Now We’ve Met the Mother

While my social media feeds ran rampant with angry hockey posts and the excitement of Chris Hadfield’s return to Earth, I managed to distance myself from the frenzy. Silly me, I was worried that fans of the CBS show, How I Met Your Mother, would spoil for me what I had waited eight seasons to find out. I was proud of my ability to stay clear of the ever addicting apps and pages of Facebook and Twitter. It meant that when I finally got the chance to watch the finale episode this morning, the pay off of my own mission — my TV mission — would be oh-so-sweet.

As it turns out, it was just “okay”. It’s no wonder that when I logged in after the fact, and scanned through the last 13 hours of my Facebook community’s status updates, there was not one single mention of this finale reveal. Of course huge events were happening, and people have important moments to report in their own lives, but surely after eight years of this jack ass not being able to find the right woman, at least one person who had invested the time might have said something! Nope. Twitter had talk (but I had to go looking) and I have a few theories as to why.

First of all, the finale was lackluster. It wasn’t bad, hell, compared to the slush that has aired this last season it was probably the strongest episode of their 8th year. But you can’t build up one woman this much, have us introduced to hundreds of quirky characters and make us jump through all these hoops only to reveal someone unknown and completely irrelevant to our history together and not even pack a punch. Where is our extravagant “TA DA” moment?! You just pushed her out, and timidly from the looks of her, then said “go on, it’s okay”, and after a moment of awkward silence it’s like you came out and said, “there you go, we cool?” (and by “you” I mean everyone collectively involved in determining the direction of the show).

Secondly, this never-ending story has not only out-lived the interest of many of its initial fans, but it’s made the ones who stuck around start to question whether they care anymore. Not just because we’re getting a little bored, but because you’ve made us dislike Ted. This is his story, we are supposed to care about him and the girl who finally gets his heart. Instead I find him annoying. He’s a schmuck, a whiny little bitch who believes hopelessly in “fate” and “destiny” but complains endlessly when his attempts to force these things don’t pan out. I want to make a T-shirts that say “Don’t be a Ted” because I fear that impressionable young men might start to think that this is the sensitive dream guy that all girls want. Don’t be a Ted, or you’ll never wed. I think that’s the lesson here.

I think true fans of the show find it’s strongest quality to be the spot-on story continuity. Back and forth they go. A seed planted in season two begins to sprout in season four. A word, a phrase, an intervention, a song about banging, these things resurface effortlessly. We are taken back to a scene we’ve already witnessed, only something new is introduced that was intertwined so seamlessly they have us questioning whether or not we missed it the first time. I’m talking near flawless execution on flashbacks and always coming back to the “…but we’ll get to that later” moments just as promised. So why now, after conditioning us to expect a grand reveal so elaborate in design that are minds are blown, why the misfire?

Because maybe she’s not the mother?

All I can say is that the 9th season is under a lot of pressure. I’d go easy on them but really the evidence shows that they’ve dug their own hole. I really hope they can dig themselves out.

Side note: Truly disappointed that they wasted Casey Wilson on that character. She would have been a much better mother reveal.