I think that the key to How I Met Your Mother’s longing success is its ever changing dynamics; you know Ted will meet The Mother eventually, but along that narrative the show has always known how to tell that story in different ways in a weekly basis; sometimes it can fall flat and not work at all, which I considered to be the case with this season’s “Mom And Dad”, but some other times the change in the narrative provides fresh air, renewed strength and the right combination of funny and poignant. “How Your Mother Met Me” is the later.
We go all the way back to 2005, right were the pilot started, with Barney playing “Have you met Ted?”, but instead of revisiting more of the pilot, we have one of this episode's characters, Kelly, freaking out because she went to the wrong MacLaren’s, the one on the west side. So, she rushes into the right one so that she can make it in time for The Mother’s birthday. Once she arrives we have the lovely opening sequence with The Mother and her own photos in there (which makes me wish the spin off “How I Met Your Dad” was actually about her, and not a new brand of characters. This could have easily been the back door pilot).
Right from the start we have a very strong moment; The Mother gets a call from Max’s phone, her boyfriend, just to hear he has passed away. Even though we haven’t met the character, it’s really affecting, and that’s due to Cristin Milloti’s impressive performance; she’s so sad that one can’t help to feel sad as well. It’s so evident that The Mother was so deeply in love with him and the repercussions of that in the whole episode makes it all the more devastating, but we’ll get to that.
Once again we skip in time, now to fall 2009; The Mother has decided to study economics to achieve her goal of ending poverty, and there she meets Cindy, and she bonds so well with her that she invited her to live together in her apartment, and she also sees Ted for the very first time; it’s very cute that she laughs at his “shellfish” joke (“come on that was funny!), but even more so that as soon as Ted says “this is architecture 101” The Mother flees from the classroom as she panics that she entered the wrong class, just to stop midways realizing she was in the right class all along while Ted runs pass by her yelling “wrong classroom! Wrong classroom!”.
And we move on to January 2010, when Ted had his date with Cindy, and we finally get to know what happened afterwards; the Mother finds her lost umbrella, and she is about to tell Cindy the story behind that, but she finds out instead that Cindy has just broken up with Ted and after Cindy says a lot whole stuff about how she was so cute when she falls asleep and things like that, Cindy kisses her, which is cue to figuring some stuff out; and as we know, that ended up being that she was a lesbian and finding the love of her life later on.
She tells this story to Darren some time later when she is looking out for a new roommate, and he confess that he is actually a fan of The Mother’s band (Superfreakonomics, this time I got it right!) and he convinces her to be a part of it; we know where that leads, he takes over the band, all the credit and stuff, but something actually good comes out of it and The Mother meets Louis, which happens to be her very first love interest in a very long time.
And so the moment comes, her band is hired to perform at Robin and Barney’s wedding, she goes to Farhampton, she meets Lily, Marshall, Darren gets hit on the face, he leaves the band, The Mother buys Ted a drink, and everything is great. Until she gets back to Louis’ house (he had a house near Farhampton) and he proposes. The Mother is not ready, she asks for a moment and she goes outside to ask Max for permission to get over him; she feels that she can’t move on because she can’t let go of the memory of him, he was the best thing that happened to her (until she meets Ted) and losing him left a scar so great that, even 8 years later, she can’t settle for something that is less than what she once had; Louis is a nice guy, but nice is not enough, it’s not love, and having experience a soul mate like relationship once, she can’t settle for just nice.
And so she picks up her stuff, goes to the Farhampton inn and she stays in the room Robin’s mother should have use if she came to the wedding. She picks up the ukulele Max gave her on her birthday 8 years ago, the same night of his passing, and she sung “La Vie en Rose”. It’s a beautiful scene, really moving and affecting, she sings incredibly well, it’s smooth and as we see how the gang is doing some tears start dropping around my cheeks and I outright cried when Ted was shown on the other sound of the wall, obviously affected by the song, while future Ted tells us that that particular performance of The Mother’s version of “La Vie en Rose” is his favorite.
The episode ends on a cliffhanger note with Barney going missing, and legendarily drunk, but that’s something I almost fail to remember of an episode that is all about The Mother, a character constructed so well, and that fits exactly into the puzzle that is “How I Met Your Mother” that all I can think about is how brilliantly made is her side of the story; it’s 8 years compacted into 22 minutes of storytelling, and somehow it manages to make me laugh and cry just in the right moments. It’s truly the perfect blend of comedy and drama that I always brag about when I praise the show, and I think the show has never found a better balance of those elements like right now.
And that’s why I think How I Met Your Mother is such a huge success; 9 years on air, over 200 episodes and it’s still able to deliver this kind of refreshing and emotionally affecting storytelling. It’s the ever shifting and risky storytelling that makes the show what it is, that keep the fans watching, and the characters are so lovely that it is easy to keep that smooth feel going on. It is rare for a TV show to reach 200 episodes, and among those this one is even rarer, because I’m sure no 200th episode has ever felt so special to me like this one. And just for that, this episode will get a onetime only special grade.
Grade: A+
Stray Observations:
-Mitch: “Can I tell you an embarrassing story?”
The Mother: “Is it this one? Taking place right now?”
Priceless!
-Kelly bumped into Barney in St. Patrick’s Day and then she fell for his Play Book trick “My penis grants wishes”. It doesn’t get better than that.
-I found The Mother’s singing at breakfast about her English muffin adorable! I would love to have a girlfriend who do that, it’s really adorable (it helps that Cristin Milloti sings so well). If Louis is not charmed by that, then he is actually made of stone.
-Tonight on How I Met Your Mother: Sunrise! Ted and Robin look for a drunk Barney and the remember past relationships while Barney teaches two guys how to live: I think this will be interesting.
