Tuesday, April 01, 2014

Waste of Ring Bear

(spoilers - but you must have seen them if you even care)
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How I Met Your Mother dragged on a few years too long, no question (in my mind) about it.  
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However, to their credit, they did a bang up job this year of reinvigorating it while bringing the series to a close.  It seemed to find its feet again and was moving towards a satisfactory closing.  The writing was back on track and funny.  There were plenty of nods to previous story lines without feeling like it was an epilog.
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Seriously, up until last night – great job.
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Up until last night.  Last night HIMYM fell apart at the seams , flew off the rails, jumped the track (again, in my opinion – some people liked it).  It was almost like the gambler who bet on black 5 times winning every time.  Then they pulled all the chips off and threw them on the double zero.  HIMYM did not hit double zero.
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After a season and a half of the writers investing us in Robin and Barney’s marriage, and in their combined emotional growth – they were divorced just minutes into the finale.  Robin moved a lot for her job and Barney – rich and free to do what he wanted, he was annoyed at following her around and her being busy all the time.  So they got drunk, had sex, and got divorced.  Wow!  Way to invalidate the entire last two seasons of emotional growth.
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They were going to “stay friends”, but they didn’t.  Barney ended up falling right back into being the womanizing a-hole he was in the beginning of the series (not nearly as funny the second time around).  Which was really just laziness on the writing staffs’ part.  And Robin became the terminally unhappy man-less old maid.  Because, you know, a woman without a man is destined to be unhappy, barren and alone. 
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Lilly and Marshall came out of the episode reasonably well.  Why they would try to stay friends with Barney and Robin is lost on me, but okay.
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Then we move to Ted and “the mother”. If nothing else, the episode did explain why we never really saw Ted and the mother (named Tracy, but it doesn’t really matter) get into a relationship. After watching Ted date and fall in love with many women over the years, the mother was always presented as a fait a compli.  Same thing last.  Never really saw Ted interact with Tracy.  We are told he got her phone number.  We are told they fell in love. We are told they were happy.
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Why..
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Because we are told that “the mother” got an illness and died six years ago (in “present day” speaking to his kids timeline).  Yeah dead.  Oh yeah – spoiler alert.  See if you were too invested in their storyline, then you might be angry here.
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And you (the viewer) might not be up for what follows.  Which is Ted goes after “Aunt Robin” who he has loved all along and Robin has always had second thoughts she should have married Ted while she was married to Barney.
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Now I read some crap somewhere that this was all about phases of your life and moving on, but that is bullshit. I mean, what a mind game.  So after all the growth, Robin never really should have married Barney.  She just dumped Ted for him because she was a screwy little woman that didn’t know what she wanted.  So she is flighty, heartless and stupid. Ok – odd way to treat one of your main characters... but okay.
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And Ted.  After years, of being a good guy and decades of being a great day doesn’t have the courage to date the woman he loves without asking his kids.  So all the stories about “How I met you mother” weren’t really about that, but about “How I love your hot aunt, and your mother was window-dressing”?
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As for Barney – after finally doing the “perfect month” (31 women in 31 days), the 31st woman got pregnant.  He is furious and angry and throwing a fit to the screen and then he sees his daughter.  He sees the baby and she is the love of his life. He has a nice scene where he talks to the child – and then Neil Patrick Harris is never seen again. We don’t know if he marries (or even sees) the mother of the baby.  We never see Barney again – because once you have kids your life effectively ends (a common theme through-out the show).
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And so it ends with Robin (who mysteriously has a bunch of dogs again) looking at out the window at Ted who is holding the blue French Horn.  Which has a meaning I shant even explain since the writer’s screwed the pooch on this bad boy well before the end.
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Oye.


And to those of you who said HIMYM jumped the shark a few seasons ago – I say yes but.  Yes but, they actually had an amazing season here, right up until last night.