KIDS... So about last night's HIMYPDM, let's use
this Vulture hypothesis as a starting point:
Some have suggested that if the Mother does die, Future Ted and Future Robin might be a couple again, and this whole story is a way of Ted convincing his children to embrace their new stepmother. That is also not an appealing option; it's simply a cop-out, and one that would be a lot more tolerable had the show not gone to great lengths to couple Robin with Barney — a pairing that seemed ludicrous in season one but has evolved into a long-standing, meaningful partnership. We've gone through every single bro-code violation and long, torturous explanations of the subsections of said code to get to a point where Ted can be okay (at least mostly) with Robin and Barney marrying. If that's all just a hiccup on the way to a Robin and Ted marriage, that's pretty awful.
Sepinwall:
The show is about putting Ted on a journey where he is going to meet this woman who's going to make it all better, and instead, their time together looks like it'll only last slightly longer than the Mother's time with the boyfriend who died in the 200th episode. It's not technically a cheat on the series' title — the show's not called "How I Got To Spend Decade After Decade With Your Mother" — but it's a violation of the spirit of the law, if not the letter. It's a dark, misguided turn in a show not built for it.
You can point to the Mother's own backstory as a reminder that love isn't eternal, tragedy strikes, all this has happened before, and all of it will happen again, and time is a flat circle, and THEY REALLY THOUGHT THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA?
Soooooooo....I guess I'm pretty alone on the "the mother being dead is a hunky-dorey ending as long as Robin is not together with Ted" bench, right? Everyone else seems to be losing their s**t over the idea and yet I think it's a fine idea that's in line with the show I've been watching for 8 years.
ReplyDeleteI'm OK with the mother being ill and then surviving it. I'm not OK with the whole 9 years leading back to him marrying Robin after all, after the show keeps showing how incompatible she and Ted are, or to them presenting us with a pretty delightful Mother and then killing her off just as the audience starts to have affection for her. It looked like they were going with 'Ted had this obsession with Robin until he met the Mother, at which point he realized how foolish he had been,' because they're not going to have him marry the Mother while still carrying a torch for Robin.
ReplyDeleteSeems like a pretty negative way to set up HIMYD, also.
FWIW, HIMYD won't be about the mother in this show. Completely new characters.
ReplyDeleteYeah, i could see it a set up with the story told and the mother coming out of surgery or something, and telling the story in such a way that the rest of the cast are all family.
ReplyDeleteJust wanted to say that I called this seven years ago. Of course, it may still be wrong. And part of my scenario (Robin helped to raise the kids, so they think of her as "Aunt Robin") is almost certainly wrong. But still. http://tosyandcosh.blogspot.com/2007/11/dead-mother-i-dont-know-why-but-i-cant.html
ReplyDeleteI'm with you; this is a rare time when I disagree with Sepinwall. He says "Look, I understand that this is a show that has had dark moments, like the death of Marshall's father, or Stella jilting Ted at the altar, or Robin's infertility. But they were not the point of the entire series." But I think they were, in a sense—it's a show about growing up and experiencing pain, and if, in the end, the meta-story turns out to be about Ted losing the Mother, then I will admire them for it.
ReplyDeleteI know HIMYD will be about new people, but it might be harder to get people to watch with this having been the ending to HIMYM.
ReplyDeleteI'm also ok with this possible ending. It would be sincere and heartfelt if there was a final acknowledgement that many things like love wouldn't be precious if it wasn't finite.
ReplyDeleteBased on last night's episode and all the jerking around about the identify of the mother, at this point, there has to be at least a little tragedy in the ending for me not to feel used.
Remember the Kubick/Spielberg movie "AI"? This lesson was the only thing that redeemed the movie in my eyes.
P.S. good to see another COS'er.
Can we get a link to the discussion in which I posed this theory last year? :)
ReplyDeleteNever mind - found it! http://throwingthings.blogspot.com/2013/05/kids-youve-been-very-very-patient-okay.html
ReplyDeleteAh. Got it. I think HIMYD is going to be a tough sell anyway. It's hard for lightning to strike twice
ReplyDeleteAll this talk about HIMYM on Twitter and such got me thinking about HIMYM and it's excellent music over the years. I'm working on a How I Met Your Music playlist on Spotify and ran across the song "Good Feelings" by the Violent Femmes, from the Prom episode. If it's actually HIMYD(ead)M, that song, taken not in the context of its original episode is perfect.
ReplyDeleteIn other words, "Kids, to distract you from the fear you're facing while mom's in a coma, let me tell you a story."
ReplyDeleteyes, which is why Ted's taken so long to tell the story of what otherwise would be one episode.
ReplyDelete