How I Met "How I Met Your Mother"

 

Kids, I'm gonna tell you an incredible story. The story of how I met "How I Met Your Mother."

It was the summer of 2012. Barack Obama was a few months away from re-election for a second term as President. Marvel's The Avengers was on its way to becoming the third highest grossing movie of all-time. YouTube was about to contaminate the internet with the music video for Gangnam Style which, to date, is the most-watched clip in its history.

And just a few months earlier, a show described in its Netflix bio as "Ted's epic search for his soul mate told largely through flashbacks, as an adult Ted recounts to his kids how he met their mother," had just wrapped up its seventh season. As the self-proclaimed melancholic sap that I am, this show had me at the words "epic" and "soul mate." And being a fan of any non-linear style of story-telling and of well-crafted scripts using flashbacks to tell their tales, I was instantly hooked. So how did this gem of a show stay hidden from me for 160 episodes?

Call it karma. Call it fate. Call it divine intervention. Or, simply, call it "I had a job for seven years that required I work on Monday nights." While there had been a couple of lazy weekend afternoons in which I found an episode or two in syndication on various unnamed cable channels, I had never seen - in its primetime slot - one episode of the show that I would eventually define as my personal life compass.

It was after these successful "trial runs" that I decided to give the show a real chance. Thus, on one fateful day in the middle of 2012, I turned on my computer, logged into Netflix, found the pilot episode on the How I Met Your Mother page and, with a single click of the mouse, began a journey that would forever change my outlook on life and love.

Sam and Diane. Ross and Rachel. Jim and Pam. Zack and Screech. Television has always had its own versions of Romeo and Juliet. The tragic story of two star-crossed lovers doomed in their destiny to be together. In some cases, the show centers itself around the relationship, while in others the focal point is the long and winding road traveled by the two on their way to finding each other. With How I Met Your Mother, the story was slightly different.


What begins as a typical story of boy meets girl, soon becomes a story of boy meets girl; boy falls in love with girl; girl is not ready for the type of commitment boy wants; boy and girl become friends; boy meets another girl who bakes cakes but then moves to Germany; boy makes it rain and finally gets first girl; after a season-long romance, boy and girl come to the realization that they have an expiration date and call it quits . . .

. . . boy gets butterfly tattoo and meets another girl who is a dermatologist; boy gets engaged to girl doctor only to be left at the altar as she runs away with her ex-husband (who later writes screenplay for a movie franchise negatively depicting boy and girl doctor's relationship); boy meets another girl (who will later meet a girl of her own to live happily ever after with) whose roommate seems to be a better compatibility match for boy; boy meets girl who is political activist standing in the way of boy achieving dream of making an architectural contribution to the New York City skyline. . .

. . . boy re-meets cake girl on her wedding day and runs away with her only to have their second shot at love end when she makes him choose between herself and first girl; first girl falls in love with and gets engaged to boy's (best?) friend; boy is best man at wedding and finds a long-lost item to give to girl as a wedding gift; boy finally meets the girl with the yellow umbrella at aforementioned wedding and talks to her for the first time at a train stop in the rain . . .

 

Along my own journey through bachelorhood I had come to want the things that everyone wants. Someone to look forward to seeing after a long day at work. Or to share the couch with on a movie night at home. Or to remind you that everything will be okay (especially after a big Red Sox loss). Or to make a nice dinner for. Or to laugh at your bad jokes. Or to tell you that you aren't as funny as you think you are.

For Ted, that someone was always Robin. And from the minute he first saw her in that bar - five minutes into the 9-year long story of how he met the mother of his children - he knew she was "the one." And at one point in life whether they are still searching for, or have already found their "the one," everyone of us has had a Robin of our own. Seeing a lot of myself in the Ted character, I always felt i had a vested interest in whether he would ever find true love and have his "happily ever after."

In an admittedly weird way, I believed that if it could be so for him then I, too, would one day have my own story to share with a couple of kids on a couch. Of course, the story would begin with a lengthy apology from me for having delayed their existence by spending hours, weeks, and, quite frankly, months watching a silly television show instead of trying to find their mother. And, so that I won't waste their time with a boring story bereft of detail, I have always been a keen observer of my surroundings and circumstances when in a coffee shop or laundry mat, or on a plane or train, at the gym or grocery store, or even sitting at my desk at work.

It's at this point I would like to be able to joke about carrying around a little notebook in my back pocket so that I can jot down notes about the appearance, demeanor, and overall first impression of every girl I meet but let's face it, at this point, who among you would think i was only kidding? I openly confess to being guilty - more times than most - of blurring the Dobler-Dahmer line. The line of demarcation that, depending on how it is perceived by the other person, characterizes an act or gesture as romantically sweet ala John Cusack's Lloyd Dobler character from the 1989 movie Say Anything (or really any role played by John Cusack in the 80's), or horrifyingly creepy and serial-killerish ala Jeffery Dahmer.


Alas, as is so often the case in real life, time passes and people change. That person who once held the basket in which you put all your eggs no longer has the same effect on you they once did. Whereas I once visualized myself at the writer's roundtables helping to script ways in which the story would find its way back to the Robin character, I ultimately gave in to that little voice in my head telling me that it was not meant to be. This was the same inner voice I had routinely ignored for so long when it spoke to me about the Robin characters of my own life.

As seasons wore on and characters developed and storylines unfolded, what was once to me the obvious - and only - ending, began to look increasingly less likely to happen. As we approached what would be the end of one story, and the beginning of another, it looked as though the only thing that could ever bring these two together was some sort of what I like to call a Shyamalanian ending. Named after M Knight Shyamalan, this is when the writer finds himself pinned in the corner of a room filled with inevitable endings left with no way out other than to create a plot twist so far-fetched and out of the blue that the audience is left feeling shocked, confused and, oftentimes, disappointed.

Then, with only a few episodes left of the 208 that would be used to tell this story and just as I had reached the depths of despair, the writers threw us the curveball I had been waiting on the whole time. Through the use of a flash-forward, or flashback depending on your point of reference, Ted and the mother of his children are sharing a somber moment in which three separate, yet equally ambiguous, comments are made.

Possibly overlooked by some in their subtlety, I used these remarks to postulate exactly how the show's story would now finish. Within minutes of the episode's end, I sent a single text message to my sisters outlining the plot twist I had lobbied for for so long. As the series finale came to a close, I graciously spared them the "I told you so" moment I had once looked forward to having.


It has now been two weeks since the final episode of How I Met Your Mother aired and, concurrently, it has been two weeks since Twitter and Facebook were virtually broken by the flooding by posts filled with more negativity and cynicism than a Bill O'Reilly White House interview. These feelings shared by so many were clearly fueled by the passion and the time invested by them over the years.

However, there were some, like myself, who could appreciate the commitment to an idea displayed by the writers as they brought the story full-circle and delivered the ending they had envisioned from the very beginning nine years earlier. For that I applaud them and defend them. Throughout the show it had become evident to most of the "not the mother" characters and was equally so to his children, so it should have been no surprise to the viewer that it would end the way it did.

 

If you want to make a cake from a recipe, you don't gather all of the ingredients, combine them as instructed, bake for the required time and then open the oven door expecting to find a pizza. Yes, that pizza would have been just as enjoyable but that is not what the recipe called for. You had all the things needed for a cake and that is what you got. When the story of meeting one person begins with the meeting of another eight years earlier and closely follows that person throughout the whole story, one should have expected that, in the end, Ted would get his cake. And, with the blessing of his children, he would eat it, too.

On the flipside of the reaction coin, there were those angered by the fate of the woman they had waited almost as long to meet as did Ted himself. I dismiss any objection to the length of time it took for the show to introduce her with the same rationale I used in defending Steven Spielberg's World War II epic starring Tom Hanks and Matt Damon. (it was called "Saving Private Ryan," not "Spending Time With Private Ryan"). The show was not titled, "How I Met Your Mother, Married Her, Had Two Kids with Her, and We All Lived Happily Ever After."


The one flaw I have with the resolution of the story was the blatant neglect of an accomplishment that I find so difficult to achieve. In my humble opinion the easiest part of writing a story is either the ending or the beginning. Unlike the "chicken or egg" argument, I don't think it matters which comes first because the other is usually found shortly thereafter. The hard part is getting the characters from one end to the other regardless of which direction you choose to take them.

Character development is always crucial in determining the thought processes and actions taken by the people in a story in which the reader, or viewer, has a rooting interest. With How I Met Your Mother, everyone had a character with whom they could relate and they watched that character grow over time.

As the show neared the end of its run, we all had a certain sense of who, or what, everyone had become and developed certain expectations as to how their tales would end. With the ending that was eventually handed to us, all of the development and growth we had witnessed over the years was essentially forsaken so that the original ending could be realized. It was in this respect that I, too, felt somewhat cheated.


As if this story of how I discovered a show was not long enough, in a fashion befitting its subject matter, I did contemplate writing it in short installments over a nine-year period carefully taking the time to engage the reader in my quest. Not wanting to risk disappointing any of the devoted followers that would have found that approach appealing, I opted against it. Although, if it has not already been made apparent, I had no idea how this was going to end when I sat down (other than finding an excuse to make use of the photo-editing software on my new computer), so there was no possibility of misleading and crossing anyone along the way.

And that, kids, is how I met "How I Met Your Mother."