Worst Use of “Will They or Won’t They” Ever: How I Met Your Mother
Photo by Francis Orante via Wikimedia Commons
Last week, Kristin Devine wrote about the overused plot device of “Will they or won’t they” and how it spoiled the TV show “Veronica Mars.” I totally agree with her on both points. WTOWT is probably the most overused TV trope ever. And it’s not really an accurate description because you know that the couple inevitably WILL, it’s just a matter of WHEN. And how many times they will break up and get back together over the course of the season.
But perhaps the most egregious use of WTOWT ever was on the sitcom “How I Met Your Mother.” I still remember watching the series pilot where our hero Ted Mosby (Josh Radnor) meets aspiring TV reporter Robin Scherbatsky (a then unknown Colbie Smulders.) It was a pretty good beginning for a sitcom. Boy meets girl. Boy immediately falls in love with girl. Girl gets scared off by boy’s declaration of love. But, you could clearly see where this one was going. They would inevitably end up together, and she would be the titular mother that Ted spends the entire series telling his future children about.
Except, she wasn’t. The writers threw a curve ball at the end of the pilot by revealing that Ted’s future kids would know this woman as “Aunt Robin.” So, she’s NOT the mother. No wondering about whether they would end up together because it’s already in the lore that they WON’T.
Except, they did. Ted and Robin would spend the next 9 seasons getting together, breaking up, dating other people, MARRYING other people, being widowed and divorced, and Ted having kids with a woman who after 9 years of buildup was brutally killed off without explanation in the last minutes of the final episode, just to have them finally end up together. Fans were outraged. I was one of them. How could they spend NINE YEARS building up this love story with this mythical mother (not to mention the entire last season on the wedding of Robin to Ted’s best friend Barney) just to pull this stunt?
I can see why the writers made the decision to go this direction. For the first several years of the show, Ted and Robin were clearly meant for each other. You couldn’t help but like them and root for them. If only it weren’t for that pesky detail that we KNEW it wasn’t meant to be. But the shows creators not only had the ending worked out, they filmed the last scene in 2006 because the teenagers who played Ted’s future kids would have been grown by the time the finale aired 8 years later.
But they screwed up. First of all, the cast was so amazing and the stories so well written, that they really sold us on the matchups. For 8 years, they built up this unseen character, dropping bits and pieces of her story (she played in a band, she carried a yellow umbrella, she was the roommate of one of Ted’s many girlfriends on the show.) And I really had a hard time believing that they would ever find someone who could live up to the hype.
Except they did! With zero warning, actress Cristin Milioti walked out onto the train platform carrying that yellow umbrella and I just about screamed. She was PERFECT. Over the course of season 9, the audience fell in love with her as Ted did. It was all jumbled and told in flashbacks, but we got to see the highlights of their life together: the first date, the wedding, the kids who had been listening to this story as their father droned on about it for 9 seasons. And finally, their first meeting. It was adorable.
They also did a pretty good job of selling us on the Barney/Robin pairing. Two very flawed people with serious commitment issues deciding to give it a shot. Who WOULDN’T root for that? I guess the writers didn’t bother watching what they had created because rather than realizing that they had made a serious error and just redoing the ending, they had Robin and Barney break up in the series finale, and killed “the mother” off with whatever disease that always strikes soap characters with a quick death that still leaves them looking beautiful. Then we discover that the whole point of Ted telling this story was so that he could ask their permission to start dating Robin (and what did DOESN’T want to see his dad date another woman?)
In the last decade, there have been more disappointing series finales than satisfying ones (Looking at you “Game of Thrones) but it takes a truly egregious one to ruin the entire series for me. And the finale of “How I Met Your Mother” was one of them. USA Today named it the worst series finale of all time. Fan outcry was so great that they released an alternate ending when the final season DVD was released. In it, Ted and Tracy (we finally learned her name!) live happily ever after with their two children. Was it lame and cheesy? Yes. But it was sure better than watching Ted get back with Robin one last time.
The new TV season kicks off this month. I’m sure that there’s at least one couple setting off on the whole “Oh, you know they’re going to. Just get it over already” story line. I’ll just be skipping the roller coaster this time.
Awesome piece!! I did not watch the show, but heard enough about it so I caught the drift. Sounds absolutely enraging!Report
The story of mid-2000s TV is of writers thinking they have got a KILLER TWIST that is gonna blow the SOCKS off the (audience figures out the twist in the first five minutes of the pilot) uh no wait actually the REAL twist is that it was a DIFFERENT twist ALL ALONG, ha HA!Report
Although it would be interesting to compare this to “ships” in other fandoms. Like, if writers don’t pander to fan theories about who’s bangin’ who off-screen, is that bad writing, or is that a respectable refusal to submit to fan entitlement?Report
Sam and Diane on Cheers. Not quite as terrible as this, but obvious and irritating.Report
That was at least the one which kind of set the formula which everything else was trying to be.Report
Yes! I always think of “will they or won’t they” as the “Sam and Diane” plot–maybe some see it as “Ross and Rachel”Report
Though there was also….what were their names? Maddie and David? On “Moonlighting”? Was that before or after “Cheers,” all the mid-80s series timelines run together for me now.Report
Moonlighting is often cited as proof that you have to keep the WTOWT going forever.Report
I *think* Moonlighting may have come first (but I really don’t know and don’t care enough to look it up).Report
Cheers first ran in late 1982. Moonlighting in early 1985.Report
It’s all a blur. Thanks for the clarification.
I’m still trying to get over the cancellation of Scarecrow and Mrs. King.Report
My understanding is that WTOWT is because it is a lot easier to write than a real relationship and avoids the Shipping Bed Death trope, where the formation of an official romantic couple leads to fans loosing interest in them. Plus, you get to build up rivalries in fandom and keep the audience engaged in the show.Report
Ted was angry and unbalanced. The show’s reveal should have been that Ted had long ago killed his wife because she had flaws, and he was telling his kids elaborate stories about how perfect she was. “If only she had listened to me more!”Report
Agree with everything here. Plus, possibility the worst aspect of not letting the ending ‘breathe’ if they were determined to go that way anyway, was the complete undoing of Robin’s character in the span of some 10 tv show minutes. It was immensely frustrating – and cliched and lazy – that some 15 years after her divorce, all she was was a ‘career woman with lots of pets and no social life’.
(it was also a total cop out to not just have Bob Saget play ‘old’ Ted. And the fishin editing of the last scene with Radnor and the previously filmed footage was possibly the most amateur thing that had been on network TV in 70 years)Report
How I Met Your Mother is an interesting reversal of the usual pattern. There are any number of shows that start off terrific, but end up going nowhere. Sometimes this is because the writers had a great idea for one season, then had nothing. Other times they may vast quantities of good material, but no coherent end game. This is fine for a traditional sitcom like I Love Lucy, but the modern trend is for shows with a clear need for closure. This is great when it works, but it often doesn’t.
HIMYM reverses the usual problem of the writing not having an ending. They had an ending from the start. They knew exactly where they were taking the show. Their problem was that they had no idea how to get there. We cared because the meandering along the way was actually pretty good, and occasionally very good. It held our attention through a long run.
By way of contrast, for an example of a show that totally nailed the ending, watch The Americans. Watch the entire series, if you haven’t already. Or even if you have. I am currently rewatching it, now up to Season 4. It stands up to rewatching. And the series finale? Absolutely perfect. After I first saw it I immediately watched it again, and this is not something that I usually do.Report
The Americans is an amazing show with an amazing ending.Report
“But the shows creators not only had the ending worked out, they filmed the last scene in 2006 because the teenagers who played Ted’s future kids would have been grown by the time the finale aired 8 years later.”
I did not know this. And I think it’s the problem. The show went in a different direction than what they intended. And they had no way of adapting to that. GRMM is facing the same problem with Game of Thrones: he has the ending in mind, but the story as written is deviating and it’s hard for him to wrench it back. It’s why the last season of GoT felt a bit off.Report
After The Matrix II and III totally ruined the original movie for me, I committed to never watching movie sequels, and I am very very wary of TV series in general. If the creators of the movie/series did not have a story arc planned from start to finish, I’m not interested in being lead around by the nose while they try to keep the ratings up. Worked for me in Heroes, in Battlestar Galactica, Game of Thrones. Ok I missed out on a few good ones like Breaking Bad.Report