How I Met Your Mother - "Something New" - Review

How I Met Your Mother in some respects has always been playing a long con. However, there used to be so much more to the series than the titillating possibility of who the mother was. It was, among many other things, a really sweet and funny exploration of being in your late twenties and growing old. The mother and the growing mythology were always intriguing, occasionally exciting, but it was never the end all be-all for the show’s existence. And even as the series reached a point where it should have been giving bigger answers, it was still managing episodes that were absolute knock-outs that it was hard to question the writers forestalling the inevitable. For example, season four is arguably where the show began to show signs of slowing down and yet it has “Three Days of Snow” which is on a narrative, character, and humor level one of the best efforts the series would ever produce and has tons of re-watch value.

But somewhere around the fifth or sixth season the show became a major tease almost always to the show’s detriment. The show could no longer be just a fun hang out comedy with the occasional hint of grander designs related to its title. In fact, the hang out aspects often became at times the least interesting part of the series as they seemed to frequently be filler to waste some time until we got a big piece of information pertinent to the identity of the mother. Now this isn’t the whole truth of the matter. Seasons seven and eight have produced such solid efforts as “The Ducky Tie”, “Tick Tick Tick”, “Symphony of Illumination” and “The Final Page”; all of which are some of the shows best efforts that do many things a series this far in its run ought to be doing. They revealed things about our main characters, while being plenty of fun and in some instances very moving. But by and large, HIMYM seemed to be stuck in its tracks, re-hashing old gags and plots, such as the slap bet (even the return of the slutty pumpkin was rather disappointing and even a little unnecessary).

If this were a typical sitcom we might let it slide, but the long term goals of the series have become more and more pressing as the show has gone along because they need to be serviced in order for the show to complete its narrative in a relatively satisfying and holistic manner. Any time we aren’t finding something out about the mother, we know the writers are probably being withholding, and that means every typical sitcom situation is slightly tainted. 

This is especially true of an episode that is meant to be a season finale. Finales need to do more than the standard episode of a season. They are stuck with the duel task of functioning as a standalone effort and to wrap up the various plots we’ve been following throughout. And “Something New” for a while is very un-finale like for a strange amount of time. There are very sitcom-y plots and not entirely in a good way, which is not to say it’s without its moments, but the show once again appears to be stalling until we get some big reveal in the eleventh hour. 

If you're wondering why I don't just shut up already about all this theoretical pondering and let you have your cowboy boot wearing cake, it's because besides the awesome, invigorating reveal at episode's end, this is not a great episode. Now when we do get the reveals at episode end, it’s all very exciting ... but it’s another damn tease. Granted it's a tease with a sense of finality and purpose, but it's still the show saying, "Hey! Stick with us for one more season. Stuff's going to happen eventually!" I mean, we haven’t even gotten to the wedding yet. HIMYM probably should have ended with this season, but since it will go on for a ninth season it makes sense that the writers want to draw this out a little longer. But it does feel like they’ve been a bit dishonest, suggesting from this season’s premiere (“Farhampton”, where we flash forwarded to the future wedding as well as were given a glimpse of Ted’s first encounter with the mother) that by season’s end we’d at least have gotten to the damn wedding. And we sort of do, as everyone heads over the wedding ceremony (including, which I’ll get into more later, the - OH MY GAWD THEY REVEALED THE - MOTHER!!! – played by Cristin Milioti). But it’s the show stalling once more. Granted this stall leaves me wanting more in a way previous stalls haven’t, but it’s still a stall. 

Let’s get into the nitty gritty of this. I had qualms with this finale but everything between Lily and Ted is absolutely fantastic. Lily and Ted have been an underused pairing in the series. The early glimmers of their friendship and its significance as a bedrock of the group got pushed aside for other stories. But it’s a nice call back here to how the two have always been willing to tell eachother big secrets when they’ve been afraid to tell anyone else. This scene works, not only because it’s revealing stuff to us finally, but because it gives material for Joshua Radnor and Alyson Hannigan to play that actually gives them something interesting and emotionally resonate to play. While there was probably something far more meaningful to call back to than that locket Robin tore up all of Central Park failing to find, it’s a callback that feels like it’s worth recalling to expand the story further in meaningful ways rather than to re-hash a joke for diminishing returns. It’s not a perfect flashback in that Robin is acting very out of character (her feelings for Ted were long since over by that point and it feels slightly like a cheap retcon), but it’s progress for the narrative in a way that the series has been seriously lacking since the mid-season finale “The Final Page”.    

Now I know you want me to talk about you-know-who, but we have to deal with another less fun point before we move on. That Robin and Barney storyline was just awful. Everything that’s wrong about Barney is present in this story. This is a mean-spirited and nasty, inconsistent and uninteresting plot that regresses both Robin and Barney, and it’s just utterly frustrating. They break up a couple because they’re pissed off by them. And then the only reason its okay is due to them accidentally causing the couple to get engaged. And then they shrug it off as if it’s no big deal. The writers seem to think if they can’t make Barney less of a scheming womanizer than the only solution is to drag Robin down to his level, but it’s not an honest development for either character and it’s simply not pleasant to watch Colbie Smulders or Neil Patrick Harris to play this character note. Everyone appears to have accepted the dreadfulness of this behavior by Barney, which was why it was refreshing to see Ted call him on his shit and then to see Robin question the behavior in last week’s episode. But everything is status quo once more. It’s okay to let characters evolve. Barney doesn’t need to be the same sex crazed maniac he was at show’s start. He can grow and we have totally seen growth and it’s not a complete leap of logic that he would want to settle down. This feels like unnecessary overcompensation.  

Now that we’re past the bad…. *Hyperventilates* THE MOTHER! Now I don’t know if showing the mother at this point was the best decision but, hell, I’m just happy to be able to put a face to this mystical manic-pixie-dream-girl we’ve heard so much about for so long. After eight years I don’t care if this wasn’t the best reveal but that there was at least something revealed. And since we’ve only heard her speak one line, there’s little for us to say whether this was a choice piece of casting or not. All we know is that there is indeed a (wo)man behind that blasted curtain and, well, she seems fetching if nothing else.  

HIMYM, at this point, has become one of the flagship series of CBS; a series that oddly enough seemed to gain fans rather than bleed them as it got older (something that almost never happens to shows going into their eighth season). And since it went beyond what was arguably its appropriate lifespan, it has made decisions to sustain itself going forward into the future. Some were bad, but others have allowed for some great episodes of television (especially for a series that is practically a dinosaur by this point). While it’s not as strong as it was at its peak, HIMYM still manages moments that give me hope for it going forward into its final season. Marshal’s sojourn to Minnesota produces some funny moments and the way it’s played to undercut the gravitas of the Ted-Lily conversation is classic HIMYM. It’s moments like these that still put a smile on my face even though the series at times seems to have run its course and gets stuck in ruts it often just doesn’t know how to remove itself from. 

HIMYM isn’t a bad series, but a series that has far too much time to kill. If anything, it’s a show that could use a shortened series order (rather than 23 episodes, may be it gets 14). Because when it’s good, it remains indelible, but when it’s not, at best it’s boring and at worst it’s just painful to sit through. And this finale is a mixture of moments that left me going meh but it also had the reveal of the mother which had me so freaking giddy. But this episode does leave me excited for next season even if it is largely due to a huge cliffhanger. But dude: it was one hell of a cliffhanger!