Make Adjustments Go Get It Energize!

Here follow a few items that crossed my mind as I watched last night's how i met your mother:

• Robin looks HAGGARD lately - it's probably the baby, right? Probably the baby (keeping her up at night).
  

• Marshall has to pursue his dream job eventually, right? He's just staying at GNB forever now? Didn't he say it would just be for a little while? Oh no! OH NO!
  

• Which girl in Ted's class is the Mother? Didn't they say we'd meet her in that class? Please tell me it's not the one with the squeaky voice and Lily hair. Oh please no. *CORRECTION: Bob Saget said that the mother was in that first classroom, but I figured that since (a) we never revisit that big room and (b) Ted thought it was his class at the time, the mother would still be in his class...and maybe one day we could meet her, finally. How on earth are we going to get back to that other classroom? Wasn't it phrased "That classroom is where I first met your mother?" or something like that? Or was it just that she was there for that? Either way, there's your correction.
  

• Clearly I'm stuck on the Swarkles Catastrophe. Here's a quotation from Carter Bays that I took from Chris Ausiello's EW article:
  

“None of us wanted to see Barney wearing a sweater-vest and going to bed-and-breakfasts,” says Bays, adding that it makes sense the relationship would “flame out fast” given that “neither of them, at their core, really wanted to be tied down.” Bays also believes that, deep down, viewers prefer single Barney to attached Barney. “It’s one of those things where you can give people what they think they want, or what they really want.”

I'm going to frame-by-frame it:

• A. Barney would never end up in a sweater vest, and it's pretty lazy to pretend that all monogamous couples will end up in sweater vests. I was looking forward to a different depiction of long-term relationships. One that Swarkles carve out on their own. The first episode of this season seemed to say that they would write their own romantic rules. Why didn't they? I would've liked to see that.
  

• B. Robin and Barney didn't "really want to be tied down at their core" BEFORE they got together. What made them put away that principle and start dating each other in the first place? Couldn't a character's reluctance to be "tied down" actually represent a solid starting point for a tremendously successful character arc? Nah, not in this case.
  

• C. Nobody but NOBODY prefers Single Barney these days. Scuba gear? Overalls? Whatever happened to Ted Mosby, Architect? Single Barney Post-Robin is a real loser compared to Single Barney Pre-Robin. An event like a serious relationship could carry enough influence to give Barney an entirely new dimension, or at least more rounding out. Now it's like they've taken the one thing they can remember from the Good Old Days and are trying desperately to revive it. And Costumes-on-Barney seems to be what that one thing is. Eeeeeeesh.

• D. “It’s one of those things where you can give people what they think they want, or what they really want.” Here's a third option: Give people what they actually want, which would be a well-written sitcom LIKE IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING.

I was reading a few other himym recaps after I wrote the above and can see that most articles this week cover Marshall's eightieth instance of dashed dreams. It's sort of funny that the show keeps hitting on the same points (Marshall hates not saving the planet, Robin is from Canada, etc) in a very similar way to how real life makes you keep hitting the same points. Being from Canada would be a repeat problem, and Not Fulfilling Your Childhood Dream Career would present a constant source of anguish. But just because something on television mirrors something from real life doesn't make me want to become Chuck Klosterman, so I'm ending here.