Episode Title: "The Lighthouse"
Episode Grade: A
It might be a good idea at some point in the future to sit down and write a post about the difficulty of separating one's emotional reaction to art from a reasonable evaluation of the work's merits. Emotion is a key element to that evaluation, of course, but it's not difficult for a moderately skilled artist to create something that is both mediocre and capable of plucking the audience's heartstrings.
All of this is a long way of saying that I don't know if I enjoyed "The Lighthouse" as much as I did because it was a genuinely moving, well-written episode or because I'm soft-hearted enough to be easily bowled over by its sentimentality.
Maybe trying to answer that is an exercise in futility and pointless navel-gazing. And in fairness, I'm pretty good at both of those things. But whatever the cause, watching Ted propose to The Mother in a flash forward at the end of the episode was a thrilling moment, and it won me over completely.
One of the advantages that comes with nine seasons of television is that it's difficult to have an un-earned character moment. Ted proposing to an adorable Cristin Milioti isn't just the climax of an episode, it's the climax to nine years of character work. Maybe the connection viewers have to television characters is silly (OK, it definitely is), but that connection is there. And we've seen enough skillfully constructed heartbreak that witnessing a moment of sheer triumph resonates in a way it wouldn't on a shorter-lived sitcom.
One of the themes How I Met Your Mother has consistently hit on throughout its run has been the reality that, even if The One actually exists and we're actually capable of finding him or her, that still means every relationship we have along the way is going to end in disappointment. The show's writers have taken pains at times to demonstrate that the disappointment at the end doesn't negate what came before, that a relationship that ends isn't a relationship that failed and that life is the beautiful disappointments that come before the messy successes. But there's always that hint of sadness, even in the knowledge of Ted's inevitable happy ending.
We some of this idea in "The Lighthouse," which ends by contrasting Ted's moment with The Mother in the titular lighthouse with the earlier moment in the same lighthouse he shared with Anna Camp's Cassie. Cassie's basically a decent girl; beautiful, of "normal height," as Lily points out. She's just in the middle of an awful weekend, and she's not really a good match for Ted.
So when Ted hauls Cassie up to the top of the lighthouse (she sprained her ankle on a kid's toy car), only to end up vomiting over the edge of the thing, it seems like another place that he's ruined with his desperate search for Mrs. Right.
But "The Lighthouse's" theory is simple: you're not history's prisoner. The failures of your past don't dictate the course of your future. A setting isn't ruined simply because you once shared it with someone who wasn't right for you; instead, you can discover the beauty of a place and a moment by finding someone who is.
Robin and Barney's plot ties into that theme, at least at its conclusion. This is a fairly light plot through most of the episode's running time, as Robin and Barney's mom play out their hostility through the time-honored art form of scrambled eggs. It's occasionally amusing, and Cobie Smoulders continues to give an MVP-caliber comedic performance this season.
Once the comedic table setting is cleared away, however, and Robin lets slip to Barney's mom that she can't have kids, the plot takes a different turn. Part of the reason "Symphony of Illumination," an episode in the show's seventh season, was such a masterpiece was that it allowed Robin to experience genuine despair at the revelation that she was medically incapable of bearing children without implying that she would have done so if she could. Robin never wanted kids, but having a road barred to you can be heartbreaking even if you don't think you're going to take it.
When her aerophobic mother calls to say she can't get on the plane to come to the wedding, it's a reminder that there are things Robin has never had and things she never can have. Her relationship with her parents has always been distant, at best, and she's unable to forge a new family in the usual way.
So her final embrace with Barney's mom is a recognition that there are other ways of doing so. There are things Robin has never had, and there are things she can never have, but that doesn't mean family is a ruined lighthouse.
Notes
- "A scramble-off to the death! Watch out for the cops!" "We really should have checked up on this town before booking our wedding here."
- Marshall and Daphne spend the night at Ted's old house in Cleveland. Ted imagines a highway sign saying "Welcome to Cleveland, Home of Ted Moseby," then admits that was unlikely.
- Ted's mom has an Old West-style photo Ted took with his best friend when he was a kid. Ted's best friend was a balloon.
- "I've always liked children. I've always wanted a Lamborghini with a hot tub in it."
- Turns out, ZZ Top's hit "Legs" was actually about Loretta's eggs. Robin's not impressed by this revelation about "Zed Zed Top."
- Ted's future wife doesn't have to share his love of coins, but it'd be nice if he didn't have to go stag to CoinCon.
- Lily being handed a glass of booze by Linus the bartender is never not funny.
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