This past Monday, How I Met Your Mother put up the “Mission Accomplished” sign with one achingly gratifying final scene in which we finally, finally, finally after 8 long seasons met the titular mother. However, have you heard what they are talking about doing with the mother and, indeed, the rest of the cast next season? Because this is, to quote Jason Mantzoukas, “next level crazy.” We might be heading for Stephen Sondheim’s musical Company as adapted for a 22-episode season of television.
*DO NOT READ THE REST UNTIL YOU HAVE WATCHED THE SEASON FINALE OF THE CURRENT SEASON OF HIMYM*
There were so many theories, but as Noomi Rapace from Prometheus might say with an unintentionally comically anguished tone “we were sooo wrong.” The mother is not one of Ted’s (Josh Radnor) many prior girlfriends nor is she, most crucially, Robin (Cobie Smulders). Instead, the girl with the yellow umbrella who plays bass guitar is a completely new character who will be played by Cristin Milioti, a lovely actress most known as Girl in the Broadway musical adaptation of the film Once. So, I guess playing someone who has only officially been credited on HIMYM to this point as “Girl With Yellow Umbrella” is a real step up, character name wise.
Marketa Irglova and Glen Hansard from the film Once in the foreground, Milioti and Steve Kazee from the Broadway musical in the background. Photo credit: NYTimes.com
The manner in which Milioti’s character was introduced in the season finale was genius. All of the characters are heading toward Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) and Robin’s wedding. However, in the course of the episode the characters have been torn apart; they just don’t know it yet. Ted is secretly moving to Chicago without telling anyone because he can’t stand to stick around and hope that Robin and Barney break up. Marshall has been offered the job of a lifetime, but how can he tell his wife since they had planned to move to Italy for a year for her to enjoy the job of her lifetime. Barney remains supremely confident in his forthcoming nuptials, but Robin has doubts as indicated by her actions in the previous episode (“Something Old”) and her the-ending-of-The-Graduate-stare Barney fails to notice.
So, the episode ends with a close-up of each character’s face, with the final close-up being on Ted’s stupid grin because he has concocted one final Hail Mary pass plan to win Robin’s heart. Appropriately, we cut directly from Ted’s face to a bus terminal where a girl with a yellow umbrella is standing in line. Big whoop. We’ve seen that damn umbrella already, most recently at the end of the season premiere (“Farhampton”) when we saw that Ted and the mother will be a train station together after Barney and Robin’s wedding. However, this time was different. There was no mere hint of the mother. Nope. We see and hear her order a ticket to Farhampton where we know she will be playing in Barney and Robin’s wedding band.
Finally! Photo credit: Glamour.com
So, when does Ted get to meet the mother? Nowhere near as soon as you would have thought.
Show co-reator Carter Bays somewhat cryptically told Michael Ausiello at TVLine.com that the ninth and final season “will tell the epic story of the longest wedding weekend ever.” What the hell does that mean? Because everyone knows the longest wedding ever is the one from Deer Hunter. Apparently, at some point there is some stuff in Viet Nam about people playing Russian Roulette, but I have never been strong enough to get past that interminably long wedding sequence. Well, HIMYM is about to test my resolve.
Also from TVLine.com, CBS entertainment president Nina Tassler confirmed that season 9’s “entire run will, in fact, span the wedding weekend and just the wedding weekend.” The idea is that each character will meet the mother before Ted does.
What? No, that could be kind…no. What! I think Lily best summarizes what I would say to Carter Bays after hearing this news:
Creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas have consistently argued their intention has always been to end with Ted meeting the future mother of his children, which is exactly the ending you’d expect given the show’s title. After all, the framing device of a Future Ted telling the story to his children would necessitate a hasty explanation for why he would continue telling them stories once he’d reached the promised “and that’s how I met your mother” moment. After 8 years of captivity it’s possible the children would revolt if he continued his story any further. “Get to the point already, old man! And why couldn’t Robin have been our mother! She’s so much cooler!”
A problem, but a good one, with the show from the very beginning has been figuring out what to do with Ted and Robin because Radnor and Smulders are so damn compelling together. Photo credit: buddytv.com
However, over the past couple of seasons this strategy has been called into question with fans seeming to collectively realize how disappointing it would be for us to end with Ted simply meeting the mother and not seeing anything beyond that. It is kind of like watching Smallville for so long and just wanting him to become Superman already or, at the very least, start flying despite the show’s ironclad rules from Day 1 of “No cape, no flying.” Can’t we just meet the mother already and maybe end the show with Ted proposing to her, even if that violates what the show creators had originally planned?
Bays and Thomas are unfailingly clever writers. Surely, they will not set an entire 22-episode season of television at a wedding. Granted, ABC’s new show Mixology is attempting to set their entire season at one night at a bar with the big reveal at the end of the story being who goes home with whom, but we all know that sounds like an unsustainable idea which will result in early cancellation Bays/Thomas are better than that. Maybe it’s going to be Stephen Sondheim’s Company, where we see a collection of memories Bobby has of his friends while he stands outside the door of his apartment knowing his friends are on the other side waiting to surprise him on his birthday. Maybe the main setting will be the wedding, but we will be getting flash-forwards and backwards a-plenty. There would have to be. I know weddings can be painfully long, but dramatizing that through 22 episodes seems a bit much.
I guess Bays/Thomas looked at what appears on paper to be a terrible, terrible idea for a season of television and announced to no one in particular, “Challenge accepted!” Bays/Thomas have given me little cause to suspect they are not up to the challenge, but, honestly, this sounds like an incredibly ambitious but remarkably stupid idea. Hopefully, it will be legen…wait for it.
What do you think? Let me know in the comments.
