We all have our areas of expertise.
An avid golfer will notice when another golfer pulled his head or some such on a swing, and will be able to accurately predict that ball will shank left or right as a result. An Army Captain will shake his or her head whilst watching the latest military flick and comment about how the uniforms are all wrong. An equestrian will grimace watching some actors and actresses ride horses, seeing that their posture and balance are terrible. A film student will be able to tell you exactly when a movie or tv episode transitions from Act 1 to Act 2 to Act 3.
(Okay, I realize these examples are mostly dealing with movies, but there’s a point to be made here!)
And that point is that once you learn the background structure of something (a proper golf swing, accurate military uniforms of a time period, proper riding posture, film structure), it tends to stick in your head. Especially if you are very passionate about that subject.
As some of you might know, I am very passionate about writing. (I’m also very passionate about horses and film.) Whether I want to or not, I automatically analyze the story structure for any tv show and movie I ever watch anymore. (And let’s not go into reading books. Sometimes ignorance is bliss. :P) This means that sometimes I really enjoy things other people hate, because I see the beautiful background structure of it and can admire it for that. And sometimes I hate things that other people love, because the background structure doesn’t meet my expectations and I can’t get myself to forgive that.
I’ve heard a lot of griping lately about the HIMYM (that’s How I Met Your Mother, btw) series finale episode. Before I heard all this griping, I’d come to my own conclusion about how I felt about the ending episode, and my conclusion was: (MAJOR SPOILERS FOLLOW IF YOU DON’T KNOW ALREADY AND CARE AT ALL)
1) It is terribly sad and kind of disappointing that after nine years of watching the show, the mother gets sick and dies
2) But overall, I didn’t mind the ending, or the fact that Ted goes back to Robin and that it’s left with him standing outside her apartment holding that blue French horn again
It might just be the romantic in me (although I often found myself annoyed as crap with Ted’s sappy romanticism on the show), but I find that ending incredibly poetic. I love the circular nature of it. And come on, let’s just be honest, did anyone ACTUALLY think Ted and Robin WEREN’T going to end up together in the … um, well, end???
In truth, that was exactly what I had been expecting all along. Despite being proven “wrong” over and over through nine years, and telling myself repeatedly they shouldn’t be together because that would just mess up everything else (including Robin being with Barney – I really did love them as a couple) – the Robin and Ted theme was just too strong and too-often mentioned for me to really believe it would never ever amount to anything. The entire show was really about the relationship between those two and everything that got in the way of it. For them to finally, FINALLY, be at a place in their lives where they could give it another shot (and in my mind, it works this time) is to me, a very happy ending.
So maybe that’s why I didn’t hate the finale. I recognized the overall theme, saw the clues, realized the foreshadowing, and appreciated the full-circle nature. And along the way thoroughly enjoyed the funny times, the rough times, the sad times, and the amazing ability of the show’s writers to keep the storyline untangled enough to come out at the end with only one, ONE, teeny tiny little loose end (which I never would have noticed if someone else hadn’t pointed it out).
(Also, the hubby totally predicted the mother would die before Ted even proposed to her. He does that. It’s useless to watch WhoDunnIts with him, trust me. He knows who the killer is in the first ten seconds.)
So maybe this time I just appreciated the overall background structure of the thing enough to be not so frustrated and disappointed like so many other HIMYM fans. In fact, I’d go so far as to say I LIKED IT. It felt right to me.
(Although I can see why a lot of people might have been blindsided. The show IS called “How I Met Your Mother“, after all. And even though Ted eventually finds a woman he loves enough to marry and has two kids with her, I pretty much always knew that Robin was actually “the one” he’d been searching for and waiting for the whole time. He could never let her go. Even when he pretended to, it didn’t last long. It was meant to be from the beginning. The kids even hung a lantern on it by telling their own father that he was only telling them the story of how he met their mother to ask them in a convoluted and roundabout way if it was okay if he now went after their Aunt Robin again … because the story was actually totally in and of itself really the story of the development of his very complex and messed up relationship with Robin!)
Life and love aren’t perfect, they don’t get wrapped up in pretty boxes with bows. HIMYM illustrated that point very well, without being overtly downer and depressing, and with many uplifting and hopeful points, too. The ending fits the show. Fits the theme. And it’s pretty much all just awesome writing all around.
Don’t believe me? Well. Writer’s Digest’s Cris Freese agrees with me, at least about the writing bit. Not so much about the Pineapple Incident, though.
What the heck is the Pineapple Incident? Well, in case you forgot (like I did), that’s apparently the teeny tiny lose end that was left hanging at the end of this series. (Aside from the fact that some people consider the ending to be an open door in general, but I don’t mind that, either. After all the stuff I’ve read about endings, it’s said they are supposed to be never-endings, anyway. Meaning, you never really solidly close the door on anything, but leave at least a little something loose or open or cracked, just enough to resonate with the reader and leave them wanting just a little bit more.)
So back to the pineapple. Apparently Ted ended up with a pineapple on his nightstand after becoming black out drunk one night, and to this day no one knows where the pineapple came from. This is okay with me. I like a little mystery. HIMYM was a show with a narrative that relied on one person’s memory. Memory is not perfect. If Ted doesn’t remember, then we just don’t know. It’s okay that the writer doesn’t even know where that pineapple came from – I’ve met plenty of published and very successful authors now who admit to not knowing every single detail of every incident ever mentioned in their books. Some things are left open, left unknown.
And it’s okay! Really.
(Note: It is NOT okay, however, to leave an entire plot string hanging. So don’t get any funny ideas…)
So there you go, that’s my two cents on the matter. I applaud HIMYM for it’s impressive strategic plotting and masterful control of subplot over a very long timeline involving non-linear and embellished character memories.
I can only hope that most of the rest of us would-be writers will be equally as savvy in our structuring and plotting!
And you know what, go ahead … throw a mysterious random pineapple in there, too.
I had mixed feelings about it (thought Barney and Robin had good chemistry and was sorry that didn’t work out), but, on the whole, I think I am in favor of it. On a purely technical level, the ending resolves the central tension of the show, which was: “Why am I hearing a story called How I Met Your Mother where the mother is barely a presence?” I mean, the majority of the stories have nothing to do with Ted meeting the mother. But if you hear it as a lead-up to being with Robin, it all makes more sense, since the show literally begins with him meeting her. So yeah, very clever. And, in some ways, satisfying.
I agree with you about Robin and Barney. I was also sorry that didn’t work out. Although, I sort of expected that, too, given how the first time they began dating turned out. I ended up being so nervous that one or the other of them would freak out and cancel the wedding at the last moment that I was actually quite surprised when the wedding actually happened at all. 😛 But yes, the whole series makes a lot more sense if you look at it from the viewpoint of Ted and Robin instead of Ted and the mother. And that’s how I was looking at it for at least half of its run (I got tired of waiting for the mother to arrive, lol, so maybe it was act of self-preservation?) so for me, I was happy overall with the ending. Thanks for sharing your thoughts! It’s good to hear from other people who didn’t hate it entirely! 😉
It also helped that it got spoiled for me, so I could watch the last 5-6 episodes with the foreknowledge that it wasn’t going to work out. Actually, there are plenty of little signs and signals, if you know to look. So it wasn’t as shocking as it was for others who got blindsided by it.
Agreed. I guess I had just made enough of my own assumptions based on what I had seen thus far (which turned out to be correct) that I wasn’t blindsided by the turn of events at all.
You are an amazing writer! And you explain things so well without being condescending. You would be an awesome motivational writer!
Well I’m glad you think so! 😛 Hah. I would like to think that some of my posts inspire other people!