I've read a lot about How I Met Your Mother these last couple days and I really don't agree with the prevailing sentiment about the finale. The reasons why I don't agree may seem a little strange, especially given that the following thoughts were inspired by a sitcom. Here goes anyway.
It's noted frequently that we've been conditioned to have strange and unrealistic expectations about the nature of love. Movies and literature would have us believe that love is an uncontrollable chemical reaction or a realization of fate -- a perfect and inevitable matching of symmetric but separately, incomplete, parts. Maybe I'm doing it wrong (I'm not) but, in my experience, love is just none of those things at all. How I Met Your Mother's finale has a sanguine opinions but supremely realistic opinion of love. Maybe the most realistic opinion I have yet seen in popular media
Consider the dimensions of that finale by which people seem to feel most betrayed. They spent an entire season on a wedding weekend for characters that would end up divorced. The season was punctuated by a beautiful, naked expression of love between both characters. The show spent the last two seasons convincing us that those two people were fated together.
Except it didn't.
It gave us grand, beautiful moments that served as weigh-stations along a highway of many, many smaller moments that indicated these two characters may not be right for each other. The fact that we spend so much time on a wedding weekend that ultimately ends in divorce rings incredibly true to me. How many times have we all attended events that were happy, important memories at the time but take on a different meaning later? How many photos are floating around of couples, of people that absolutely, without a doubt loved each other once but couldn't make it work? Are those moment vanished Of course not. Are they wrong or ruined or somehow rendered imperfect? Yeah, sometimes. Sometimes not. Regardless, it certainly happens and I personally don't want art (even popular art for mass consumption) to just paper over the existence of those moments or those events.
The show ultimately stands as an argument for many possible loves in a lifetime ensconced in a candy shell gimmick that implied there was actually only ever one love for each of us - or at least it seemed to. That's not true. That you could love someone deeply, lose them and love someone else deeply is a painful, complicated but freeing reality. I would hate the thought of Cole in love with another man - that she would give him the same looks, use the same tone of voice, hold his hand, have private jokes and feel emotions for him that were once reserved only for me. The only thing I could hate more than that is the thought that she would go on alone and unfulfilled simply because she had had the bad fortune of losing me.
That we didn't see Ted truly mourn The Mother in that episode was a function of time. It would take a multi-part arc to convey that honestly which would undercut the shock of the final reveal. It wasn't perfect storytelling admittedly (especially on a show that could certainly take the scenic routes), but if we had more than a vague notion of what was coming the emotional impact would have been greatly diminished. It was a tough narrative choice and understand why they made the one they did.
We spent 9 years with the character Ted and because of that we know - we absolutely know with certainty - that he sincerely mourned The Mother and continued to mourn her even as he found his way back to Robin. We only had a few minutes to process The Mother's death. Ted had five years. If you judge his return to Robin as an indication that Ted was somehow cold, cynical or sselfish, I don't know what to tell you. That reads to me as a weird combination of moralistic and self-righteous. On matters of the heart, at least, Ted definitely earned the benefit of the doubt.
The fact that The Mother was a one instead of the one doesn't make their time together any less precious. Nor does the fact that Ted ultimately found his way back to Robin. That Ted could genuinely let go of Robin and then rediscover his feelings for her later doesn't invalidate his time with the mother nor does it read to me as heartless, stupid or even unlikely. The devil - in love, as in all things - is in the details, and timing is pretty important detail.
The reaction to this show is the world reacting negatively to their being forced to confront and reevaluate their fairy tale notion of how love and monogamy really functions (when it functions at all). That the show seemed to be offering a fairy tale while all the while surreptitiously making a far more complex and honest emotional argument makes the ending only that much more brave. I loved it and given time, I think more people will grow to love it, too.
