"How I Met Your Mother" is one of my favorite television shows of all-time. If Internet countdowns are any indication, I'm not alone in this assertion. I could go into the finer details of why I love the show so much, but there is one thing I cannot seem to get over, even two years after the show's end.
Warning for those of you who have not seen the show: there are some spoilers ahead.
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After eight-plus seasons of watching Ted go through relationship after relationship en route to finding true love, he finally finds her while attending the most unlikely of weddings and afterward while both await the train to the city. The final episode was a blur of events to wrap up the show in the allotted hour time slot to get the rest of the picture in the photo of the frame narrative seen in the series.
It's in that fracas of events where things start to fall off the rails a little. The various scenes of Ted and the Mother living through their relationship propel the plot through Marshall's struggles of being a judge, a disappointing divorce of the unlikely married couple and other bits of tumult in the lives of our favorite gang of bar-going friends. After everything, though, Ted and the Mother get married.
But then it happens – and here's the major spoiler: We find out the mother died a couple of years ago of some undisclosed illness. Ted concludes the story to the kids who had been sitting on the couch for nine seasons, and the kids deduce somewhat correctly that he still has feelings for Robin. Then Ted pulls one last grand romantic gesture, and the show cuts to credits.
Needless to say, people had many mixed (though generally not positive) feelings about the show. Some felt empty. Some were outright angry (and continue to be bitter). There was even enough online reaction to petition a reshoot of the ending (and for those of you wondering, an alternate ending does exist). Cristin Milioti, who played the titular mother, reportedly cried heavily upon first reading her character's fate.
Others, in true fatherly fashion, just felt disappointed. And that's where I'm at.
You see, I love this show. It helped me through some rough times and made me feel good (or even just feel) when I needed it most. And I still love it, even after the finale – hence my disappointment.
Alyssa Rosenberg of the Washington Post explained that the finale did two things in equal parts: it betrayed the series' ideals and held too staunchly to the gimmicks it pulled. You can read more in the piece here, but pay special attention to this sentence near the start of the article:
"But it was definitely jarring to learn that the Mother was ... a MacGuffin – a goal he chased for 208 episodes, only for us to find out she was only a plot device."
For those who aren't as well-versed in the tropes of television, here's a quick explanation. A MacGuffin is pretty much the driving force behind a character's motivations, serving little, if any, purpose outside of forward plot movement. In this case, Rosenberg argues what some TV Tropes users assert: the Mother is a living MacGuffin.
It's not an uncommon happening in the series, as Robin served a similar role in the first season. However, that was one season. As one user mentions (open folders and scroll until you get to Living MacGuffin), most of the characterization that happens in season one gets reframed or rewritten in subsequent seasons. The Mother had no characterization to retcon because there was only one season in which the character existed. Meanwhile, the concept of her permeated throughout the whole series in varying frequencies and depths. Those first eight seasons had her pushing forward the plot, while the last made her the plot itself.
But only one episode in that final season made her a character, too: "How Your Mother Met Me," arguably one of the best episodes in the series and the best from the final year. It fleshed out the Mother's character smoothly and almost comprehensively (at least for the show's purposes) and made us fall in love with Milioti's character, down to her rendition of "La Vie En Rose." For once in the show's history, it was an episode about the title mother.
That said, Kaitlin Thomas of TV.com made an interesting point about the show. "The story was never about [the Mother], and that very simple fact is right there in the show's title: How. HOW I met her. When you stop and think about it, the 'I' is the subject; the 'Mother' is only the object."
It makes sense, though. In nine seasons, the Mother is a primary player only once. Every other time, the most she played was a bit part in the inner frame narrative in season nine episodes. Usually, though, she was more like a guest character on a train, in a van or at a store that acted as the catalyst to a main character's development or plotline. So to think that the story was more about the journey than the destination is not wrong. And to think that Ted would resign to One True Love for an entire show would negate the optimism (and realness) involved with the show and the character of Ted Mosby. It would have negated the overarching lessons involved with the nature of loss, sadness and soldiering on.
However, that does not give the finale a clean pass. The show eventually turned into the story of Ted and Robin, which was probably the story all along, but it came at the expense of the most important character in the series – the Mother. Ted may have been the main character, but the Mother was an integral part of the story because, without her, there was no chase – just a litany of love and loss. Her rushed death and the "your mileage may vary" nature of the reconnection with Robin turned the mother into just another name on the list (even if it is a big one).
I love "How I Met Your Mother," and I truly do not dislike the ending (though I do prefer the alternate). I'm just disappointed that she was barely more than a (loveable) plot device.
