*SPOILER ALERT: if you haven't watched the finale yet and don't want spoilers, don't read on. Though, as you'll see, you'd probably be better off just quitting now before you're disappointed. Read on at your own risk*
Count me in as one of the people who hated the season finale of How I Met Your Mother. It's not just that it was a terrible way to end the series and an example of God-awful writing (which I'll return to later). It's also that it was a finale that rendered the entire series unwatchable. I will never watch the show again save for a few really memorable episodes (mainly Slap Bet, Slapsgiving, and the Baggage episode). There have been some terrible finales in the past, but none of have completed killed their shows in the process. Seinfeld was widely criticized for being a letdown, but I can basically erase that episode from its history and still watch the rest of the series happily. But, as I'll explain here, the way the writers chose to end the show invalidated the rest of the story.
Let me be clear first: I'm not upset about the events out of context. Many people who like the ending claim that it reflect real life, that life doesn't end with rainbows and unicorns all the time, and that the writers reflected a situation that people go through in their lives. I accept that. I have nothing to dispute on those grounds. I can fully accept that the Mother dying is a realistic outcome, that ending up with Robin as a second choice is what some people do, and that life isn't fair when it comes to divorce and marriage. I have no problem there. So before you comment saying that I'm just wishing it was all a happy ending, that's not the case at all.
My problem is that in 40 minutes, the writers erased 9 seasons of character growth and plot development to stringently adhere to an ending that no longer fit the characters or the story they had written. Further, they spent an entire season (the final season) building up the Barney and Robin wedding, spent a number of seasons showing they were perfect together, fit each other, met each other's needs, and had become people who were willing to persevere through hardship and fight through anything to remain together, and in the first 20 minutes, they undid all of that work and split them up over a relatively minor spat. Why would Barney be upset about traveling around the world? At one point did the writers establish that his character wasn't comfortable traveling around the world? At what point do we see that Barney is so devoted and dedicated to his work that he would sacrifice his personal life over it? Robin's dedication is no surprise as that is true to her character, but Barney becomes completely inconsistent. And quickly thereafter, Barney becomes the Barney of season 1 again, negating all of his character development from seasons 7 and 8 and inexplicably showing him somehow just being fine reverting back to his old self. It made absolutely no sense and was completely inconsistent with the character he had become.
Then there's Ted, who has been shown a number of times that he was not good for Robin and not a good match. We've been shown a Robin character is who dedicated to the point of being selfish and can't meet the needs of Ted. We're shown Ted in a final season who has finally had that moment of realization that he cannot be with Robin because he will never be happy with her. And then, in a matter of moment at the end of the finale, he simply forgets all that and decides "To hell with logic, I will follow my teenager's sound advice and follow my heart that isn't really for Robin anyway!" I completely disagree with the kids; the story is not about how Ted has always been in love with Robin. The story is about how his fixation on one person almost kept him from meeting the person he was meant to be with. Ted missed the Mother in the Night Club and St. Patrick's Day, in the apartment of his ex, in the Econ class, at the wedding reception, and almost at the train station. And after he finally realizes this, after he finally accepts this and lives into the life we've wanted to see him have, he throws all of that growth away and follows a teenager's idea of love back to Robin's apartment, where he will have to settle for second best, settle for a woman who never wanted to have kids, who never wanted to commit to marriage (or another person), who will always leave Ted wanting and dissatisfied.
I have a theory as to why the finale ended the way it did. I know the story now that the writers knew the ending from the very beginning and shot the final scene very early on. At some point around the 5th season when Robin was still a likable character, they realized that they were coming too close to the end of the show and needed to find more story. The Barney and Robin storyline, I think, was never meant to be a long lasting but because they didn't have much to work with, they decided to focus on that, which would buy them time along with Lily and Marshall's progression to their final spots. The problem is that that they did too good a job of establishing that Robin wasn't meant for Ted. When it came time to go to the finale, instead of adapting their ending to fit the new story, they shoehorned their old ending into the finale, rifling through 16 years in minutes, and leaving the audience no time to react and no time to adapt. The used a disingenuous ending that cheated their viewers and selfishly served their own vision rather than the story that they had created.
Ultimately, that's why I won't watch the show ever again (nor will I watch How I Met Your Father, which already seemed stupid from the get-go). The writers spent an entire series letting the audience get to know these characters, learn about them and grow with them, and then ripped them up out of their roots and gave us the seed characters again. The actors and writers are right in that the show did come full circle, but the circle ended back at the very beginning. Barney finally undergoes his change, but it's not convincing. We had already seen him change from a carouser to a lover and back again; why should I be convinced that his daughter is going to be able to keep his love from this point on?
The most disappointing thing for me was that my wife and I only stuck with the show to meet with Mother. The show was fairly mediocre for a number of seasons, and we almost gave up on it a number of times. So to slog through a very mediocre show for that long only to be given the finger by the writers at the end makes the finale even more upsetting. So they can enjoy their ending. I'll be enjoying other shows by different writers from here on out.
No comments:
Post a Comment