Everyone has something to say about “How I Met Your Mother”
and the finale to its nine-year run that occurred on Monday night and I’m no
exception. So here goes nothing.
I’ll start by saying I’ve always had a love-hate
relationship with HIMYM. It was hilariously funny and I can’t pretend it
wasn’t, but many of the jokes were at the expense of women. Both the premise of
the show (Ted telling his kids about his serial dating) and the characters (I’m
lookin’ at you Barney) could be creepy. However, the characters were interesting and
compelling and this was a comedy that wasn’t afraid to tackle real, non-comic
topics like the death of Marshall’s dad or Robin’s inability to have kids. Even
though I often felt guilty about it, I kept tuning in for years and for that
loyalty I felt I deserved some satisfaction and reward from the finale, but I was
left viscerally disappointed.
For nine seasons, I invested in these characters and was
able to watch significant character development unfold. But one hour threw
almost all of that character development away. Barney went back to being a
creepy womanizer, Ted hadn’t really let go of Robin, and Lily and Marshall were
still almost exactly the same as they were nine years ago except for job and
family size. I felt cheated and it seems to me the characters were cheated,
too.
Additionally, the plot concerning Barney and Robin led to so
much disappointment, at least for me. After watching a whole season take place
over the weekend of their wedding, I was even more invested in their
relationship than I had been at the start of season 9. Throughout the season
every problem I was worried about in their relationship was carefully handled
by the writers which is why I felt a little bit confused when they were
divorced within three years. It was adding insult to injury when Barney fell
for his baby daughter via a stranger because it seemed that the one thing that
could truly change Barney’s nature was the one thing Robin couldn’t give him, a
child.
Yet, the disappointment over Barney and Robin paled in
comparison to the disappointment over Ted and Tracy, the eponymous Mother.
Tracy, who became so beloved in so few episodes, was reduced to a mere plot
device. She gave Ted the kids Robin never could and by dying she allowed “the
nice guy” to finally get the girl, except it was the wrong girl. The final five
minutes made the whole story not one of Ted meeting the mother but of never
getting over Robin. If I had been one of Ted’s kids I would have been ticked
off with my dad. Even without being Ted’s kid I’m still ticked off! Tracy was a
compelling female character who shouldn’t have been short changed the way she
was by this finale.
I understand that the desire to have Ted and Robin end up
together stemmed from a long ago determined original plan, but I think that’s
the problem. A famous saying goes “What screws us up most in life is the
picture in our head of how it’s supposed to be.” As it turns out, it’s what screwed
up HIMYM the most, too. Having a plan is great, but at some point the
characters might make that plan irrelevant. That’s what I believe Ted, Robin,
Barney, Lily, and Marshall did. The original plan no longer fit these
characters. The best show would remain true to the characters. Unfortunately, this show remained true to the plan
instead.
While that might sound like a lot of problems for me to have
with the HIMYM finale, there’s one I haven’t mentioned yet that deserves some
attention. The pineapple. I was
promised an answer to all of my lingering questions and I didn’t get this one.
What was the story of the pineapple?
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