…but for whatever reason that seems to be what’s sticking in my brain these days.
Anyway, last night’s episode, “Band or DJ?” was moderately fun, and had some nice moments, but who gives a crap about that?
The REAL news out of the episode is that they gave a date to the Barney-Robin wedding – May 25, 2013 – which almost certainly is when the season finale is scheduled.
Now, despite the show’s flexible relationship with time within the framework of any given episode, as a whole, the show has kept its long arcs up with “real” time – meaning that the season that airs in 2010-2011 is actually taking place in 2010-2011. And, of course, the scheduling issues that come with production means that this episode was filmed several weeks ago, before the news that the show was going to come back for a ninth season was official.
(Yes, I know it’s not 100% official yet, but it’s more or less there.)
So given that, the show now has two choices. They can:
1. Slow the story down and hold “May 25, 2013” until next year.
2. End the season with the mother and then tell other stories (either their courtship or other stories that Ted hasn’t gotten to yet) next year.
The first choice is not a great one, in my opinion – despite the titular premise of the show, this (like most sitcoms about 20 and 30somethings) show quickly became about the interpersonal dynamic of the characters and their misadventures, rather than the actual mystery of who the mother is (a mystery that is fundamentally flawed in any event, since we’ve known, at least up till now, that he doesn’t meet the mother until the end of the story anyway). It seems to me that actually revealing the mother and then continuing the story for us would be much more interesting.
There is an argument against this – namely, that there won’t be any emotional tension in the relationship between Ted and mother, knowing that they will end up together. But the same should, therefore, have been true with every other relationship on the show ever, since we knew that none of those were the mother, and so we know that the relationship is going to end at some point. However, clearly that wasn’t the case – at least, with some of the love interests that crossed Ted’s path over the eight seasons.
In any event, the announcement of the wedding day provides some semblance of narrative momentum – an opportunity for anticipatory excitement as the rest of the season closes.
Let’s hope they don’t “The Killing” it.
