How I Met Your Mother - "Field Trip"

Season 7, Episode 5

How to properly induce happiness

I have a love-hate relationship with happy endings. (I mean the literary device, not the show Happy Endings – that I heartily enjoy.) While I always appreciate a well-done happy ending, it’s such a rare occurrence that I am far more familiar with the cheesy, lazy, perfunctory happy endings. You know, the one’s where the story never justifies the characters happiness, and just asks you to feel happy for them because, hey, it’s an inherently happy moment. Sadly, this has become the norm in Hollywood, and convenient shorthand for those that would rather fill their work with more jokes, action set pieces, or meaningless plot points rather than a satisfying story.

And yet How I Met Your Mother is one of the few shows I’ve found that tends to do happy endings fairly well. (Actually, television series as a whole are better than movies at this sort of thing, especially given that they have the time to build to them properly, but I’ve still seen shows that mess this up terribly as well.) The best happy endings come from a story that has time to build and this usually (but not always) involves dragging the characters through some really depressing or dark moments before they can achieve happiness, and it’s a rule that HIMYM manages to follow more often than not. But, as tonight’s episode illustrates, there are consequences to not following this rule to the letter.

The main plot tonight focused on Robin and her therapist-turned-boyfriend Kevin, in what was perhaps a too quick turnaround for both Robin’s story and Kevin as a character. Last week’s episode may have been a messy pile, but it was still successful in getting across the point that Robin was both a) a very broken human being and b) incredibly sad over Barney’s current relationship with Nora. The obvious problem here is that though the show has effectively dragged Robin through the requisite shit, it’s unbelievably too soon for her to have gotten over Barney and moved onto someone else, especially if the show wants us to believe in the inherent destiny of the Robin-Barney pairing. (I recognize that Barney and Robin might not get together, but the show wants us to believe that it’s possible, and having Robin move so quickly onto Kevin destroys out belief in the possibility.)

The less obvious but larger problem on Robin moving onto Kevin is that it wrecks what could have been a strong story for the character. I’m not going to say that I found the ensuing storyline completely hopeless – in fact, it was rather cute, thanks to strong performances by both Smulders and Penn – but that doesn’t change the fact that the story fails to fit in the larger picture. Not only does this happiness prevent Robin from being taken through some darker yet probably dramatically more satisfying storylines, but knowing that her relationship with Kevin is only supposed to be a diversion until she and Barney reconnect (I’m assuming) makes it much harder to feel involved with everything in the interim.

But it was the other three plots that were far more powerful and generally made up for the mediocre A-plot. While Marshall was fairly aimless in seasons three through five, season six proved that the show could come up with a intriguing plot for the character, and it seems as if the show wants to continue in the vain. Yet toward the end of last season, the show focus for the character was his new job, and with the early episodes in season seven, it didn’t’ seem to add up to a whole lot. In fact, most of Marshall’s plot didn’t really have a whole of kick to it, minus the parallel the show was drawing between naïve Marshall and the jaded Cootes. But my interest in the story perked up quite a bit with the cliffhanger-y ending, which allows for a story in which Marshall is able to fulfill his lifelong dream of saving the environment. Marshall’s story isn’t over, and it will only get better over time, but the reveal that he will now be doing something he considers important, and that’s a happy moment for both the character and us, especially considering all the rough jobs he had to suffer through in the past.

For all its silliness and it’s rather inconsequential manner, I rather liked Ted’s subplot, not only because it was funny, but also because it allowed us to Relive Ted’s fairly sad career path – his failed architecture business and the fact that he settled for teaching an Architecture class – and his readjusted expectations because of it. Ted might not be totally happy as a teacher, but it’s clear that he want to get the most out of his life, and that means that he wished to inspire his students. It might be replacement happiness, but it’s also one that appeal to Ted’s douche sense of self-importance, and one can believe that that alone would make somewhat happy.

But really Ted (and his class) really only worked into the plot as a way to connect the other plots of the episode, especially Barney’s plot, which was equally light, and needed to Ted to bounce off of to give it some more legs. The idea that Barney would dump Nora over Ewoks was a bit ridiculous, but so is the fact that he wouldn’t date a totally hot 37-year-old. Barney is new to the dating game, and even though he’s trying, he’s still on relatively thin relationship ice, and just about any pressure could cause it to crack. And thus we appreciate every little victory that Barney makes in his newfound attempts at love.

“Field Trip” may leave each of the characters at something of a turning point in their lives, and normally I might complain that the show was telling slightly incomplete stories across the board. But this was a fairly entertaining half-hour of television, and if this is HIMYM stepping more towards serialized storytelling well, it could do much worse.

Quotes, Etc:

In case you were wondering, the Perfect Focus Group proved that: macaroni salad in not an actually salad; it’s Edward James Olmos, not Jacob; and Germans really do love the Hoff. (Fortunately not decided: bestiality vs. necrophilia. Hey, that makes TWO Twilight jokes in that scene.)

Say, what was up with Ted’s half beard? That looks like something a creeper might sport.

“Hypothetically, do you like movies with a surprise twist where all the main characters die at the end?” “YES.” “You will love this movie.”

“Okay, he will hug you until you agree to peaceably shut down the Death Star.”

“Nobody takes an intro class to get on a path except the not-being-hungover path.”

"Frog creek, a tributary of Trout River that runs in Clearwater Lake, all three of which need new names."

“Thank you, Gina.” “How do you know her name?”

“37. That’s one year older than Will’s mom.” “How do you know my mom?”

“You know, it’s one thing to pretend to be a therapist and bang your patients; that’s normal. But to do it for real? Little creepy, bro.”

“No it’s a matter of principle. I don’t care how delicious it is, I am not going to have a third piece of cake.”

“That settlement was a flaming pile of …puppies…that aren’t on fire…”