially cut their friends off, only allowing them to ask for advice if their problem were an 8 or higher. After six months of this, during the competition over who would become Marvin’s godparent, Lilly and Marshall realized the error of their ways and pledged their undying devotion to the group and their 8 or below problems. Now I understand that raising three children would be harder than raising one, but, logistically if they were able to have a babysitter/nanny/Chris Elliot to watch their one child to allow them to continue their unhealthy attachment to their friends, couldn’t they find someone to watch all three? As Kevin pointed out in season 7, the group was highly dysfunctional and involved in each others’ lives to a sick degree. That isn’t the type of friendship that one simply outgrows. On top of that, this is a TV show. The friendship this fivesome had was always unrealistic. Do any of us live with our best friends and/or exes for years throughout our twenties and into our thirties? Do any of us get together with our best friends every single day? Have you maintain the same friend group (especially in a place like New York City) throughout nine years? Do you have a friend group where every member is as invested in each person equally? NO. This show was never fully grounded in reality anyway (would anyone really believe that Barney’s penis grants wishes?), so injecting a bit of tough love, real world cynicism at the last moment doesn’t ring true. I don’t watch television to be reminded of the real constraints life places on us. And if I did, I wouldn’t choose a sitcom for that purpose.
2. Barney
I, and many other fans, am extremely disappointed in how the Barney and Robin marriage ended. But I’ll get to that. First, I want to address Barney’s daughter. Many fans ooed and praised the moment where Barney was introduced to and became instantly smitten with his infant daughter, Ellie. Yes, this was a very touching moment, but that was because it was extremely well acted (it’s NPH, what did you expect?). But was it the right ending for Barney? No.
This ending for Barney feels like it was also planned out from the show’s beginning. And had the show been cancelled in an earlier season, perhaps after season 3 or even 4, it would have been a fitting ending for him. Barney the womanizer finds the one woman who he would ever selflessly love, his daughter. That’s sweet as a concept. But that’s negating all the character development that Barney has earned over the course of the entire show. Barney’s story became a tale of redemption starting in season 4, when he fell in love with Robin. Through his relationships with Robin, Norah, and Quinn, Barney had shown colors of his complexity as a man and vulnerability as a person. He had shown he was capable of falling for a woman and committing to her. He had proven that he was deeper than he let on and that his bravado was merely a shield built after being abandoned by his father. We had gone on this journey with him already. He had proven himself worthy of happiness. He had proven himself worthy of Robin. The fact that these two didn’t even live the three years they were married in wedded bliss is also a let down. We as fans wanted to believe that these two unlikely soul mates were the perfect balance for each other and that they would go on awesome adventures into their golden years. They had finally found each other. Barney had penned his last play, The Robin, and it was a fitting end to that chapter of his life. What was the point of him writing that play and using it as his proposal? What was the point of him burning The Playbook if he was only going to rewrite it? We may as well not have seen those parts of his journey if he was only going to revert back to his old ways. Also, a big part of Barney’s charm was his whimsical, sometimes even fantastical, nature. He could pull off plays and pranks artfully. He had outsmarted the whole gang on numerous occasions. We didn’t need to see Barney get dragged down to Earth and rooted in reality. His character didn’t NEED to change any further, as Barney himself professed last night. If only the creators had realized this was indeed true. And having him slut shame two women, two women he himself would have gladly preyed upon with no hesitation a year before, as a demonstration of his character growth was misguided and out of touch. Barney suddenly gets to judge these women for their choices because he is over that phase in his life? Isn’t this show at least partly about the mistakes and fun you have while navigating life in your twenties?
3. Robin
Robin, oh Robin, where have you gone? For the first six seasons of HIMYM, Robin was arguably my favorite character (I mean, everyone clearly loves Barney, that’s obvious). She was cool, she was smart, she was sexy, and she was interesting. She was a woman the grown up tomboys could look up to. But while steadfastly maintaining her independence, she had a vulnerability to her that would reveal itself both in her relationships (with Barney, Ted, and Kevin most notably) and in her devotion to her friends. She drove Marshall to the airport to pick up Lilly during a blizzard, set Barney up with Norah when she noticed he had feelings for her, and flew all the way from Japan for Ted’s wedding (granted this may have been because she had some residual feelings for him, but still, it’s nice). But, in the past few seasons, Robin has morphed from an independent and confident woman with occasional bouts of unintentional abrasiveness to a bitter and self-serving shrew. Why her shrill berating of her sweet, well-intentioned coworker Patrice (“NOBODY ASKED YOU, PATRICE”) became a running gag is beyond me. Did anyone find that funny? It seemed out of character for the once charming, cool as a cucumber Scherbatsky that we had all grown to love. We understood Ted’s obsession and Barney’s eventual devotion, Robin was a kickass lady. But starting with season 7, Robin became unrecognizable. (Maybe it was due to her horrible new haircut that season, a la Felicity). She lost a lot of her, ahem, sparkle. I can see what the writers were trying to do, Robin was at a crossroads in her life professionally and personally. She finally realized she wanted Barney back only to see him with Norah. I could even have forgiven her and Barney’s indiscretion (they cheated on their respective partners with each other) had they indeed wound up happily ever after. But with their quickie divorce after three miserable years, all the pain they caused each other and everyone else (Norah, Ted) was for naught. Robin cheated on Kevin with Barney and then turned around and coldly dumped Barney for Kevin and faced no consequences. She put her own needs way out in front of anyone else’s. The Robin from an earlier season would have at least shown remorse for her actions. And a little while later, Barney still pursued her without even holding a small grudge, she had taken no steps to redeem herself to him. Their quickie divorce in the finale makes me think that the Barney-Robin relationship, and most definitely the wedding, weren’t part of the bigger plan in the beginning. Once the obvious chemistry between Robin and Barney was discovered, the writers just went with it. But the ending of that relationship was done so tactlessly, as almost an afterthought, that it seemed like they had no idea what to do with it – it didn’t fit into their rigid plan for a season finale, so it had to be dealt with quickly to get it out of the way. If Robin had married Kevin and then gotten a divorce only to wind up with Ted, I could have bought the whole concept a little bit easier. Kevin was clearly the guy she wanted to deserve, but didn’t, so that marriage would obviously have failed (on a side note, anyone hate that Kevin ended up with Jeanette? I do. It turned him from a loveable doctor who couldn’t help but go after Robin because their connection was so strong to a weirdo, creepy doctor who scams on his patients routinely). But the writers set us up to believe that Robin and Barney were soul mates, to go on this journey with them, to emotionally invest in their relationship more so than in her relationship with Ted. Meanwhile, this new cold, unfeeling Robin from the latter seasons played out in the finale. She becomes bitter after her divorce with Barney, realizes Ted is the love of her life and as a result promptly cuts everyone out of it. Maybe this was a fitting end for the Ice Queen that Robin had become, but not for the Robin that audiences had first fallen in love with. It’s also disappointing because fans wanted to see these characters all happy and content at the same time. If Barney and Robin had been happily married after Ted had met the mother, that meant we could picture all six of them, finally a complete group, hanging out having beers at MacLaurens. That’s how we wanted to see our characters end, forever friends and finally happy. Separating Robin from the group for a period of YEARS was a huge blow to the fans. If it was so easy for Robin to just discard these friendships, why had we invested so much time and energy as viewers into them?
4. The Mother
Now before I say anything, I want to say that I, along with Ted, fell in love with Cristin Milotti. She was natural, charming, and engaging in her role. But, she was written as a caricature of the perfect wife for Ted. If the twist at the end of the series had been that she was actually an angel, sent to teach Ted the meaning of love, I would not have batted an eye. Despite an attempt to flesh her out in one twenty two minute stand alone episode, we still didn’t know much more about her than the fact that she had lost a great love, played in a band, and shared many quirks with Ted. While this may seem like enough information, unfortunately all her interactions with the other main characters consisted of her giving them sage, life altering advice. IS ANYONE ACTUALLY LIKE THAT? She was a Mary Jane. A character built with all loveable qualities but with no real personality of her own. A manic pixie dreamgirl that embodied the fantasy woman Ted wanted. She ended up becoming simply the vessel through which Ted could have the children that Robin couldn’t give him. Considering she was the title character, you’d think she’d serve more of a purpose. Her death, hinted at throughout the series, was dealt with horribly, in a fifteen second shot of her in a hospital bed with a voiceover explaining that she “got sick.” Now I understand that Thomas and Bays’ wanted to subvert expectations by having her die, thus allowing Ted to end up with Robin. But to a fan who spent 9 years theorizing and imagining the mother, eating up each small clue that would be doled out sparingly (the umbrella, her bass, the St. Patrick’s Day Party), her blink and you’ll miss it conclusion would OF COURSE be unsatisfying. We had waited for this woman’s introduction for 8 years, for the conclusion to this love story for 9, and then she dies just as he gets her?
5. Ted and Robin
And now the big one. Ted and Robin finally found each other after years of not being quite right. Romantic, no? Actually no, not romantic. The IMDB trivia page (which has also been known to be wrong) states that the show had been wary of cancelation early on and therefore had to have contingency plans as to who would be the mother. Victoria would have been the mother had the show been cancelled after the first season, Stella if it had after the third. But we now know due to the prerecorded footage that Ted was always going to wind up with Robin. And had this happened after the first season, or the third season, I would have been totally on board. Back then, I remember thinking it was sad that they weren’t going to end up together, as the writers’ had led us to believe. But as soon as Robin hooked up with Barney, I, and many other fans, changed my tune. Robin and Barney were a much better fit for each other, sharing similar goals and personalities. Cobie Smulders and Neil Patrick Harris had way more chemistry than Robin and Ted. The show seemed to pick up on this and shifted the focus a bit. We followed Robin and Barney fall in and out of love with each other over the course of five seasons, but the timing had never been right - until the end. We spent a whole season awaiting their wedding, investing in the life they were building together. And then BAM five minutes later they were divorced. Is it really any wonder that fans are mad? Barney and Robin had pledged to stick it out with each other, but happily dropped the relationship they had spent years fighting for. Meanwhile, in the years following Barney and Robin’s romance, Robin and Ted’s relationship had shifted. In order for a Barney-Robin relationship to work, the writers would have to establish a truly platonic relationship between Ted and Robin with no real hint of longing. Otherwise, the Barney-Robin match would have been simply too cruel. They established the friends only dynamic between Ted and Robin really well, especially when they become roommates – even when they slept together for an episode. I truly felt that the Ted-Robin romantic relationship had concluded and they had moved on to being friends. When Ted revealed his secretly enduring love for Robin during season 7, I rolled my eyes. In my opinion, there had been no indication for the past four seasons that would lead me to believe Ted was still in love with Robin. Their friendship was solid. He wasn’t depressed or morose when seeing Robin with Barney, which would be impossible to fully hide. The reemergence of feelings felt like a cheap ploy to add drama to the series. I know now that the writers were trying to reintroduce this relationship to make way for their secret surprise ending. But it rang false. When they dropped that storyline, I believed it to be over and done with. I was relieved. Even with the hints dropped throughout the rest of the series – Victoria’s insistence that Ted was in love with Robin, Ted and Robin holding hands longingly in the rain in Central Park – I still felt that their relationship was too weak to have a believable resurgence in the future. In that way, I was duped by my own insistence. I refused to notice the signs. But in the bigger picture, I feel duped by the writers. They established in the very first episode that Robin was not the mother. We were basically told to abandon all hope for that relationship. The writers did this knowingly, with the intention of pulling the old switch-a-roo on us in the eventual ending. It’s like a murder mystery specifically telling us that the butler could not have been the murderer, and then SURPRISE the butler actually did it. Oh, you didn’t include that in your list of possible endings because we specifically told you not to? SILLY YOU. On top of that, Robin was willing to pledge her life to another man. Shouldn’t that have broken Ted’s heart? She was okay with the possibility of never being with Ted again. That’s not something the love of your life should do. And Ted had claimed to let her go. What was the point of the cheesy Robin floating away on the beach moment if she was only going to sail back into his arms?
The fact that the show ended with pre-taped reactions from Ted’s future kids was old news to anyone who had read the HIMYM IMDB trivia page. I had at first interpreted this bit of trivia to mean that the producers had cast the mother during the first season and was excited by this amount of forethought. Imagine how much better a finale would have been with an actress that had long been peppered into the background being revealed as the mother. However, I can acknowledge the difficulties this would cause, not to mention the constant fear of spoilage. But that was an ending that excited me.
HIMYM biggest problem was trying to force an ending that wasn’t the one the show had earned. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for shows planning out their series runs in advance, but what Thomas and Bays had unknowingly done was paint themselves into a corner. With the pre-taped footage, they were forced to stick with an ending that the show itself had long outgrew. Thomas and Bays’ failure to acknowledge this and tailor the ending to the actual arc of each character made the finale fall flat with fans. Instead, we were left with an ending that was not quite right for the show in its current state. It’s like if my mother were to buy me the birthday present that I had asked for as a teenager, only now, for my 26th birthday. Yeah, the present would have been SPOT ON ten years ago and I would have loved it once upon a time, but she’d be failing to acknowledge who I am now and how my wants and needs have changed. Instead, it feels as if Thomas and Bays came up with a cool concept nine years ago (what if the mother WAS DEAD ALL ALONG AND ONLY TED COULD SEE HER… wait, I mean just the first part) and became stuck on the GOTCHA, IT’S A TWIST aspect of their finale. Had they kept their fans’ feelings in mind, they would have traded in their twist for a much more satisfying finale. And that, kids, is why we hated the series finale of How I Met Your Mother.
Follow Allie Nelson on Twitter @ANelPleasures
Original post at - http://imakemyownfun.wordpress.com/2014/04/01/why-fans-are-rejecting-the-finale-of-how-i-met-your-mother-or-why-you-shouldnt-find-the-end-in-beginning/
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