For this assignment, I watched as many episode of How I Met Your Mother as I could. Originally, I had planned to watch all 200-plus, but that proved too unwieldy of a task. There's just so much filler in this series. I'll build a case today, as best I can and in hopefully less than 2000 words (ha, yeah right), that Ted's journey is worth seeing on television, even though with that journey comes attached the tangential journeys of Lily and Marshall, which are pretty boring even now that I'm a parent just like them, and of Barney, who... may or may not be a rapist, depending on the age and politics of the person you ask. I think this TV series soars when it's focused on Ted's search for meaning in life, and it falters when it strays from that and instead follows the Erikson marriage or Barney trying to trick a co-ed into sleeping with him (or worse: when it focuses on Barney's search for meaning in life). I don't need to see Lily's pregnancy woes or Barney finding his biological father or the conclusion of the Slap Bet or any of that shit.
So there's that. After watching all of Season 1 and some of Season 2 (maybe finding Gabby convinced me that I didn't need to watch all of it because it reminded me of another recent Sisyphean television experience), I started to pick and choose episodes that felt like they needed to be watched in order to reorient myself with the Search for the Mother. Episodes like Season 3's "No Tomorrow," in which Ted is at the same St. Patrick's Day party as the Mother, and finds her umbrella, or Season 5's "Girls Vs. Suits," in which Ted briefly dates the Mother's roommate (and the Mother gets her umbrella back). And then I watched the last few episodes of the final season. My point being that this blog post isn't going to include a bulletproof defense for this show, because there were about 150 episodes that I skipped. But I think I got the gist.
The reason I've felt for years that this blog post needed to be written was that the ending to How I Met Your Mother was controversial at the time—and remains controversial today—and I always felt this need to defend it, without really being able to articulate why I loved the finale while others despised it. But I think after this quasi-rewatch, I have a better grip on my argument.
I feel like the big reason why people hate how the show ended was because it revealed the true purpose of the show all along, and that purpose was not what was presented to the audience. It was a surprise reveal, and the audience felt cheated. SPOILERS, by the way, because I'm about to talk about the ending of this show. So basically, the ostensible hook for this show, as indicated by its title, is that Ted sits his kids down in the year 2030 and decides to tell them the story of how he met their mother. It is an apparently byzantine tale that comically requires nine years to tell (there's your real problem, honestly—this probably should've been five years tops), but the point being that the kids, and we the audience, are told from the very beginning that this story is going to conclude with Ted meeting the Mother.
But that's not how the story ends! Yes, after a long, emotionally arduous journey, Ted finally meets Tracey McConnell, and they fall in love, and... then about 60 seconds after that happens on screen, it's revealed by 2030 Ted that the Mother passed away in like 2024. And then it's revealed that the true reason that Ted is telling this long story to his kids is because he's subconsciously attempting to build a case to his kids that he should be able to pursue Aunt Robin, a.k.a. the woman that, throughout this nine-year tale, he had befriended, dated multiple times, shared countless important life-altering moments with, and had at various times considered her to be The One (pre-Mother). Ted's kids know this. They claim they knew this was their dad's purpose for the story the whole time. They give their stamp of approval. Ted, in the year 2030, once again shows up at Robin's doorstep, searching for love. This is how the story ends.
So, first off, I get how you might feel like this is just too big of a rug-pull, and that you feel cheated. It is underlined again and again that Ted is going to meet The One, and then when he finally does, that The One is quickly pushed offstage in favor of another, Robin, with whom closure was never found, and never will (barring a series revival, which, in this craven and creatively-bankrupt television landscape, is unfortunately always a possibility). This is especially hard to swallow for married women in happy relationships, those of us who have found The One in real life—is the show trying to say that there could be love after one person in that loving relationship dies?! I get that too. In rushing to defense of the finale back in 2014, I was definitely accused of having a "Robin" or two in my life. It's not true, and that's not even the point here.
There's a different point, one that I realized on this current rewatch, but let's just stop for a moment and marvel at the audacity of this red herring. The Mother was indeed a red herring the whole time. The Mother who is mentioned in the title of the television series ultimately proved to be not important to the story! This is crazy! Regardless of how you feel, you gotta admit that it's pretty funny, right? I think it's funny. I think if the main point of this TV show was to trick the audience, then even then it would've been worth it. That's not the point, but so what?
And, in my opinion, it also speaks to the power that we the audience feel like we have over a story, and how ultimately powerless we really are. Just because we want the story to be about the Mother doesn't mean it has to be about the mother. Surprise reveals are a natural part of storytelling, sure, but in this case, was it that much of a surprise? From the very beginning, we are oriented to see Ted and Robin as the centerpieces of this drama (which is disguised as a comedy). Ted falls in love with Robin in the pilot episode! And over nine years, Ted really never stops being in love with Robin! There are plenty of reasons why it doesn't work out, and those reasons fill a lot of screen time over those years, but the point being that it's always Ted and Robin.
I'm not saying that they are ACTUALLY meant to be or whatever. By all accounts and also according to my own interpretation of this series, Ted and Tracy were actually perfect for each other, and actually did have a perfect life during their time together, and made their respective life challenges worth overcoming just by nature of their eventual togetherness and mutual love. But I'm saying that Ted and Tracy were never the part of the story that Ted wanted to tell. The story, as it was presented to us for almost a decade, was literally about Ted and Robin. And so why shouldn't that story conclude with Ted and Robin?
This is just me being the contrarian, though. As always. Oh, the vast majority of America thinks that the ending to How I Met Your Mother was dogshit? Well, psh, I think it was awesome, and here's how I am SMARTER than you. Ha ha ha.
Nah, I get it. You see what you want to see in art, even if that art is a three-camera sitcom. You can see a journey in search of true love in How I Met Your Mother, and you can be disappointed when the conclusion to that story isn't about true love at all. That is your right, and I won't begrudge you it.
Just don't begrudge me mine. And here's the interesting thing—in this latest viewing of How I Met Your Mother, I actually found a different way to view this series, one that changed my perspective on the whole endeavor. This actually might be helpful for you if you struggle with the ending and the alleged emotional manipulation that it entails. And this new theory is even able to justify the prominence of Marshall and Lily and Barney in this series, despite the fact that they are ancillary characters at best in Ted's love life. Here it goes.
How I Met Your Mother is not ultimately about Ted finding love or with whom he finds it with. How I Met Your Mother is actually about growing up. "Growing up" in this specific case meaning that time period from young adulthood to actual adulthood. How I Met Your Mother is a love letter to the struggles that we all face as we attempt to find our place in the world. It is a documentation of a specific portion of the human life cycle. The Mother marked the end of that journey for Ted. The Mother meant comfort and stability for Ted, which are not things that we have a good grasp on in young adulthood. But those challenges that we face during those times in our lives are what makes them memorable too, and thus worthy of the telling of the tale. Ted literally survived to tell the tale.
That's the main tension in the finale. This group of friends who traversed young adulthood together are now drifting apart, simply because they are true adults, with all that that entails (stability, family, home). The tension isn't, like, Lily resenting Marshall for making her a mother or any shit like that, because that would be sad and pathetic, just like it would be sad and pathetic for me to personally sit here and, like, sincerely miss college and wish I could go back there. I have a wife and kids and a home and a family. I'm fucking happy, man. Ted is fucking happy in the late-'10s, when he's living his best life with the Mother. But with that happiness comes just a tinge of sadness, because even though you're happy, that means that the other time in your life when you were happy (granted, in a completely different way) is now over, unequivocally, and you can never go back. It's not sadness, more nostalgia. And the tension comes from knowing that you're better off now, and yet still missing it a little bit.
So that's really why Ted is telling this story to his children. It's his way of grappling with the past. He knows that he was at his best with the Mother, and he is still happy and content in life with his children, even after the Mother passes away. But in telling this story to his children, he understands that there was value to be found in the struggle as well. Life sucked as a young adult because it was hard and confusing and challenging beyond anything he later experienced as a husband. Being a young adult is challenging, but with those challenges comes a sense of adventure. You have no idea what's going to happen, so that means anything could happen. There's a sense of a wonder that you lose when you get older and become more comfortable where you are. It's okay! Adventure is not necessary at every moment of your life, because that's exhausting.
I think that it's important to know that it will come back eventually, though, that sense of adventure. Speaking personally, I'm spending a lot of time in the home working together with my best friend to rear our three children. There's no adventure in that. There is comfort and stability, both which breed happiness, but certainly no adventure (as much as parents might try to fool themselves, and maybe even create a faux sense of adventure via social media posts about their kids). But sooner than we think, the children will be growing up, and create their own lives, and so I have faith that I will find that sense of adventure again soon enough. Those future adventures, in my mind, involve a lot of experiences with my wife, lots of literal adventures (trips to other countries and shit like that) and figurative adventures (learning new things, finding new ways to view the world) together with her.
Ted will never have the opportunity to rediscover that sense of adventure in the same way I hopefully will, because his wife is dead. So, on the surface, I think the Ted in 2030 believes that he is telling this tale about his kids' mother and framing it as a sad tale, as a tale of how he not only lost the love of his life, but also lost that sense of wonder and amazement that he had before he grew together with his wife. It is a tale of loss and regret in two different and yet inseparable ways.
And here we finally find true justification for ending the story with Robin. Don't be mistaken. No one—not the showrunners for HIMYM, not Ted, not Ted's kids, not me, not anyone—is trying to tell you that Robin is The One, that it should have been Robin, that Ted loves Robin more than he loved Tracy. No. What the show is trying to tell you is that you can find that sense of adventure once more. Robin is a symbol of that ability to find your sense of wonder in middle age. Even Ted, who won't be able to share it with the true love of his life. Even Ted, who's been down this road with Robin a thousand times and more, and who probably has a feeling that pursuing Robin in 2030 is going to end in disaster just like it did in 2005, in 2006, in 2010, and in 2013. But the important part is that he doesn't know. Life is a mystery again. Life is a challenge. There is value in pursuing Robin as late-40-something because there is value in being able to find a new adventure, and see what you can make of it.
Yes, How I Met Your Mother underlines again and again that young adulthood is a special time in your life, and it's a worthy show based on that alone. But it also ends with a message that life does not end at the conclusion of that time period. "Finding the Mother" was just one mystery. There are plenty more where that came from.
