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ravenOh, you knew this was coming. This is the post I was threatening to make a couple of days ago - I figure I need to actually make it and get it out of my system and maybe stop yelling about it at people who don't care.
So here are the three things that are embedded into the premise of How I Met Your Mother. Thing the first: future Ted, sitting on a couch with his two children in the year 2030, is telling them the story of how he met their mother. Thing the second: the reason - the in-universe reason - why it is such a long, ridiculous, meandering story is that he's also telling them the story of how he came to be the person he was when he met their mother. And, thing the third: Robin is not the kids' mother. (The first episode, which is all about how Ted saw Robin across a crowded bar and fell dippily in love with her, ends with: "And that, kids, is how I met your Aunt Robin.")
So far so hoopy, right? And, you know, I'm fine with that as a premise. It gives the whole show an interesting twist from the beginning: because you know, right from the start, that a) Ted's in love with Robin - ridiculous, love-at-first-sight, choirs-of-angels stole-a-blue-French-horn-for-her in love with Robin; but also b) even if they do get together, they're not going to stay together. So even though Ted pursues her for a long time despite the fact she says she doesn't want to date him, and actually acts very Nice-Guy-ish around her, the audience is meant to think it isn’t healthy, because they know it won't work out! Again - I'm fine with that. That's self-aware storytelling. And then when they do get together they can't stay together - because Ted wants to get married and have kids and settle down, and that's just what Robin doesn't want: she wants to travel and see the world. It's not that either of them want things that are wrong - and the writing is very good about emphasising that – and not that they aren’t very fond of each other, it's just that they're wrong for each other.
In the meantime - Barney! Barney, who is a womanising misogynist dick, becomes... less of one. When you put it like that it doesn't sound like the miracle of character development that it is, but it is. And partly that's because of Robin - because when he falls for her, he takes Lily's and Tracy's and Ted's advice and becomes a better person. And still, the show does that carefully - it's not redemption through love, but redemption through hard work and self-examination, so when Barney and Robin do get together, finally, it's on an equal footing. They’re perfect together: irreverent, malevolent, loving, kind of dysfunctional but functional for them. They don't want the settling-down-having-babies thing - Robin wants to carry on travelling the world as a journalist - and Barney supports that and loves her for it. It's a lovely romance which I am not doing justice to here: it's meaningful and rooted in character.
And here's the thing: all the while Ted is still carrying a torch for Robin, and it's not romantic. It's not a grand love story. It's miserable, and the writing makes it clear that it's miserable, and about the saddest episode of the entire show is the one where Ted finally admits it, and finally admits he needs to let it go. At the very end, this is where we’ve got to: Barney and Robin are about to get married, and Ted - who is lost and sad and tired, and ready to leave New York for a new life in Chicago - has become the person he has to be to meet Tracy at Barney and Robin’s wedding.
And in a brief digression: I've seen people say that it's depressing, this idea that real life is hard work and true love isn't real. And sure, that is depressing, but that's not what's happening here: what's happening here is that love is complicated. This is the show that tells you that love is Lily and Marshall, who after seventeen years together are still working stuff out, still communicating stuff, still loving each other as much as they did when they were lovestruck teenagers, but differently; love is Barney's brother James and his husband Tom, whose peaceful relationship is what makes Barney think a happy marriage is possible; love is Lily, Marshall and Robin dropping everything to run across the city - covered in paint, barefoot, and in the middle of a live TV broadcast, respectively - because Ted has been in a car accident; love is Ted and Marshall driving 22 hours together listening to the Proclaimers' 500 Miles on constant repeat; love is Marshall finding Robin a Canada-themed karaoke bar in New York City and love is Lily rescuing Ted from Staten Island on Christmas Eve and love is all of them never letting onto the fact that they know Bob Barker is not Barney’s father, despite what he may believe. Love is not, though it can be, eyes meeting across a crowded room: there are a thousand types of love and it's complicated and it's everywhere and that right there is why I like this show so much.
And so: Barney and Robin get married, and it's beautiful. And Ted meets Tracy, and it's beautiful.
(Another brief digression, about Tracy - I love her so, so much, please see the vid I made on the subject but seriously. What I love about her is that she's not just a love interest for Ted: she's a real person with a real story. I love that she's a giant nerd, that she's a musician, and most of all, I love that she's quirky, but not a manic pixie dream girl; if anything, that's what Ted is for her. She has her own tragic backstory of womanpain! Men are killed, fridged and rolled on and off stage to further Tracy's character development, it's amazing. Tracy puts her own life back together, she falls in love, she finds a passion for her work. In later life, she's a well-respected economist and writer, because aged twenty-five she decided she wanted to work to end poverty. I love her.)
And then: in the last episode Barney and Robin get divorced, for no particular reason that I can see, and in the last five minutes you learn that in 2030, Tracy has been dead for six years. And future Ted, with some prodding from his children, goes off after Robin with a blue French horn.
I am really angry about this. I am so angry about this.
Okay, so I think I would just have about got over the thing if it was just that Tracy was dead. I mean, I would have still been angry about it. All that beautiful characterisation, all for nothing, all gone in one line of dialogue. and also on a slightly less analytical note, omg, it's too sad, I can't deal with it. (Because - okay, I'll give the show this, it can do tragedy well. There's one episode, "The Time Travellers", in which future Ted returns to 2013 (for reasons - just go with it) and goes to see Lily and Marshall, Barney and Robin, but first of all, goes to see Tracy: stands on her doorstep forty-five days before they meet and tells her that he'd give everything he has just to have those extra forty-five days with her, or even the forty-five seconds before her boyfriend shows up and punches him in the face. And Louis does show up, and does punch him in the face, and he's still smiling as he hits the ground. It made me cry. So did “Vesuvius”, the episode where Tracy says, in passing, “What kind of mother would miss her daughter’s wedding?” – and Ted just looks at her and starts to cry.) So if Tracy’s dead – that’s horrible, and sad, but not quite so rage-making.
But the thing with Ted and Robin. They don't work out the first time around, or the second. Eight years of character development for the two of them and Barney, all devoted to establishing why they don’t and can’t work together – all disappearing in a scene that’s a deliberate duplicate of one in the pilot? Wonderful Robin, who has built the career she wanted: she’s a successful, happy journalist, and who would have been so happy with Barney, just… lost. And Ted, too – I hate the implication that Tracy was his second choice, that if Robin had just said yes all those years earlier everything would have been different. Because they wouldn't have worked. Because Tracy deserved so much better than that (and got it! I mean, there's absolutely no indication that Ted and Tracy weren't very happy together). Because Lily actually broke Ted and Robin up the first time because she knew they wouldn't have worked. And if it's that Robin didn't want children, and Ted did, and now he does have them - well, what that says about Tracy's purpose in this narrative pisses me the hell off all over again.
It's such a bleak vision of the future, as people other than me have said. It's meant to be a hopeful show, in the end: the yellow umbrella always appears as a harbinger of that. And then - nothing. Urgh.
Here's the alternate ending again. Look at how much sense it makes. Also, the bit with the goat, last night I made fun of the bit with the goat, who gets attacked by a goat even in sitcom-land, then this morning I got chased by a cow. True story.
So here are the three things that are embedded into the premise of How I Met Your Mother. Thing the first: future Ted, sitting on a couch with his two children in the year 2030, is telling them the story of how he met their mother. Thing the second: the reason - the in-universe reason - why it is such a long, ridiculous, meandering story is that he's also telling them the story of how he came to be the person he was when he met their mother. And, thing the third: Robin is not the kids' mother. (The first episode, which is all about how Ted saw Robin across a crowded bar and fell dippily in love with her, ends with: "And that, kids, is how I met your Aunt Robin.")
So far so hoopy, right? And, you know, I'm fine with that as a premise. It gives the whole show an interesting twist from the beginning: because you know, right from the start, that a) Ted's in love with Robin - ridiculous, love-at-first-sight, choirs-of-angels stole-a-blue-French-horn-for-her in love with Robin; but also b) even if they do get together, they're not going to stay together. So even though Ted pursues her for a long time despite the fact she says she doesn't want to date him, and actually acts very Nice-Guy-ish around her, the audience is meant to think it isn’t healthy, because they know it won't work out! Again - I'm fine with that. That's self-aware storytelling. And then when they do get together they can't stay together - because Ted wants to get married and have kids and settle down, and that's just what Robin doesn't want: she wants to travel and see the world. It's not that either of them want things that are wrong - and the writing is very good about emphasising that – and not that they aren’t very fond of each other, it's just that they're wrong for each other.
In the meantime - Barney! Barney, who is a womanising misogynist dick, becomes... less of one. When you put it like that it doesn't sound like the miracle of character development that it is, but it is. And partly that's because of Robin - because when he falls for her, he takes Lily's and Tracy's and Ted's advice and becomes a better person. And still, the show does that carefully - it's not redemption through love, but redemption through hard work and self-examination, so when Barney and Robin do get together, finally, it's on an equal footing. They’re perfect together: irreverent, malevolent, loving, kind of dysfunctional but functional for them. They don't want the settling-down-having-babies thing - Robin wants to carry on travelling the world as a journalist - and Barney supports that and loves her for it. It's a lovely romance which I am not doing justice to here: it's meaningful and rooted in character.
And here's the thing: all the while Ted is still carrying a torch for Robin, and it's not romantic. It's not a grand love story. It's miserable, and the writing makes it clear that it's miserable, and about the saddest episode of the entire show is the one where Ted finally admits it, and finally admits he needs to let it go. At the very end, this is where we’ve got to: Barney and Robin are about to get married, and Ted - who is lost and sad and tired, and ready to leave New York for a new life in Chicago - has become the person he has to be to meet Tracy at Barney and Robin’s wedding.
And in a brief digression: I've seen people say that it's depressing, this idea that real life is hard work and true love isn't real. And sure, that is depressing, but that's not what's happening here: what's happening here is that love is complicated. This is the show that tells you that love is Lily and Marshall, who after seventeen years together are still working stuff out, still communicating stuff, still loving each other as much as they did when they were lovestruck teenagers, but differently; love is Barney's brother James and his husband Tom, whose peaceful relationship is what makes Barney think a happy marriage is possible; love is Lily, Marshall and Robin dropping everything to run across the city - covered in paint, barefoot, and in the middle of a live TV broadcast, respectively - because Ted has been in a car accident; love is Ted and Marshall driving 22 hours together listening to the Proclaimers' 500 Miles on constant repeat; love is Marshall finding Robin a Canada-themed karaoke bar in New York City and love is Lily rescuing Ted from Staten Island on Christmas Eve and love is all of them never letting onto the fact that they know Bob Barker is not Barney’s father, despite what he may believe. Love is not, though it can be, eyes meeting across a crowded room: there are a thousand types of love and it's complicated and it's everywhere and that right there is why I like this show so much.
And so: Barney and Robin get married, and it's beautiful. And Ted meets Tracy, and it's beautiful.
(Another brief digression, about Tracy - I love her so, so much, please see the vid I made on the subject but seriously. What I love about her is that she's not just a love interest for Ted: she's a real person with a real story. I love that she's a giant nerd, that she's a musician, and most of all, I love that she's quirky, but not a manic pixie dream girl; if anything, that's what Ted is for her. She has her own tragic backstory of womanpain! Men are killed, fridged and rolled on and off stage to further Tracy's character development, it's amazing. Tracy puts her own life back together, she falls in love, she finds a passion for her work. In later life, she's a well-respected economist and writer, because aged twenty-five she decided she wanted to work to end poverty. I love her.)
And then: in the last episode Barney and Robin get divorced, for no particular reason that I can see, and in the last five minutes you learn that in 2030, Tracy has been dead for six years. And future Ted, with some prodding from his children, goes off after Robin with a blue French horn.
I am really angry about this. I am so angry about this.
Okay, so I think I would just have about got over the thing if it was just that Tracy was dead. I mean, I would have still been angry about it. All that beautiful characterisation, all for nothing, all gone in one line of dialogue. and also on a slightly less analytical note, omg, it's too sad, I can't deal with it. (Because - okay, I'll give the show this, it can do tragedy well. There's one episode, "The Time Travellers", in which future Ted returns to 2013 (for reasons - just go with it) and goes to see Lily and Marshall, Barney and Robin, but first of all, goes to see Tracy: stands on her doorstep forty-five days before they meet and tells her that he'd give everything he has just to have those extra forty-five days with her, or even the forty-five seconds before her boyfriend shows up and punches him in the face. And Louis does show up, and does punch him in the face, and he's still smiling as he hits the ground. It made me cry. So did “Vesuvius”, the episode where Tracy says, in passing, “What kind of mother would miss her daughter’s wedding?” – and Ted just looks at her and starts to cry.) So if Tracy’s dead – that’s horrible, and sad, but not quite so rage-making.
But the thing with Ted and Robin. They don't work out the first time around, or the second. Eight years of character development for the two of them and Barney, all devoted to establishing why they don’t and can’t work together – all disappearing in a scene that’s a deliberate duplicate of one in the pilot? Wonderful Robin, who has built the career she wanted: she’s a successful, happy journalist, and who would have been so happy with Barney, just… lost. And Ted, too – I hate the implication that Tracy was his second choice, that if Robin had just said yes all those years earlier everything would have been different. Because they wouldn't have worked. Because Tracy deserved so much better than that (and got it! I mean, there's absolutely no indication that Ted and Tracy weren't very happy together). Because Lily actually broke Ted and Robin up the first time because she knew they wouldn't have worked. And if it's that Robin didn't want children, and Ted did, and now he does have them - well, what that says about Tracy's purpose in this narrative pisses me the hell off all over again.
It's such a bleak vision of the future, as people other than me have said. It's meant to be a hopeful show, in the end: the yellow umbrella always appears as a harbinger of that. And then - nothing. Urgh.
Here's the alternate ending again. Look at how much sense it makes. Also, the bit with the goat, last night I made fun of the bit with the goat, who gets attacked by a goat even in sitcom-land, then this morning I got chased by a cow. True story.
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no subject
on 2014-10-14 06:46 am (UTC)I realise that this is probably mostly my over-identification with Robin talking, but I found that final scene with her leaning out the window to see Ted below so fucking depressing. I read it 100% as joyless acquiescence - like "well, may as well give this a go, it may well be my last chance." This is not a romantic ending, this is an ACTUAL THING that happens to A LOT OF WOMEN and it is miserable as all hell. I have seen so many women shack up in their late-thirties or forties with some dude they would have had no interest in ten years before. There is nothing charming or romantic about that. NOTHIIIIIIIIIIIIING.
no subject
on 2014-10-14 12:30 pm (UTC)