Spolier Warning, évidemment...
On Tuesday I caught the series finale of How I Met Your Mother. Although it has had an overwhelmingly negative response, it, in my opinion, was fantastic. To be fair, because of the shows unique nature, Mother fans put an unusual amount of stock in the shows conclusion, maybe not equaled since Lost. It would have been impossible, as J'abrams found out, to please everyone.
Why did I love the conclusion? Maybe I've lowered my standards since deciding to generally focus on the positive, but there's more to it. To be transparent, I might not be the best judge of the shows denoument, as I wasn't a die-hard Mother fan (Motherboy?). I only casually watched seasons 5 through 8. On the other hand, I may be better qualified to give an objective opinion, because the finale was written before the writers expected it to go on so long. The success of the show led to its extension by several seasons and the poignant conclusion became more and more removed from its intended proximity to relevant events. The effect was that we were given too much time to make up our minds about things. If, like some of my friends, in seasons 5 through 8 Robin's changing character led you to dislike her, or if you were convinced, by the constant reaffirmations of the fact, that Ted and Robin could never be together, you probably didn't like the finale. My limited exposure to the superfluous seasons meant that I didn't give up on Robin. Maybe I'm just a sucker for a Canadian girl.
The things I loved about Mother generally, and how the finale delivered on them:
The unreliable narrator. In my opinion, the greatest thing about Mother was always the use of storytelling and unreliable narrators. What the audience knows and doesn't know was always used to great effect. In the episode "Ted Mosby: Architect," for example, Robin (then dating Ted) and Lily search around town for Ted, meeting people who say he had just left with some woman. The ubiquitous flashbacks illustrate their accounts of shallow Ted's cheating escapades. Ultimately, it turns out that "Ted" of the flashbacks was actually Barney who, in the latest of his 'plays' had gone around introducing himself as "Ted Mosby: Architect." The series finale applies this device to whole series. Old Ted, it turns out, was talking about someone else the entire time. The very name of the show is put into question along with the point of the narration. It was only logical for the writers' penchant for ironic reinterpretations of events to be taken to an all encompassing level in the finale.
Realism. More than many sit-coms, Mother had a way of capturing real emotions and exploring themes that are often overlooked by the medium. The longue durée of the show, taking place over 25 years, allowed it present multiple perspectives on events by the same characters at different stages in his life. As shown with Barney and Robin's divorce, the Mother writers weren't afraid to get overly real. Tracy's death and Ted's ultimate decision to pursue Robin was another daring and, in my opinion, beautiful instance of the show's breaking the sit-com mould in the name of realism. Now, this is controversial. Some people see the final scene as a cop out. Fans dreaded a Ross and Rachel ending, but I didn't see it that way. I don't think they killed off the mother so they could have a fairy tale ending—a hastily devised 'will they' to the seemingly absolute 'won't they.' It wasn't a trifle. It was a nuanced and realistic portrayal of the complexity of Love.
They didn't 'kill off' the mother and her death didn't cheapen the ending. To say her death cheapened the story is to say there is no value in loving someone if you can't grow old with them. Ted and Tracy had a timeless love story, and her death was just a part of it. Their story was central to the show, clearly, and Ted's development and the maturing of his views of love was fulfilled in their relationship. But, as Penny Mosby cleverly pointed out, that's not entirely what old Ted's story was about. We were asked from the first episode to suspend our disbelief about a man telling such a rambling, complicated and seemingly irrelevant story about how he met the kids' mother, and we suspended it too much. When the nature of the story was explained we didn't accept it. We preferred to live in our infinitely suspended disbelief.
Neither is Ted's love for Tracy cheapened by his decision to pursue Robin. His kids are into their teens, his wife has been gone for six years, he is a man who knows how to love profoundly and his old flame, with whom he has always had a strong bond of affection, is alone. Why wouldn't two lonely people with such a connection decide to be together? Why can't we accept that Ted would keep on loving, to follow his own advice to Robin, that, “Love doesn’t make sense. You can’t logic your way into or out of it. Love is totally nonsensical, but we have to keep doing it or else we’re lost and love is dead and humanity is just packing it in. Because love is the best thing we do.” Well said, Ted.
If nothing else, we're still talking about it. The writers should be commended for that. They succeeded in giving us something to think about. You can't deny that the ending was memorable, whether or not you found it satisfying. They told us that love doesn't fit into the moulds of a traditional three act structure, and that when you find love you have to pour everything you have into it because you never know how long it will last.
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