Enough Already With This Ted-And-Robin Business

There have certainly been lots of times over the (too) many years of How I Met Your Mother's run when it seemed like, despite the series title, Ted (Josh Radnor) was never going to meet his kids' mother. It's easy to imagine that the framing story was just a gimmick to help series creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas trick a network into buying what is basically 5/6 of a Friends clone -- which is not an insult; 5/6 of a show as basically perfect as Friends is still pretty good. But now that producers have announced -- nay, promised -- that the show's upcoming ninth season will definitely be its last and that Ted is for sure going to meet his children's mother at last, the viewer should be feeling pretty confident that...you know, this summit is going to happen soon. So what is this cul-de-sac with Robin all about?

Over eight seasons, Ted and Robin (Cobie Smulders) have basically been everything to one another that two people can possibly be. They've briefly dated; broken up so quickly that they could be friends; been a long-term couple; broken up and been less than amicable about it; dated other people while still kind of yearning for each other; lived together as platonic roommates; resolved to spend time apart because they're each still kind of carrying a torch for the other; and have finally ended up one single person (Ted) and one betrothed person (Robin). But since Robin's gotten engaged to Barney (Neil Patrick Harris), there's always been the question of whether the problems that have cropped up are, any of them, dealbreakers -- will Robin's father (Ray Wise) give Barney post-facto permission to propose? Will Robin be okay moving into Barney's fuck-lair? Will Barney be adequately prepped for marriage with an epic bachelor party? Or are they just typical bumps in the road to a wedding that nearly every couple faces? Given that each half of this couple have, historically, been enemies of marriage, there's always the possibility that one or both of them will try to back out...

...except that Craig Thomas has promised that the wedding is going to happen. One of the countless clues producers have doled out regarding Mother over the years -- see also the yellow umbrella, the bass playing, that she was roommates with Rachel Bilson's character -- is that Ted meets her at Barney and Robin's wedding. That's why it's all the more frustrating that the latest episode seems to end with a hint that Robin has more than cold feet, and that Ted is still pining for her. We know for a fact that they're not getting together, so why get back into this wheel-spinning waste of time?

...except that the promise that Barney and Robin are going to get married doesn't mean they're going to stay married. You know who else got married? Ross and Emily (Friends). Karen and Lionel Finster (Will & Grace). Ross and Rachel (Friends). And all of those fell apart seconds after they happened, and the two of those couples who had guests at the ceremony still went through with the reception. So there's still a chance that the series could end with Robin unattached and pining for Ted -- but will that be satisfying to the viewer if, by that time, Ted is happily coupled with Mother?

...except that this season the show's producers established that Ted's stories could, in fact, be packs of lies. Three episodes ago, we got an even bigger waste of time with "The Time Travelers," in which Ted spun this whole yarn about the courses of action that followed the question of whether or not to see an event called Robots vs. Wrestlers, only to reveal in the last moments of the episode that literally nothing he had talked about having happened in the past tense had actually happened. So now we know that Ted can be an unreliable narrator -- not just in the way most people are when they tell stories about themselves (making themselves look better, for instance), but in the sense that he could actually go through an entire chapter of his personal history and then basically yell "PSYCH!" at the end. If that story was an exercise in pure wish fulfillment, who's to say the final episode couldn't just be "And even though I've been calling her 'your Aunt Robin' this entire time, she's actually your mom, goodnight kids!'"???

I can understand that producers may have felt hamstrung over the years by the titular premise of their show. But putting Barney and Robin together was not a mistake. Those two characters actually are perfect for one another, and if she were real, which I know she is not, every minute Robin spent thinking about being with Ted would be a minute wasted trying to talk herself out of the essential and insoluble personality clashes between herself and Ted which were the reason they broke up in the first place. Furthermore, at this late date and having gone through all the ups and downs of Ted and Robin's relationship, I have to think I'm not the only viewer who doesn't want them to get back together, precisely because the reasons producers gave for Robin and Ted's breakup were compelling and credible!

Can Yellow Umbrella hurry up and get here so that Ted and Robin can both quit putting off their own separate pursuits of happiness? Because it's enough of this shit already.