An Open Letter to the Creators of “HIMYM”
Spoiler alert — it doesn’t end well.
Dear Creators of HIMYM,
Let’s talk about why we love your show.
We love your show because you created one of the most accurate representations of being a twenty-something in NY, trying to build a career while fostering friendships, searching for love and feeling the isolation that this city brings but honoring the incredible moments New York City affords. You created a show that was simultaneously laugh out loud funny and cry your eyes out heartbreaking. For that, we thank you.
You also effectively created a group of individuals who represented our generation in a way that we haven’t seen before and doesn’t exist elsewhere right now. We love these characters because they are layered, they make mistakes, they follow their own rules, and they’re better for it. They have grown with us. We have grown with them. They have seen us through our own heartbreaks, job trials and friend tribulations. We’ve been with you since the beginning.
It’s not an exaggeration to say that in less than one hour you effectively broke the bond that we spend nine years building with these people. These people were our friends.
Let’s talk about our friends.
Barney Stinson. What a guy? He’s actually the worst kind of guy but somehow you made him lovable. More than that you grounded him reality. His disfunctional relationships with women stemmed from an honest place of childhood trauma. You gave him depth. You slowly, subtly and brilliantly revealed his layers and allowed him to evolve and change. We watched Barney go from the playbook, to falling honestly in love and burning it. Barney’s evolution is one of the best on TV. His relationship with Robin grew from a place of respect and nurturing. When a bus hit Barney and his life flashed before his eyes, it was Robin that he saw. That was an amazing character arc, truly.
Barney ending his marriage with Robin over her successful career was more than a slap in the face (yes, I went there) to his character development, but also a slap in the face all the people who grow and change as they learn what they want from life and love. Seeing the playbook once again in his hands and watching him chase after women half his age broke my heart. He deserved more. His journey deserved more.
And Lily, that beautiful firecracker, Lily’s journey has been one that we can closely relate to. For years, Lily chased her dream of being an artist. That dream led to her almost losing the love of her life, twice. But she believed in herself and needed to honor her desires. That dream pushed her from New York, to California and to Rome. That dream evolved, shifted and altered, but art was always there. We saw ourselves most in her when she cried believing that it was too late for her dream. But somehow you showed us it’s never too late.
In this finale, her career is nothing more than a memory. Lily goes from a woman who managed to juggle marriage, children and work to a 1950’s caricature. She talks about her husband’s career and pops out baby after baby. While Marshall is pursuing ambitions of being a judge, what is Lily doing? Is she a stay at home mom? Does she have a part-time job? Does she work full-time and still manage to make it to Daisy’s dance recitals and Marvin’s baseball games? Or, does her life revolve around everything Marshall? How did this woman who we have watched for almost a decade end up? How was her story wrapped? How did it end? From the finale, we guess with many babies and her turning on her best girlfriend.
Ted and Marshall both have their own inconsistencies but they get endings that honor their desires and character development in varying capacities. In fact Ted gets two happy endings, but more on that later. We could go more into depth on them, but we want to get to the real kicker. We want to get to the reason we felt impassioned to write this. The truth is, at one time or another we have seen ourselves in all of these people, but none more so than Robin Sherbatsky.
Robin Sherbatsky is one of the best female characters to grace our television screens. She is strong AND feminine, invested in her career AND her love life. She is a woman who doesn’t apologize for who she is and what she believes in. She is the perfect role model for women in their twenties trying to pave their way in a world where women are valued solely on the size of their jeans. Her sense of self worth was NEVER connected to a man. She is a woman who knows herself, her values, her strengths, her weaknesses and her capacity for love.
When it was revealed that Robin couldn’t have kids, you showed us something. You showed us that motherhood is not the only thing that makes a woman. You showed us that having a career could be as fulfilling as having a family. With Robin, you showed us that a woman could like scotch, watch sports and be feminine. Robin was different. Her life wasn’t about chasing men and getting married. It wasn’t about the ideals that a patriarchal society has spent years shoving down our throats.
In one hour Robin went from having all the aforementioned qualities to being a weak, isolated “yeti” (to use your, and her friends, own words). After sticking through an entire season building to the wedding of the two most interesting and evolved characters on your show, you broke them apart in less than five minutes. You boiled the end of their relationship down to meaningless sex with each other in the wrong hotel room. They deserved more as a couple. Robin deserved more as a progressive woman. Barney deserved more as an evolved man. They deserved for you to address the complexities of divorce, of having a career and a relationship and ultimately what it means to take a vow. In a generation where we barely have the attention span to walk without texting, you condoned running away from a hard discussion and giving up on a relationship that was healthy for both parties.
Then you proceeded to isolate our female heroine from the friends who said, “We choose Robin.” (Even though this is not about choosing.) They turn on her and talk about her behind her back. They take her back, but not without judgment. You turned her into a caricature, a woman who can’t have a career and maintain relationships. What about Lily? What about the relationship they’ve built and grown? They don’t talk. They don’t email. They don’t tweet, for god’s sake!
Moreover, you broke her down, you made her uncomfortable in social situations, you made her run away from NY, you destroyed her self-confidence and the friendships she’d built and fostered. And worst of all, you turn her into a woman longing for an ex that she chose to walk away from time and time again because they were not right for each other. She CHOSE because she knew herself and her values. And after all of that she ends up pining after him and regretting her decisions. And worse than that, every time she talks about her career it’s in a debilitating way, as if it’s held her back from her true happiness…and her true happiness is… wait I can’t even actually type it…it’s…Ted.
Before Ted “saves” her, she ends up alone with her dogs. So, while the man was married to the actual love of his life and got his happy ending, Robin was alone simply waiting for Ted’s wife to die so that she could be Ted’s consolation prize. So now the man gets two happy endings and Robin is still second fiddle. She sits and waits for him to sweep her off her feet, even though she’s created a life for herself and paved her own way in the world.
To top it all off, the man with whom she shared a marriage, the man who stood by her when she learned she couldn’t have children, the man who valued her for more than her womb, the man who saw her as an equal was effectively changed by a baby with a one night stand. That man needed a baby to give him perspective that his long term, layered relationship with Robin couldn’t. He needed the one thing Robin couldn’t give him. That love and companionship meant nothing because she couldn’t give him the baby he needed to change.
For years, your show has given viewers lessons and messages on life, love and family. What message were you trying to send to us? We’re women, writers, filmmakers and business owners in our mid-twenties. How should we read this episode? How should we value ourselves based on this episode? Are our careers simply placeholders until we find men to fulfill us and we become baby-making machines? Or if we don’t want to or can’t have children should we wait it out until a man has children with another woman, fulfills that need and then can see the value in us? Should we get rid of our male friends while we’re at it?
We wish that we felt outraged as fans of the show. We wish that we felt like you wasted our time. Instead, we feel that you wasted an opportunity, an opportunity to show a progressive couple help each other discover who they are in a nontraditional way, while both having careers. You missed the chance to show millennials that there are different types of relationships, that romance is not dead, but it’s not for everyone. You missed a chance to say that a relationship is worth fighting for with the right human. You missed a chance to show that a woman can have a career and be sexy and be cool and make mistakes and not have children and have a successful marriage. You missed the chance to tell us that we are more than our value to men.
Sincerely,
-Amanda & Naomi
