How I Met Your Mother - "Symphony of Illumination"

Season 7, Episode 12

Last week’s episode ended with a cliffhanger, one that left me very skeptical of the show’s next step, convinced as I was that this was a twist done out of desperation, and not organic storytelling. I conceded that the perhaps the show could actually make said twist successful, but in the light of “Symphony of Illumination”, I guess it doesn’t really matter. And that pisses me off so much that it becomes hard to focus on the good of the episode.

Between the endings of “Disaster Averted”, “Tick Tick Tick” and “The Rebound Girl”, it seemed as if How I Met Your Mother’s seventh season was going to be really delivering on the show’s dramatic elements, and given how strong those have been in past seasons, and how well those three episodes did with the same, it was a development that I was willing to go along with, even if it seems as if the show was giving up some of its comedic elements to do it. But I think that the show wrote itself into a something of a corner by going for dramatic reveals four episodes in a row. In the previous three, the ending reveal was meant to double up on the tension of the one before it, and that was a move that worked for a time – until tonight.

In all honesty, I don’t get what the writers want out of Robin’s current story. Having Robin get pregnant may have been a perfunctory means to an end (that is, her marriage to Barney), but at least it was a twist that made sense, and could have provided believable drama. But taking that twist away from us – three times over even – not only robs the character of a storyline that’s solid and proven (if a bit trite), but it also feels like a cheat to the audience, and a return to the show’s lesser days. Remember how season five was so frustrating because there were practically no ongoing storylines, and how the best part of season six was seeing Marshall’s gradual evolution as a person after his father’s death? Well, Robin’s pregnancy reveal felt like a season six kind of storyline, but the fact that she can’t have kids feel like a season five kind of move. Taking away her ability to have kids may have been more shocking than the initial twist that she was pregnant, but it’s not a shock that helps the development of the season-long arc.

Now, I get that the key to tonight’s episode was supposed to be about Robin’s views on having kids changed in light of the news of her inability to have any. Cobie Smulders played the hell out of these scenes, and it was well-written enough so that I can’t pretend that this isn’t a good storyline in theory. However, when you couple this storyline with its context (i.e. where it feels like little more than a cop-out, given the circumstances) and what we know about Robin as a character, it’s a very bad move. Robin has always been defined by her strong-willed nature and her taste for independence, and her stance about not having children has always felt like a vital part of that. (As someone who wants kids of his own someday, it’s not one I can fully understand, but it is one I can respect in terms of making her something greater than a gendered stereotype.) Even when the show made slight nudges in the other direction, by having her admit that maybe she might want a brood in the future, it mostly felt like the show softening her up a bit for mainstream acceptance, and not as something the writers were seriously considering. 

So selling Robin out in this manner not only sells out the specificity of her character, but what I thought she represented. I’ve always respected the show for what I perceived to be its strong female characters, and in the world of multi-camera sitcoms, I always found its feminist bent somewhat refreshing. But increasingly this season, the show has gone out of its way to have Lilly and Robin act out the most horrendous feminine tropes imaginable, and tonight unfortunately continued that trend. At times it often felt like Robin was suddenly longing for a child not because she suddenly lost the possibility to do so (even if I believe this was the episode’s view), but because she was a woman. I’m not saying that characters can’t change, or that learning that you can’t have kids wouldn’t make someone nostalgic for them; but the episode didn’t do a good enough of a job of making this change of heart come from Robin’s personality, not her gender.

What’s more, as I mentioned above, I’m not entirely sure what her sudden longing for children has to do with anything with the season long arc. How is Robin supposed to get from here to marrying Barney, and what’s Barney going to think when he (inevitably, presumably) finds out? Looking at Barney’s reaction tonight, I honestly believed in his desire to have a child with Robin, as well as his horror at the sudden realization of the complications they would bring to his freewheelin’ lifestyle. (And it frustrates me even more that the show has taken the time to show why Barney is now okay with the idea of kids, but with Robin her change of heart happened much more quickly, and thus seems to be a result of her gender, and not her character.) And what are we supposed to make of Barney’s role in this, really? Insane Dwayne seemed like he was introduced to invite some parallels, but he mostly just ended up being a one-note joke. I think this episode would have been stronger had Barney and Robin had more parallel stories, or if they had been part of the same story throughout the episode’s whole running time, but instead the focus was placed mostly on her weaker character beats.

But I think what really pissed me off is that there was some actual good stuff in this episode, and not only did those bits of quality storytelling made the bad parts stick out even more, but the good bits eventually became consumed by the bad. The episode opened with a nifty trick of having Robin talk to her “kids”, and it was a role reversal that I welcomed. If this is a true ensemble show (as I would argue that it’s become from the third season on), then why should Ted always be the narrator? (Note how little screen time Josh Radnor got, especially in the first half, before the truth was revealed.) Even when it was revealed that Robin couldn’t have kids, I had yet to give up on the reality of this structure, because you know, adoption. But when it was revealed that the “kids” were just figments of her imagination, well I just lost it. While it worked as a piece of pathos – it was a nice note to undercut all the tension, and again it gave Smulders a chance to do some awesome work – it was also indicative of the problem I had with the episode, in smaller form: they set up a story going in one direction, only to knock that reality down without any reason why for.

To close off this idea more fully, let’s take a brief glimpse at Marshall’s B-story. To be honest, him attempting to build a magnificent light display on his new house, and trying to take a neighborhood kid under his wing (and getting duped in the process) isn’t exactly original, nor the best use of Jason Segel’s talents, but it does have one thing over Robin’s story: build. Slowly but surely, this season is clearly building up to Marshall and Lilly moving into the house, and (even if there’s a number of logistical reason why they shouldn’t) doing so with small acts like this makes that build believable. I just wish that the writers would apply this same thought process to whatever it is that their doing with Robin. I sincerely believe that this is a plot that some other show could have done and gotten great results; but it is an ill fit on How I Met Your Mother as it is now.

Quotes and Other Thoughts:

The more that I think about it, the more it occurs to me that Robin’s “kids” only existed in this episode as a device so that we could hear Robin explain her thought process. This does not make it better, both because it further devaluates their (admittedly imaginary) emotional weight, but also because it gives the show an out from the “show, don’t tell” rule.

Oh, and apparently Robin’s going to become a bullfighter at some point in the future. Stop fucking with us, show.

So Ted using “Highway Hell” as the soundtrack to his own Christmas lightshow: exactly how tasteless was that?

And Marshall like Manheim Steamroller? He’s like some dubious stuff in the past, but this is stretching it. (A better pair of nicknames for his fists would have been “Trans-Siberian” and “Orchestra”.)

Reasons Robin doesn’t tell her friends upsetting news: Ted goes into overdrive caretaker mode, Lilly implodes and blames herself, Marshall asks a series of specific and personal questions, and Barney makes failed attempts at humor.

“I am never late. It’s a point of pride with me.”

“I’ve spent years training my boys to swim the other way.”

“One of your socks? Boom! You’re huge!”

“Mr. E? Sounds like some little scamp just earned the right to put the Vikings helmet on baby Jesus.”

“YOU HAVE TO PUNCH ME IN THE FACE.”

“Actually, the duck could be polish, it doesn’t matter….Yes it does….The duck isn’t polish.”

“Aww, dammit. That thing’s cute as crap. Screw you, baby.”

“Insane Dwayne…” “It’s ‘Sane Dwayne’ now.” “You used to be magnificent.”

“What about the one where you ski and shoot at the same time? You seem like you’d be good at that.”

“I know it’s not Canada, but it starts with a ‘C’ and it’s cold as balls.”

“You can fire me. I’m union, bitch.”