Friday night - end of a long week. Somewhat spur of the moment, went out with BS for a drink which turned into several, so that I got home well past midnight. And then finally started watching this last season, with the full weight of the previous ones behind it.
I've watched HIMYM over three years and change rather than its actual nine, but it feels like I've grown up with the characters nonetheless. And, it turns out, I didn't know how it would end after all.
* * *
Stella in an earlier season: I know that you're tired of waiting. And you may have to wait a little while more, but she's on her way, Ted. And she's getting here as fast as she can.
John Ashbery, as epigraph to Bobcat:
Somewhere someone is traveling furiously toward you,
At incredible speed, traveling day and night,
Through blizzards and desert heat, across torrents, through narrow passes.
But will he know where to find you,
Recognize you when he sees you,
Give you the thing he has for you?
* * *
Saturday.
Richmond in the morning for wedding suit alterations with R's bridal party then lunch with AC, including a character name discussion (his response to MS particularly pleasing).
Waiting for a tram and looking up and down the straight flat length of Bridge Road, I was struck by the sensation that that very stretch had been the setting for a dream from months ago, its outlines still hazily present.
* * *
NGV in the afternoon.
The "Golden Mirror Carousel" (Carsten Holler) in the ground floor hallway a striking presence and a vivid metaphor at a time when I'm particularly attuned to them.
That familiar Rothko untitled. It's not that I see something new every time I return to it, but rather that, each time, it is something new, and at the same time, a continuing object - integrally, of course, an object of consciousness and experience (in phenomenological terms). Angel Olsen's "Windows" on repeat.
Paul Nash's "Landscape of the summer solstice".
That deceptively simple Magritte ("In praise of dialectics") which I've also visited so many times - windows within windows.
A row of four impressionist paintings along a wall - also familiar - which, after I'd looked at them for long enough, took on the aspect of windows themselves, into other worlds: Pissarro, "The banks of the Viosne at Osny in grey weather, winter", 1883, Sisley, "The Loing and the slopes of Saint-Nicaise - February afternoon", 1890, Monet, "Rough weather at Etretat, 1883, Sisley, "Haystacks at Moret - morning light", 1891.
The abstraction-leaning splash of Gustave Caillebotte's "The plain of Gennevilliers, yellow fields", 1884.
* * *
In the evening, "Once".
After EJ changed her ticket I'd expected to see it by myself, but it turned out that TV was also along as part of the usual complicated multi-party subscription arrangement sorted at the start of the year; AC came out to join us for pre-show dinner, CWS.
And so, anyway. The show was nice. Romantic, not overly sentimental. Good music - very yearning. I didn't know how it was going to end, and I liked how it ended.
Also - it turns out that Cristin Milioti played 'The Girl' in its first stage production, initially Off-Broadway and then when it started its Broadway run - and now, she's the long awaited The Mother, too (henceforth, 'TM').
* * *
Got home; started on HIMYM post-midnight for the second night in a row. A question: how would it maintain interest despite having already seemingly revealed its end game by showing TM at the end of season 8 and framing the whole thing within the day and a half or so of Barney and Robin's wedding?
The answer (it seems): the usual bouncing back and forth in time, a sequential unfolding of how delightful - and perfect for Ted - the mother is (including flash-forwards to their future), and some clever structuring ("that's how Lily met your mother" etc) to build towards the meeting that we now know is sure to take place.
A few laughs (nowhere near as many as in early seasons), a fair bit of drama, those same characters following their paths; it's familiar but welcome territory by now.
* * *
Sunday. A big sleep in.
More episodes during the day. All the big relationships are placed under stress, and in most cases, by the same type that's been the major source of tension in past seasons: Ted's feelings for Robin and her less clear feelings for him; Robin and Barney's mutual attraction and difficulties with honesty and trust; Barney and Ted's friendship amidst all that; Lily's unfulfilled artistic desires vs the stability of her relationship with Marshall. Which, while maybe necessary to generate some dramatic stakes, feels like a bit of a cheat, especially in a ninth and final season and given that we presume that, by now, we know how it's going to end: Barney and Robin married; Lily and Marshall securely happily ever after; Ted finally meeting and settling down with TM...the knowledge of which doesn't particularly diminish my involvement with these long-arcing stories.
Somewhere in there, 'How Your Mother Met Me', starting (again) back in 2005 and telling the story from TM's perspective, including the series of intersections, happenstances and events that will eventually bring her together with Ted. The sad piano music playing as she farewells Max outside is the same as that in season 8's 'The Time Travelers', when Ted talks about how he wants the extra 45 days with her (gaining additional poignancy in retrospect, once the ending has played out).
* * *
Later in the afternoon, out to meet TN at the Abbotsford Convent for a bit. Short walk and bus ride each way; hotter outside than it had seemed. A bit of summer in the air. Travelling between places, a sense of disconnectedness.
* * *
Home again. Only a few episodes left; very much feeling at the end of something. The flash-forwards continue into Ted and TM's future together, for a while essentially in parallel to the present day narrative (which also contains a series of embedded flashbacks, most notably Ted's recovery of the locket via the ex-girlfriend chain of Stella, Victoria and Jeanette).
Near the end, a strange, muted note in 'Vesuvius' with the unexplained sadness between Ted and TM over their (future) dinner at the Farhampton Inn, which is then left hanging --
Nearly every reasonably significant character from the last eight seasons gets at least a small appearance somewhere in this ninth, and many of them are wrapped up in 'Gary Blauman', three or four eps from the end, in a kind of clearing of the decks - Carl, Jeanette, Kevin, Ranjit, Patrice, William Zabka, Zoey, Scooter, Blitz, Blah Blah (Carol), Sandy Rivers, James. And also gives us Ted and TM's first date, which is a reminder of part of why I liked this show so much in the first place - its adeptness and lightness of touch in rendering modern romance.
TM. The Mother. Tracy McConnell. Ted Mosby. &c.
The two-part finale, 'Last Forever', has a different tone, moving at intervals through the future for all six of the major characters and, shockingly, unwinding not one but two things that we'd been set us for a long time to assume would be part of the ending - Barney and Robin's marriage (the divorce and growing separateness of all of their lives casting a pall that hangs over much of the finale), and Ted and the mother's happily ever after (despite the clue in 'Vesuvius', I didn't see her death coming, which made its emotional impact even greater).
And then, again, at last: Ted and Robin.
* * *
Over the last few days, I've watched the whole season again, this time coloured by the knowledge of how things were going to end - with the mother, and then with Robin.
I don't know how I feel about the ending. The whole nine seasons - almost a decade's worth of character years - leads up towards Ted meeting the mother, and not only that but as she finally draws near, it's made clear that they couldn't be more right for each other, exactly according with the romantic ideal that we all hold somewhere within us. And it's all structured, as I've observed before, around a reassuring logic of that precise happy ending, embedded in the title and premise of the whole thing. So it was a shock to have that rug pulled out from underneath me - to feel, like Ted perhaps, that it had been all too brief a time with her.
And then there's what it means for Barney and Robin, a relationship in which we're also brought to invest and believe over many years of the show's run time and finally culminating over multiple seasons of foreshadowed and then actual, seemingly climactic wedding - and then summarily terminated almost straight away seemingly for no other reason than that Robin's career takes off and takes her constantly overseas; and then the pivot in which Barney finds that the love of his life is his unexpected baby daughter, while maybe consistent with his own absent father, isn't led up to in a way that allows it to be really satisfying, but instead feels abrupt and from out of nowhere.
On the other hand, while the fairytale of Ted and TM proved cruelly not to be forever, there's Robin. The girl who, even if she isn't precisely just-right and perfectly-matched as TM, is the one who, in the show's schema, he loves all the way through, maybe even from when he first sets eyes on her. So there's that.
* * *
I've felt for some time now that I had to finish watching this show - like not knowing how it ended, or maybe more to the point, not having come to its end, was somehow affecting my own life. Irrational, obviously - but still.
Well, it's over. So what now?
I've watched HIMYM over three years and change rather than its actual nine, but it feels like I've grown up with the characters nonetheless. And, it turns out, I didn't know how it would end after all.
* * *
Stella in an earlier season: I know that you're tired of waiting. And you may have to wait a little while more, but she's on her way, Ted. And she's getting here as fast as she can.
John Ashbery, as epigraph to Bobcat:
Somewhere someone is traveling furiously toward you,
At incredible speed, traveling day and night,
Through blizzards and desert heat, across torrents, through narrow passes.
But will he know where to find you,
Recognize you when he sees you,
Give you the thing he has for you?
* * *
Saturday.
Richmond in the morning for wedding suit alterations with R's bridal party then lunch with AC, including a character name discussion (his response to MS particularly pleasing).
Waiting for a tram and looking up and down the straight flat length of Bridge Road, I was struck by the sensation that that very stretch had been the setting for a dream from months ago, its outlines still hazily present.
* * *
NGV in the afternoon.
The "Golden Mirror Carousel" (Carsten Holler) in the ground floor hallway a striking presence and a vivid metaphor at a time when I'm particularly attuned to them.
That familiar Rothko untitled. It's not that I see something new every time I return to it, but rather that, each time, it is something new, and at the same time, a continuing object - integrally, of course, an object of consciousness and experience (in phenomenological terms). Angel Olsen's "Windows" on repeat.
Paul Nash's "Landscape of the summer solstice".
That deceptively simple Magritte ("In praise of dialectics") which I've also visited so many times - windows within windows.
A row of four impressionist paintings along a wall - also familiar - which, after I'd looked at them for long enough, took on the aspect of windows themselves, into other worlds: Pissarro, "The banks of the Viosne at Osny in grey weather, winter", 1883, Sisley, "The Loing and the slopes of Saint-Nicaise - February afternoon", 1890, Monet, "Rough weather at Etretat, 1883, Sisley, "Haystacks at Moret - morning light", 1891.
The abstraction-leaning splash of Gustave Caillebotte's "The plain of Gennevilliers, yellow fields", 1884.
* * *
In the evening, "Once".
After EJ changed her ticket I'd expected to see it by myself, but it turned out that TV was also along as part of the usual complicated multi-party subscription arrangement sorted at the start of the year; AC came out to join us for pre-show dinner, CWS.
And so, anyway. The show was nice. Romantic, not overly sentimental. Good music - very yearning. I didn't know how it was going to end, and I liked how it ended.
Also - it turns out that Cristin Milioti played 'The Girl' in its first stage production, initially Off-Broadway and then when it started its Broadway run - and now, she's the long awaited The Mother, too (henceforth, 'TM').
* * *
Got home; started on HIMYM post-midnight for the second night in a row. A question: how would it maintain interest despite having already seemingly revealed its end game by showing TM at the end of season 8 and framing the whole thing within the day and a half or so of Barney and Robin's wedding?
The answer (it seems): the usual bouncing back and forth in time, a sequential unfolding of how delightful - and perfect for Ted - the mother is (including flash-forwards to their future), and some clever structuring ("that's how Lily met your mother" etc) to build towards the meeting that we now know is sure to take place.
A few laughs (nowhere near as many as in early seasons), a fair bit of drama, those same characters following their paths; it's familiar but welcome territory by now.
* * *
Sunday. A big sleep in.
More episodes during the day. All the big relationships are placed under stress, and in most cases, by the same type that's been the major source of tension in past seasons: Ted's feelings for Robin and her less clear feelings for him; Robin and Barney's mutual attraction and difficulties with honesty and trust; Barney and Ted's friendship amidst all that; Lily's unfulfilled artistic desires vs the stability of her relationship with Marshall. Which, while maybe necessary to generate some dramatic stakes, feels like a bit of a cheat, especially in a ninth and final season and given that we presume that, by now, we know how it's going to end: Barney and Robin married; Lily and Marshall securely happily ever after; Ted finally meeting and settling down with TM...the knowledge of which doesn't particularly diminish my involvement with these long-arcing stories.
Somewhere in there, 'How Your Mother Met Me', starting (again) back in 2005 and telling the story from TM's perspective, including the series of intersections, happenstances and events that will eventually bring her together with Ted. The sad piano music playing as she farewells Max outside is the same as that in season 8's 'The Time Travelers', when Ted talks about how he wants the extra 45 days with her (gaining additional poignancy in retrospect, once the ending has played out).
* * *
Later in the afternoon, out to meet TN at the Abbotsford Convent for a bit. Short walk and bus ride each way; hotter outside than it had seemed. A bit of summer in the air. Travelling between places, a sense of disconnectedness.
* * *
Home again. Only a few episodes left; very much feeling at the end of something. The flash-forwards continue into Ted and TM's future together, for a while essentially in parallel to the present day narrative (which also contains a series of embedded flashbacks, most notably Ted's recovery of the locket via the ex-girlfriend chain of Stella, Victoria and Jeanette).
Near the end, a strange, muted note in 'Vesuvius' with the unexplained sadness between Ted and TM over their (future) dinner at the Farhampton Inn, which is then left hanging --
Nearly every reasonably significant character from the last eight seasons gets at least a small appearance somewhere in this ninth, and many of them are wrapped up in 'Gary Blauman', three or four eps from the end, in a kind of clearing of the decks - Carl, Jeanette, Kevin, Ranjit, Patrice, William Zabka, Zoey, Scooter, Blitz, Blah Blah (Carol), Sandy Rivers, James. And also gives us Ted and TM's first date, which is a reminder of part of why I liked this show so much in the first place - its adeptness and lightness of touch in rendering modern romance.
TM. The Mother. Tracy McConnell. Ted Mosby. &c.
The two-part finale, 'Last Forever', has a different tone, moving at intervals through the future for all six of the major characters and, shockingly, unwinding not one but two things that we'd been set us for a long time to assume would be part of the ending - Barney and Robin's marriage (the divorce and growing separateness of all of their lives casting a pall that hangs over much of the finale), and Ted and the mother's happily ever after (despite the clue in 'Vesuvius', I didn't see her death coming, which made its emotional impact even greater).
And then, again, at last: Ted and Robin.
* * *
Over the last few days, I've watched the whole season again, this time coloured by the knowledge of how things were going to end - with the mother, and then with Robin.
I don't know how I feel about the ending. The whole nine seasons - almost a decade's worth of character years - leads up towards Ted meeting the mother, and not only that but as she finally draws near, it's made clear that they couldn't be more right for each other, exactly according with the romantic ideal that we all hold somewhere within us. And it's all structured, as I've observed before, around a reassuring logic of that precise happy ending, embedded in the title and premise of the whole thing. So it was a shock to have that rug pulled out from underneath me - to feel, like Ted perhaps, that it had been all too brief a time with her.
And then there's what it means for Barney and Robin, a relationship in which we're also brought to invest and believe over many years of the show's run time and finally culminating over multiple seasons of foreshadowed and then actual, seemingly climactic wedding - and then summarily terminated almost straight away seemingly for no other reason than that Robin's career takes off and takes her constantly overseas; and then the pivot in which Barney finds that the love of his life is his unexpected baby daughter, while maybe consistent with his own absent father, isn't led up to in a way that allows it to be really satisfying, but instead feels abrupt and from out of nowhere.
On the other hand, while the fairytale of Ted and TM proved cruelly not to be forever, there's Robin. The girl who, even if she isn't precisely just-right and perfectly-matched as TM, is the one who, in the show's schema, he loves all the way through, maybe even from when he first sets eyes on her. So there's that.
* * *
I've felt for some time now that I had to finish watching this show - like not knowing how it ended, or maybe more to the point, not having come to its end, was somehow affecting my own life. Irrational, obviously - but still.
Well, it's over. So what now?
