I Was Wrong: Apologies to How I Met Your Mother

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This past May, when the season finale of How I Met Your Mother concluded with a shot of—wait for it—the mother’s face, I reacted pretty strongly. I, and I’d imagine at least a few other dedicated HIMYM fans, was disappointed that she turned out to be someone we’d never seen before, thus turning all of the teases and hints of the previous eight years into just that: teases. My argument at the time was that what HIMYM had done was to deliver on the promise of a big reveal, but that the reveal itself lacked any kind of substance, since we didn’t know who this lady was. In my defense, the latter seasons of HIMYM have made kind of a habit of big reveals sans substance, like for instance Barney’s proposal to Robin, which technically qualified as a surprise but didn’t amount to much, since B+R is possibly the least substantive relationship in the history of sitcom relationships.

I also questioned whether the writers, who’ve by all accounts gotten a little tired in the past few years, could make anything of an entire final season wherein anyone Ted meets will no longer be a possible wife, since now we knew who it’d be. Ted’s pursuit of a mother for his children, initially the entire point of the show (I mean it’s the title, for Christ’s sake), had been marginalized for so long that the writers had instead chosen to focus on the other four, much less interesting, characters. The creative storytelling it had built a reputation on had all but disappeared, and the only remaining morsel of creativity left was in the Dream On-like fantasy sequences, which in themselves were a cop-out too, since fantasy sequences carry nothing at stake.

Well, I was wrong. This season of HIMYM has proven to be the best in half a decade, creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas displaying a revitalized playful spirit, and an admirable dedication to storylines that act as puzzles for both us and them to solve.

On a macro level, the most ingenious puzzle is the scope of the whole season: the whole thing takes place over one weekend—the weekend of Barney and Robin’s wedding. This 24-ish real-time pacing isn’t easy to do, yet the writers make it look deceptively simple (24’s plot had suspense built into it; it’s much more challenging to tell the story of five average people at a wedding in real time and make it interesting—but they have).

Setting the whole season over one weekend also solves a lot of the problems I predicted above and last May. We don’t have to suffer through a season’s worth of not-the-mother girlfriends for Ted, because he only has 48 hours left in the story, so the women he meets are limited. Also, since, in every episode, Barney and Robin are getting married imminently, the writers don’t have to spend any time throwing fake complications into their relationship to create phony chemistry. They just sort of exist as a couple, which is definitely for the best.

On a micro level, the show has gotten back down to the basics of what it has always done best: setting narrative challenges to itself and solving them in creative ways. The entire premise of the show is actually like that (how do you keep an audience on the edge of its seat when they already know the ending?), and the best episodes of the series function like writing exercises from a craft book. “Ten Sessions”, from season three, had Ted’s entire courtship with Stella told only through the ten sessions she spent removing his tattoo; in “Mosbius Designs” from season four, the writers dealt with Alyson Hannigan’s real-life pregnancy by having Lily get so offended by a joke that she decides not to hang out for a month. In “Ted Mosby, Architect”, Lily and Robin go on a wild goose chase to find out why Ted’s been womanizing all night, only to discover (when we see the whole story told over again) that Barney’s been using Ted’s name all night.

And so on. This season finds a return to that. In “No Questions Asked,” Marshall has to get each cast member to erase a text from Lily’s phone in order to prevent her from seeing it, and has to call them on their owing him a “no questions asked” favor. Each character’s owing him of this favor is perfect and totally in character, and the way the whole thing gets resolved calls back to the entire episode’s theme, and ultimately ends up being poignant and true, in the way that HIMYM does in its best moments.

Last week’s episode was told entirely in rhyming couplets (!), and as the season continues, I have a feeling we’re in for even more treats. I always knew I’d be looking forward to the series finale for a sense of closure; I’m all too happy to discover that now I’m looking forward to it because it’ll probably be genuinely good on its own terms. My apologies.

Ted McLoof

About Ted McLoof

Ted McLoof is a writer at Rookerville and teaches fiction at the University of Arizona. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Minnesota Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Gertrude, Monkeybicycle, Sonora Review, Hobart, DIAGRAM, The Associative Press, and elsewhere.He's recently been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and a Best of the Net Award. He is very cool and very handsome and he'd like to buy you a drink.

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