“How I Met Your Mother” – take the title literally

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a big fan of the show How I Met Your Mother. And following the last few episodes, I’ve seen a lot of speculation online about the show… with next year’s season nine pretty much confirmed to be the final season and the second half of season eight already bringing us tantalizingly close to the actual meeting of Ted Mosby (Josh Radnor) and “The Mother,” there’s a lot of chatter going on about who the titular Mother is. And while that’s by no means unimportant, I don’t think it’s as important as some of the other factors at play here. Things like the Mother’s job, her background, even her name are only important in how they play into the story of Ted Mosby.

So here’s your spoiler warning. I’m about to talk about specific plot points up to and including the January 14th episode. If you’re not caught up, you may not want to read.

Too many people are concerned about who the Mother is. They approach the story like it’s a murder mystery, trying to use each clue as it’s revealed to narrow down the field of suspects and find the Mother before Ted does. There’s a problem with this approach, though. Unless both the producers of the show and the show’s narrator (Ted himself in the year 2030) have constantly lied to us from the very beginning, the Mother is not someone we have ever met. We can’t narrow down the field because the list of potential mothers includes virtually any woman on Earth who has not previously appeared on the show.

Well, that’s not strictly true. Seven and a half seasons in, we actually know several specific things about the mother. But true to form, those details don’t actually point us towards a specific person, but rather to the circumstances of Ted meeting her. The genius of the show is that each fact we learn about her explains why one (or more) of the series’s many side-stories, subplots or tangents are not actually side-stories, subplots or tangents after all, but actually are integral to explaining just how the complicated tapestry of Ted Mosby’s life finally leads him to his true love. Let’s look as a few of the things we know about the Mother and Ted’s encounters with her, and how those clues actually point backwards rather than forwards.

• In the episode “Definitions” (Season Five, Episode One) we learn that the Mother was a student in the first class Ted taught when he became a professor at Columbia University. However, on that first day he went to the wrong classroom – he was giving his opening day spiel to a class of economics students rather than his architecture class. While he no doubt couldn’t pick out his future wife in the auditorium of students, she would most certainly remember the strange young professor who boldly humiliated himself teaching the wrong subject. This justifies the season four story arc in which Ted almost marries Stella (Sarah Chalke). If not for their relationship Stella wouldn’t have reconciled with her ex, who then got Ted the professor job out of guilt, and therefore the Mother wouldn’t have seen Ted that day. I would be very surprised if this isn’t referenced when the two of them finally, officially meet.
• In “Girls Vs. Suits” (Season Five, Episode Twelve) Ted dates a woman named Cindy (Rachel Bilson). Their relationship crumbles when Ted finds that all of the stuff in her apartment that he actually finds appealing belongs to Cindy’s roommate, and Future Ted reveals that Cindy’s Roommate is, in fact, The Mother (although at that point he does not actually meet her). Interesting information, to be certain, but considering how many one-episode girlfriends Ted has had, it doesn’t appear to be particularly significant at the time. As of this week’s episode, however, that is no longer the case. But we’ll get to that.
• In “Big Days” (Season Six, Episode One) we learn that Ted will meet the Mother at a wedding, in which he is the best man. Important, but not enough of a clue to build on, except that it turns a storyline from later in the season — in which Ted is best man for his old high school buddy Punchy (Chris Romanski) — into a red herring… because it isn’t Punchy’s wedding after all.
• In “Challenge Accepted” (Season Six, Episode Twenty-Four) we learn that Ted will meet the Mother when he’s the best man at Barney’s wedding. Now we know why so many of the Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) stories, going all the way back to season one, matter to the arc. It’s important we know that Ted is Barney’s “best bro in the world.”
• In “The Magician’s Code Part Two” (Season Seven, Episode Twenty-Four) we learn that Ted will meet the Mother when he’s the best man at Barney’s wedding…  to Robin. This is probably the biggest, most important bomb dropped on us yet. The HIMYM story begins, in the pilot episode, when Ted Mosby meets Robin Scherbatsky (Cobie Smulders), because he literally would not have met his wife if he wasn’t at Robin’s wedding. This explains the significance of huge swaths of the show, including all the stories about Ted and Robin’s relationship, Robin and Barney’s relationship, and even those stories about Ted and Victoria (Ashley Williams), an early Mother candidate whose path with Ted was derailed twice because of Robin. (It’s okay. Victoria turns out to be Beinaheleidenschaftsgegenstand anyway.)
• In this week’s episode, “Band or DJ?” (Season Eight, Episode Thirteen), we learn the Mother will be the bass player in Barney and Robin’s wedding band. She gets the job because the first band they book will cancel just a week ahead of time. Disaster, until Ted just happens to run into Cindy again, who tells him that her old roommate’s band is available for that weekend.

I could go on, but the point is that none of these things are about the Mother’s identity as much as they are about how all the dominos of Ted’s life were arranged to get him – both emotionally and literally – in the right place at the right time to meet her.

The Mother’s name? Where she grew up? How long she and Ted will date before they get married? If that’s what you’re focusing on, you’re going to be disappointed, because the narrative structure of the story isn’t pointing towards these things as being part of the Big Payoff. Even the actress who ultimately gets the role is largely irrelevant, as long as she’s talented and has chemistry with the rest of the cast.

The emotional core we’ve been building towards for eight years now has not pointed to the revelation of any specific cast member. We’ve only encountered the Mother, whoever she is, in fleeting glimpses here and there. Structurally, this show has more in common with Se7en than an Agatha Christie mystery: the final character reveal is not nearly as important as what happens to our hero as he searches for that character. The emotional punch at the end of HIMYM isn’t going to be seeing Kevin Spacey’s face, it’s going to be finding out what’s in the box.

And that box, by the way, is where the writers have wiggle room for season nine, even if the meeting is at the end of season eight. Even once they meet, that doesn’t mean the story ends right there. Maybe she’s going out of town for a year and Ted doesn’t know (at that point) if he’ll ever see her again. Maybe he’ll do something outrageously stupid and have to find a way to win her back. Maybe any of a dozen obstacles will pop up that will allow us to end season nine, and the series, with a final emotional jolt equal to that of “The Final Page” (Season Eight, Episode Twelve), even if we’ve already known exactly who the mother is for a whole season at that point.

And that’ll be okay.

Because remember, the show isn’t called Who’s Your Mama? It’s called How I Met Your Mother.

What I’m Watching: How I Met Your Mother Season One

It’s been a slow weekend here, so for the sake of entertainment, I turned to the DVD shelf. What was I in the mood for, I asked myself. Horror? Nah. Action? Eh… not today. Period drama? I’d probably have to go to Chase’s secret lair to get one of those. No, I wanted something lighthearted, but still intelligent.

How I Met Your Mother turned out to be the perfect choice. I’ve been a fan of this show since it premiered, and I picked up the DVDs of the first two season on sale a while back, but this was the first time I ever sat down and watched the whole season in one stretch. Let me tell you, you don’t recognize the real genius behind this show until you watch a whole block of episodes in a stretch.

The show is framed by the character of Ted Mosby (voiced by Bob Saget) in the year 2030, telling his teenage children stories about his youth. In the pilot episode young Ted (Josh Radnor) meets a girl named Robin (Cobie Smulders) that he falls for head-over-heels. His enthusiasm turns out to be a bit much, though, as Robin blanches from a guy ready to fall in love, get married, and start a family so soon after they meet. Rounding out the cast are Ted’ engaged roommates Marshall (Jason Segel) and Lily (Alyson Hannigan) and his skirt-chasing buddy Barney (the brilliant Neil Patrick Harris). In the first episode, Ted begins telling his kids the story of “how I met your mother,” which makes it particularly surprising when he tells us right out of the box that Robin, the girl of his dreams, isn’t the one he’s going to end up with. Suddenly we’re left wondering, just who is the mother of his children? And why is he beginning this story with meeting another girl… one his kids call Aunt Robin?

What elevates this show past the level of an average sitcom is the same thing that you don’t understand until you watch a lot of episodes together. My favorite TV shows are the ones that are planned out, that tell a long-term story. Shows like Lost and Babylon 5 raised the bar for genre television, with a single storyline that extends the entire run of the series. While I’m not sure this show is as meticulously planned as either of those dramas, it’s most certainly better planned out than most TV comedies. Continuity is important to this show. Small elements or minor characters turn up later on down the line. Sometimes they’re just there to be funny (the ongoing “slap bet” being a prime example). Other times, the things and people that come back turn out to be vital to the storyline.

What’s more — as the Bob Saget voice occasionally reassures his kids — you really get the feeling that all of these storylines are important, that they are building up to something. Even though, at the end of the fourth season of the show, we still haven’t actually met the nameless “mother,” everything that’s happened to Ted, to Robin, to Marshall and Lilly, are working together in concert, preparing him for one event, one relationship, one disappointment and one triumph after another. And after each one, he comes out a little different. His goals, his ideas, his hopes shift over time, and soon it becomes clear that without these adventures he wouldn’t be the right person in the right place when the Mother finally makes her entrance.

And I gotta say, that’s the sort of thing that happens in real life. When I watch Ted making a dork of himself in over-the-top pursuit of one girl of his dreams after another, I remember myself pre-Erin. Although real life isn’t quite as funny as this show, and few of us are blessed with a Neil Patrick Harris, I honestly believe that the events in our past DO prepare us for the future.

(I should interject here that I don’t want at all to imply that I no longer make a dork out of myself now that I’m with Erin. I just do it in different ways.)

The first season is a good example of how it all plays out. Although the larger arc of the season is Ted’s pursuit of Robin, there’s a side arc where he falls for a girl named Victoria (the so-cute-it-should-be-illegal Ashley Williams). By the end of the season, it’s doubtful that things would conclude the way they did without that side-track. The writers also play with the format quite a bit, employing flashbacks, flash-forwards, nonlinear episodes and even Rashomon-style episodes where we see the same incidents from various points of view. It’s a constant reminder that we’re not actually witnessing these events as they’re happening, we’re being told the stories more than 20 years after the fact.

Unlike most sitcoms, this is a show that really demands you think, pat attention, and even play along with the characters in a way most others don’t require. With season one down, I intend to start watching season two right away, and I’ll more than likely be picking up three and four before long. This is a series that’s completely worth my time.

Oh, I wish I were in San Diego…

One of these years, Erin and I are going to make it to the San Diego Comicon. Yeah, it’s huge. It’s grown so big that it’s barely fun anymore. It’s hardly still even about comic books. But it’s still the biggest Geek mecca there is, where comics and movies and television and videogames and cosplayers and artists and filmmakers and people who got lost on the way to a Padres game collide. And yes, every year when the convention begins, I sit here, absorb the news as it leaks into the internet, and wish I was there.

But since I’m still in Ama this weekend, I thought I’d just fire off a few of the interesting tidbits that I’ve heard announced from all over thus far.

• Gary Oldman, Commissioner Jim Gordon in the two most recent Batman movies, says that filming of the third movie is going to take place next year with the movie to be released in 2011. This is awesome news, although a little surprising considering that Christopher Nolan, the director, hasn’t ckpblicly stated that he’s signed the deal to make it yet. I don’t think anyone doubted that he would, he just hasn’t.
• The second season of the highly-awesome Batman: The Brave and the Bold cartoon series will feature a lot more characters from across the DC Universe, and two very special guest-stars. Julie Newmar, Catwoman from the old Adam West TV show, will make an appearance as Bruce Wayne’s mother, Martha. And Neil Patrick Harris, who is awesome in virtually everything, will appear in a musical episode of the show. That’s just sweet.
• Disney’s Tron 2, or Tr2n, has been renamed Tron: Legacy. I love the original movie, and I’m glad they’re doing a sequel instead of a remake. The new movie will apparently focus on Sam Flynn, son of Jeff Bridges‘ character from the original movie, searching for his missing father who disappeared mysteriously 20 years ago.
• Also from Disney, Robert Zemeckis — director of the upcoming Jim Carrey A Christmas Carol, has hinted that there may be a sequel to his classic film Who Framed Roger Rabbit? This gets me a bit nervous. Although he says the 2D characters from the original would remain 2D, he also hinted that there would be 3D animated characters as well, and so far, I’ve been disappointed in his 3D efforts. While there were some visual treats in both The Polar Express and Beowulf, Zemeckis has a real “Uncanny Valley” problem that he’s yet to overcome. Maybe A Christmas Carol will change my mind.
• Still from Disney, Boom! Studios has announced a few more products based on their new license to the classic characters. They had already announced the return of Mickey Mouse and Friends and Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories. Now they’ve confirmed those two titles will be joined by Donald Duck and Friends and Uncle Scrooge, as well as a hardcover edition of the epic Don Rosa story The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck. If you never read this story before, do it. Do it as soon as this book comes out. It’s one of the finest comic book stories of all time.
• Just a wee bit of Blackest Night news, Geoff Johns has announced that he’ll be writing a Blackest Night: Flash miniseries starting in December, with art by his oft-time collaborator Scott Kolins. I’m glad to hear this — these two work really well together.

That’s really it so far. Two more days — well, two and a half, the day’s not over in San Diego — and I’ll be anxiously watching every bit of news.