**WARNING: SPOILERS BELOW**
It's over! It's finally over. We wrapped up the finale of How I Met Your Mother with Ted finally meeting the mother (or rather, Tracy McConnell) and a montage of moments from their life eventually ending in her fight and eventual loss against an unknown illness....and so on. Here, now, I just want to discuss a few things I have seen controversy over and at the end I'll give my verdict.
The first thing I want to talk about is the rise and fall...and rise of the great Barney Stinson. Throughout the whole of season 9 we are present during the weekend of Barney and Robin's wedding. It doesn't seem believable. Barney, the thrill seeking, womanizing, sex-hound and Robin, the traveling, ambitious, emotionally detached reporter are getting married; but we roll with it, cause if How I Met Your Mother has taught us anything it's that...well, just...ok? (Imagine that in Barney's voice and it'll make much more sense) Anyway, everything is chaos through all of season 9. Things go wrong, at one point they can't find Barney, Robin worries about everything...stuff is happening. Throughout the whole episode we occasionally get glimpses of Robin's worries that are valid (as well as the worries of others). Robin realizes that Barney lies and everyone else acknowledging that both of them are very independent people, just to name two of the big ones. Though the lying is resolved in Barney vowing to Robin to always tell her the truth (which we actually get an admittedly sad example of), they are still two very independent people, which they realize; realizing that you are independent and attempting to solve it though are completely different.
Fast forward three years. Barney and Robin are in Cancun...or Barbados...or somewhere (sorry, I forget....it's late). Once again they're arguing. Robin's career with World Wide News has taken off and they send her to the far reaches of the world to report of various things. Meanwhile, Barney is either left behind or drug along. In this instance he has made his blog a career, but he can't post anything cause he doesn't have wifi. This spurs on an argument that leads Robin to ask if Barney would take an out if one were presented to him. After getting drunk and having married sex (the good kind) and eventually waking up in a haze in someone else's room, Barney responds that because he loves her and wants to be honest he would. Now, obviously that is paraphrasing as that news isn't dropped in the same scene.
Barney and Robin get divorced. Now, when you get out of a relationship, any relationship, two things happen: you grieve, then you move on. We don't see Barney grieve, but that doesn't mean doesn't, but I won't focus on that. The second step is to move on. When we move on we either try to find what we had again, or revert to who we were before. In this instance Barney reverts to what he knows how to do, i.e. get women. I honestly wouldn't expect any less. It's Barney. Yes, his character development has taken a LONG time to come to fruition, but that doesn't make him stone. If Barney has shown us anything over the years it's that he is broken. I think this is shown especially when Lily confronts him about not changing and he responds that who we all thought he had become just wasn't him. He couldn't, he could never be that person, he was just too far gone. I think what we all expected was that him marrying Robin was an allegory for him being healed finally, but this wasn't the case. You don't fix a broken house with a broken hammer. You don't ask a surgeon with only one arm to perform heart surgery. Robin was just as broken as Barney, and though it would have been great for it to work out, How I Met Your Mother has proven to us time and time again that they are a show that works on real world rules, this means that crap happens. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Barney made it clear, Robin couldn't fix him, he wasn't hers to fix. Ellie was.
Enter Ellie Stinson. Ellie Stinson is the love child of Barney. She was inadvertently the after effect of his "Perfect Month." "Day 31" as Barney calls her gets pregnant and has a child while the others wait expectantly in the waiting room. When the baby is born, Barney, though very obviously reluctant to see her, goes at the forced insistence of his friends. When he sees her his life is changed forever. You see, I think the flawed premise with the Barney/Robin relationship dynamic was that they were so alike that neither felt the need to change unless absolutely forced, but they both had their own things that could not be changed, i.e. Robin's job and Barney's mentality. For instance, Barney continued to lie to Robin up until their wedding day and Robin remained emotionally cut off unless forced to talk. With Ellie it was different though. Here was this baby that would require all of Barney's attention. He couldn't deny her, he couldn't dump her off on someone else. As soon as he saw her, Barney was forced to irrevocably change. Gone were the nights of sleeping with random women. Gone were the drunken outings with friends. Barney was a single father who had finally fallen hopelessly in love with the one woman who he could not escape nor deny. His daughter.
The next thing I want to talk about is the mother's death and Ted's seeming lack of any emotion. Admittedly, I was also very sideswiped by the the whole mother dying thing. It happened so fast, I wasn't sure what was happening. Ted never explicitly says, "SHE'S DEAD," but rather that she was sick; we later find out that she had been gone for six years by the time of the story starting. This brings me to my point. She's gone and had been for six years.
Allow me to jump over to something else for a second and then I'll come back. Last year I took a class called Bible Study Methods. It was a fantastic class that at the beginning level only focused on the book of Jonah. Four chapters. Three months. You get the point. Anyway, sometime during this class we discussed "authors intent." Authors intent refers to the ultimate intent of the author. For example, you're reading an old poem in high school english and one of the lines is "the curtains were blue." The teacher begins to go on about how the blue curtains were actually an allusion to the authors troubled and sad life living on the streets of the bronx...when in actuality the author literally meant that the curtains were blue. Authors intent means that above all else, if the author intends for something to mean how they mean it, it means that regardless of what you think. It's a tough law, but it's just so we go with it. Back to the show....
At the end of the episode we find out that the mother has indeed died and has been gone for six years. Now, I was also disappointed with the lack of emotion displayed on screen by Ted, but ultimately this isn't the story of a broken man who hasn't yet come to grips with the death of his wife. The whole story, beginning in 2005, is told from the point of view of a Ted Mosby who has been without his wife for six years and is ready to move on. What about Robin, you ask? Ted and Robin had been on and off again for a long time before Ted met Tracy. He had come to grips with not being with her though before the wedding, which would be 16 years before the events of the story. For 16 years Ted never pined after Robin. Then his wife died. I'm sure he grieved, come on, it's Ted, but again, the story isn't told by a broken Ted, it's told by a healed Ted ready to move on with his life, which touches on a really important lesson I think this show teaches, but I'll get to that later....
The last thing I want to talk about, though I have already touched on it, is the eventual pairing of Ted and Robin. I saw one dude comment on a post on the How I Met Your Mother Facebook page saying that Ted had ultimately just returned to the obsessive and overly compulsive guy he had once been with women, giving his heart to them right off the bat and slowly watching as they crushed it in front of him. I don't believe this to be true. Ted married her. The one. He found her. It was destiny. He left during the wedding and went to a train station where he told the story to an old woman who would not keep from pestering him until she eventually point to her and asked if she was the woman in his story. If that's not destiny, I don't know what is.
Ted tells us in the end that as soon as he saw her he knew he had to love her as much as he could then, he couldn't wait for the future; so he loved her. Through thick and thin, through the times of joy and the times of pain and frustration, he loved her. He would have kept loving her, but she became ill and eventually passed away. You know Ted would've been sad. He knew she was the one. Ted would've cried like a baby, but in the end he would move on, just as he always does. He would've looked pain in the face and focused on what was important. It was no longer his search for a soulmate, it was the kids. Her legacy left behind for him.
Six years pass before the story we hear is told. Some criticized the finale because they took it as the writers telling us that the whole story voids the Ted/mother search just to tell us that Ted has always loved Robin more than anything else...ever. Again, and I feel like I've said this a lot, but I don't agree. Just because Ted tells his kids the story doesn't mean that it was him asking for permission to ask Robin out, just because Penny (the daughter) says that Ted still has "the hots" for Robin doesn't mean that the story has now come to naught, stories can have dual meanings. Yes, I do believe part of it was that Ted wanted to move on and thus telling his kids the story was a way of sharing this, but I think that the telling of the story would also serve as Ted revealing to them that he has healed enough to tell it, after promising to his own parents so long ago that he would tell his kids everything. The story honors the mother by showing everything that happened that eventually led to her. Every time Ted wanted to give up. Every time he almost ended up with someone else. Every time Ted almost ended up halfway across the country. Everything eventually ended with her. Yet there it is again, she dies and Ted must move on. So I say this, it's not that everything that has happened led to Ted getting together with Robin, the show is called How I Met Your Mother, and Robin is definitely not the mother. It's more that everything that has happened has led to the mother, but when even the worst happens, Ted will always be Ted and move on. Ted will always be the one to make the big gesture (as with the blue french horn). Ted will always love. And lastly, Ted will never dwell on the past because it's the future that is the most important.
Now for my verdict. I loved every moment. I loved the show since my friends in high school got me into the pilot and I loved it even more when it ended. True, there were problems. I wish they had shown Ted grieving over Tracy, but I know that they wouldn't because it's all being told by a Ted that is past that. Since the beginning How I Met Your Mother has been a show actually for the people. It worked on real world problems and real world solutions. Sometimes things happen, sometimes they don't, but when they do, we must continue moving forward or we're lost. We have to focus on what is really important: friends, family, having fun, love. Nothing is worth doing if you don't have anybody to share it with, which is a lesson shared with us by the most broken of the group, Barney.
Even within the group each character provides a lesson in and of themselves. Barney is totally broken when we meet him. He's a sex crazed, egotistical, womanizing, scoundrel. Over the course of the 9 seasons we watch him rise up, and then fall, and then rise as he is slowly healed. Every time he rises though it is only temporary as it is only the result of a treated symptom, but then he see's Ellie and shows us that when that one person or moment shows up, even the worst of us can be healed. Marshal is the friend that never gives up. He never gives up on Ted no matter what. He always believes in Lily and even when it's questionable whether or not they would follow Lily to Italy, he ultimately decides to drop his own judgeship and go with her. Marshal is the friend that loves no matter what and shows Ted the whole time what never giving up on love looks like. Robin shows us that no matter what the circumstances, you should always follow your dreams. When we meet Robin she had been in the U.S. for just two months. She had been working for Metro News One as a reporter, though she really only did those "little fluff pieces at the end of the news." Through the course of the show however, she begins to rise. By the end of the series she is a world famous reporter for World Wide News, traveling the world. Yes, problems rise, but she just kept following her dreams and even though she took the solitary path for awhile, even she would end up back with her friends. Lily is kind of a conglomeration of Marshal and Robin. She is full of love and shows us the benefits of believing in people even when it comes at the expense of your own personal gain. However, she also shows us that it is possible to follow our dreams when we might feel otherwise tied down. Through the story she slowly but surely follows her artistic desires and eventually becomes and art consultant for a man known as "The Captain" which leads her, Marshal, and their two kids to Italy for a year. And lastly, Ted. Ted shows us that no matter what the situation, no matter what life throws at us, no matter how down we feel, we should always move forward. Always believe in love. Ted goes through the best and the worst of times in his search for love and eventually finds the end, but only after tripping on every root along the beaten path. He's left at the alter, dates 39 women, get's punched in the face by Barney, get's left multiple times by Robin, but he continues to believe that somewhere out there is the one girl who will solve all of his woes. And she does. Ted shows us that no matter what he must keep our sights on the present and what is to come because when we begin to focus on the past to exclusion of all else, we are lost.
For some reason, this show has meant a lot to me, and though I'm not quite sure why yet, I feel very sad to see it go. With that said though, I am very pleased with the way it ended. The writing was more real than most sitcoms now or in the past. It worked on a real world basis. I loved every moment, every high and every low. This is a show that made us laugh but also made us think. One of my favorite episodes is still The Time Travelers from season 8 when Ted spends a whole night debating whether or not to go to Robots vs. Wrestlers, talking occasionally to the future selves of him and Barney. Though hilarious in some aspects, it leaves us with Ted talking about how if he had known about the mother sooner, he would've ran to her door and told her everything just to have that extra time with her. It's this kind of writing that we need more of on television. It makes you laugh, but at the same time it leaves you with something more. The whole of How I Met Your Mother was simply "something more." With that, it teaches us that we ought to simply love life, to the exclusion of all else. Sometimes our lives suck, but sometimes they don't and those are the moments we should live for.
-- Josh
