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At the beginning of the year, I reviewed four TV shows- two new, and two old. As this season of TV comes to a close, we can look back on the ups and downs of this year in television. Be warned: there are major spoilers ahead!
How I Met Your Mother
To say I was disappointed with the series finale of How I Met Your Mother is an understatement. Perhaps fortunately, the last episode ties up most of the loose ends about Ted (Josh Radnor) and “The Mother,” Tracy (Cristin Milioti), but with the way those loose ends were tied, it might have been better to leave the gang’s future more ambiguous.
Of course, much of the problems with the episode are a matter of opinion. I, for one, prefer Robin (Cobie Smulders) with Barney (Neil Patrick Harris), rather than with Ted, and am devastated that they get divorced only three years into their marriage. Unlike some other fans, I’m not too torn up about Tracy’s death; I’d realized long ago that it was a possibility and prepared myself for that ending.
What I’m most disappointed with is the way the characters seem to revert to older versions of themselves, taking back the character development they suffer so much for. Barney and Robin make each other better people, and when they split up, they forget that impact entirely. Robin goes back to being entirely career-driven, forgetting her friends in the process. Barney’s womanizing behavior is worse than ever, and though the birth of his child changes him, he’s never as calm and untheatrical as he was with Robin. Even worse is the developmental lapse Ted suffers. As a viewer, I’d assumed that Mother’s main lesson was about learning to let go of old hopes and dreams once they’ve run their course so that new dreams can come along. I thought that Ted would learn that lesson, letting go of his romantic attachment to Robin so that he could live his life with The Mother. The finale tells a different tale. Ted’s getting back with Robin, an ending that was apparently meant to be happy, enforces the misogynistic trope that women are conquests, and that once a man sets his sights on a woman, he should tirelessly pursue her, despite her rejections, until they get together or he gets bored.
After nearly a decade of great TV and a promising final season, How I Met Your Mother’s finale was a major letdown because of the writers’ disregard for their characters.
Brooklyn Nine-Nine
My pleasant surprise at Brooklyn Nine-Nine at the beginning of the season has only been reinforced by its entire first season. Its humor is funny without being mean and its more serious moments are rarely too sappy; it’s managed to find balance. And, unlike How I Met Your Mother, it stays true to its characters.
One of the difficult things about shows with characters like Detective Jake Peralta (Andy Samberg) is giving him serious emotions without compromising his tendency to brush everything off as a joke. There are some rough, awkward attempts at dealing with Peralta’s deeper emotions earlier this season, but the writers and Samberg eventually succeeded in finding perfect balance, culminating with Peralta’s heartfelt speech and nonchalant goodbye to Detective Amy Santiago (Melissa Fumero) in the season finale.
The show has also found balance in the way they’ve treated Captain Ray Holt’s (Andre Braugher) character. A struggle for any form of media portraying a minority character- especially LGBTQ characters- is walking the line between exploitation and assimilation. While defining minority characters by their minority-ness erases their other traits, portraying minority characters that face no problems because of their race, sexuality, etc. erases them entirely by assimilating them to the majority. Holt has faced reasonable difficulties because he is black and openly gay, but these difficulties don’t dominate the his entire plot. The balance Nine-Nine has found here is an example some other TV shows (Glee, I’m looking at you) should heed.
Captain Holt and Detective Peralta are just two notable examples out of many. The writers and actors are making a habit of doing right by their characters- one that will hopefully stick around until the very last episode.
~Rachel A. Schrock