It
will probably surprise some people to discover that I did not watch the finale
of How I Met Your Mother last night. That will be slightly less surprising when
I provide my excuse that I was on a plane at the time as “I’m on a plane” is
basically my default state of being at the moment. However, I have read the
reactions and watched the last scene and felt that I must provide my thoughts
on the ending of the television show that most paralleled my life.
Let’s
talk about the parallels. The show debuted in 2005, just under a year after I
started the blog so when Barney talked about nobody reading his blog in the
first season I totally got the joke. The characters were a few years out of
college and five years younger than I am. I was a few years out of grad school
and most people would be generous in saying that my social and emotional
immaturity would make me five years younger than I actually am. The main
characters seemingly lived at a bar, drank Red Dragon shots and lived in a
world of in jokes and bad decisions. It was my life in a nutshell.
I
should also note that I stopped watching the show weekly in the spring of 2011,
which not coincidentally is when I stopped blogging regularly. The fact that I
decided that the show that I once threatened to sue for stealing my life story had
gone on too long at the exact same time that I got married is an interesting
sidebar. It wasn’t that we disliked the show; it is just that the schedule of
our lives had grown too crowded. I still kept up on the show by online reviews
and have bought all the seasons on DVD so one day I will catch up. From what I
can gather is that the three things that people are most upset about are 1)
Barney and Robin break up, 2) we meet the mother only to have her die and 3)
Ted ends up with Robin. I’ll go through these one at a time.
Barney and Robin’s marriage falls
apart: I will
admit that this is something that I am not really happy with especially given
that the past several seasons were dedicated to getting the two of them
together as a couple and having Barney mature into a better version of himself.
I remember the season where they first started dating and you could see that as
a storyline and I truly wanted it to work. I was more upset when they broke
them up the first time than most people because I just thought they made a
great couple and were treading water apart. The fact that their marriage ends,
Barney returns to being a player but finally gains his center by becoming a dad
as a result of his one night stands ends the story of Barney on a bit of a sour
note. But, to be honest, I can easily point to so many friends who had
seemingly gotten their lives back on track only for them to derail and then
find themselves again in a simpler way.
We meet the mother only to find
out that she has been dead for six years: To be honest this was not a complete surprise. I read
a review of an episode from a few weeks ago that made it pretty clear that the
mother had died and I know that years ago that was one of the predominant theories
about the mother. Once it became clear that the mother was a character that we
had never met one of the few ideas that made sense was that Ted was telling
them the story about how he met their mother because she couldn’t tell them
herself. It seems strange for a sitcom and when the show started I would never
have assumed that ending but now I can understand it. Maybe it is because I
look at my list of Facebook friends and see several who have died over the past
few years. As you reach middle age the idea of one dying young goes from being
a bad Billy Joel song to a horrific truth.
That
said I understand that one could be in one of two camps here. The first is that
this is a total rip off. The entire show was about how he met her and the
moment she is introduced she is killed off screen. That is tonally dissonant and
in watching the last scene the entire conversation with the kids where this is
revealed feels completely wrong (and not just because of Ted’s makeup). If you
viewed finding out who is the mother to be the pinnacle of the series then this
was a total gut punch of an ending.
On
the other hand, I stopped thinking about the importance of the mother years ago
once they decided once and for all that it wasn’t going to be Victoria. Who Ted
totally should have married in season one like they had planned if the show had
only lasted thirteen episodes and we wouldn’t be having this discussion today.
Instead the story was about Ted’s journey and finding out who he was and what
he needed to be happy and yes, in the end, the story was always about Robin. He
started the story with how he met her and ends with getting permission to try
one last time.
Ted ends up with Robin: For as much as I question the
last scene having it close with Ted holding up the blue French horn outside
Robin’s apartment is one of the best ways to end the series that I could
possibly imagine. And in this case, and the last example of the parallels
between my life and this show, I am completely biased.
Twelve
years ago I saw a girl in a bar. After meeting her I told my buddies that I
would marry her. At the time it didn’t work out. We never even dated. We liked
each other but were in different places in our lives with different goals and
dreams and while I always thought that she was “the one” it was never right.
Years passed. I drifted away and went on adventures and had a serious of
relationships that could be alternately called comical, farcical and fictional
depending on your point of view. Then one day, six years after I first met that
girl in the bar, she emailed me and I decided to raise the blue French horn to
her window one last time.
Kim
and I celebrated our three year wedding anniversary last week. Sometimes you
end up with “the one” though the journey is never the one you expected it to
be. All my best to Ted and Robin and to quote a much wiser man than I, “Fair
play to those who dare to dream.”
The five random CDs for the week
(and yes, back to blogging regularly)
1)
Big
Head Todd and the Monsters “Beautiful World”
2)
Josh
Rouse “Under Cold Blue Stars”
3)
Beausoleil
“La Danse de la Vie”
4)
Jay
Farrar. Will Johnston, Anders Parker, Yim Yammes “New Multitudes”
5)
Sting
“The Soul Cages”
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