Tuesday, April 1, 2014

9 Years Gone...

If you know me in real life, and most especially if you knew me as a teenager, then you know that I watch too much television. Or at least I used to. I still probably watch too much TV, but I watch far, far less now than I did then. But I had thought that I had reached a happy medium last year-I even wrote a blog post about how I was finally able to enjoy TV again after years of foggy mommy brain that left me unable to remember from week to week what happened.

But this year, I'm taking things off the TiVo at an alarming rate (for Neilsen rating people anyway). And last night's How I Met Your Mother may very well have done the rest in. It didn't do them any favors.

I have truly enjoyed HIMYM. I'm not 16 with no life, so I don't know exactly how it all fit together, but I'm sure that the writers always joined things up appropriately and plugged all of the holes. I love the character of Barney and I love that if I catch an old episode of Doogie, I am amazed to remember that Neil Patrick Harris is able to play both roles so well. And believeably. And really, though I'm sure in the near future this won't seem odd, but that he was able to play this horndog character and then turn around and be so fabulously gay in real life.

To be honest, I have never cared for the girl roles on HIMYM. I always felt that they were guy fantasies of girls, especially the character of Robin. The only time that I ever really cared for Robin was in the Robin Sparkles episodes. So take that as you will.

I did, however, like the mother. Even though I did not care for this season and the neverending wedding weekend, I enjoyed the bits with the mom. I settled in with Nick this morning (we watch TV together in the mornings, as his schedule won't allow us normalcy), I was excited to see the end. For Ted or Bob Sagat or whoever to say, "This is how I met your mother." And that it was at Robin and Barney's wedding, which would therefore lend sense to the notion that he started with how me met Robin. But one hour later, I was just mad. And frustrated. And feeling like I have wasted 9 years of my life watching something only to have it end all wrong.

It is somewhat similar to my feelings about The Wonder Years. Not that I feel like I wasted that time, because they are treasured classics that are amazing and wonderful-but because, when it ended, I cried and cried and cried. It was inappropriate-I do realize that Kevin and Winnie aren't real people-but it felt like someone had crushed my heart. And even though I am a grown up now, and I realize that of course the only way to end it and have it mirror any reality was to break them up, it still sucks. And I still cry every time I watch the ending.

But I'm not going to be watching old episodes of How I Met Your Mother. Even if I had liked the ending, I never watch old episodes of anything made past 2004. There is a clear divining line there-Betsy's birth-that separates my childhood from my adult self. And it is likely very pretentious of me, but I don't like to dwell on things that came after my official adulthood descended upon me.

So there. I'd rather read anyway.

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