A Many Speldored Thing: Love & TV (Part 1) [Contributor: Ann]

Stories about relationships pre-date procedurals, medical dramas, period pieces, goofy shows about nothing, and offbeat shows about female friendship. Stories about relationships pre-date Lena Dunham, Liz Meriwether, Amy Sherman Palladino, Scott Buck, Stephen Falk, Craig Bays, Shonda Rimes, Chuck Lorre, Mindy Kaling, Mike Schur, and all the showrunners in-between. Stories about relationships may only be pre-dated by stories with religious themes (creation stories, etc.) but, I mean, I’m making this point entirely without external sources, so please don’t question me on that. I don’t know which is older.

The point is, relationship stories are old. I read once (I’m pretty sure on Tumblr, if that’s any citation) that there is 0% chance of writing a romance that hadn’t been written before. The tropes all exist; each story is just putting tropes together and then executing them. The magic of the writer is in the creativity of their organization (what tropes do they choose? are they ones that provide for character development or are they ones added for shock value?), the execution (what weight is given to emotional moments – is there too much drama, too little drama, drama for the sake of drama, etc.?) , and the characters behind these stories and whether or not they have dimensions (as if they were real people themselves). That’s why relationship stories will never get old; there are an infinite source of different ways to cook one recipe.

I’m writing this mostly because I miss writing for this website. I love writing. (If you have anything you would like for me to write, please let me know!) I also want to call attention to pairings that might not get as much praise as some other ones because they are inherently low-key.
What I will now do is go over five “relationship types” that I have noticed on TV, especially ensemble series, and how they can work, how they can fail, and instances where I’ve seen them. Cool cool? Cool cool.

A disclaimer before I begin: as I write, keep in mind that I have never and will never claim to be an “authority” on any couple, any TV show, or really anything. Some of these shows I have not watched every episode of, so I am certainly just basing them off of GIFs – when that is the case I will let you know. But, I am merely calling attention to patterns I think work and ones that don’t. Be a jag and disagree! Don’t be a jag and agree. But in either case, what I really want to do is open up conversation on TV and learn more about what everyone appreciates and doesn’t appreciate, as well as see where I’m wrong and where I’m right. (On one of my articles for The Mindy Project I got a lot of mean-spirited heat but then was able to have really fruitful discussions with people, which would be my hope and expectation here as well, though I don’t think I’m saying anything that controversial. To be fair, I never really think I’m saying anything that controversial, as I mostly discuss romance in television, a p. benign field of dreams study.)

WILL-THEY-WON'T-THEY?

Typically includes: A pining man and a girl with a boyfriend, or a pining girl and a man with a girlfriend (though this is less common). The two are friends and the fear is "ruining the friendship" most of the time (or how scary it can be to take the next step!). The peak of interest watching these moments is the PINING, which often leads to an ANGUISHED DECLARATION OF LOVE or something equally ANGST-FILLED (”Why didn’t you tell me? Now it’s too late!”). But they get together, of course.

When this works: It gives you butterflies! You are the audience and you are privy to beautiful dramatic irony (HE LIKES HER BUT SHE DOESN’T KNOW IT! They’re friends but IS THAT A ~MOMENT~ THEY JUST SHARED? UGH, WHY IS HE SO DUMB?) Because chemistry is often best with the drumroll, the drumroll extends far longer than it should in real life and there are silly obstacles everywhere preventing Person X and Person Y from getting together (Again: exes, daddy issues, family issues, professionalism, and GOD forbid, the FRIENDSHIP!). But we eat it up because it is thrilling. And let’s face it: it’s better to see sudden mid-fight almost-kisses in the rain than it is to see the rational response, which would be: “Hey, want to grab dinner sometime? I’m romantically interested in you.” “Sure sure!”

When this doesn’t work: But when so much of the relationship is dependent on the tension, the tension can sometimes overtake the characters and become more interesting than them. This means that when the tension is gone – either because the couple gets together or because there’s too many knee-jerks – nothing is left. It’s not fun to watch two hollow puppets get jerked around again and again for no good reason other than ratings grabs. It also is not real to life. Alternately, the writers can even fail the will-they-won’t-they from its very beginning by pinning together two characters who have no chemistry just because will-they-won’t-they’s are so common they must hang around. A third option is to introduce a will-they-won’t-they couple that doesn’t fit into what the rest of the story is telling and force it down viewers’ throats who are more invested in something else.

My favorite will-they-won’t-they: JD and Elliot, Scrubs.

I don’t watch the final season of Scrubs, because it’s not Scrubs. But I do love to watch all other seasons so much, and one of my favorite things about the series is how it handles relationships. For some reason, Scrubs always felt like it knew what it was doing from the very beginning with its relationships (true of all of them, but in this case JD and Elliot). As the principal will-they-won’t-they, JD and Elliot both messed with each other: in the first season they were too immature to let their relationship stick, in the second season they wanted different things, in the third season JD only wanted what he couldn’t have.

But why this tug of war works is because JD and Elliot’s romance is not what defines either of them. Both of them are multi-dimensional characters who have real personality flaws that are apparent both in their relationships and in their career. (P.S. - JD and Elliot had caricature features, but their emotions were taken so seriously! I wish this were true for other shows.) Because they were so well-defined, they could grow independently of each other so that when they were broken up it didn’t bring the show at a screeching halt. Their independent growth meant that every iteration of JD and Elliot getting together was a little bit different, as JD and Elliot both became more experienced in so many ways – leading to the discussion they have with each other in the seventh season about each of their fears in regards to starting again:

JD and Elliot were always soulmates, but their will-they-won’t-they makes it clear that they have to work for their happy ending. And that kind of character work elevates the romance, making the simplest of moments (at their final get-together, JD takes her hand as they walk out of Sacred Heart) feel earned.

Oh, and for some reason, they were weirdly hot. (”My Monster,” “His Story II,” “My Bed Banter and Beyond,” “My Point of No Return”)

Other notable couples: Jackie and Hyde (That ‘70s Show), Jim and Pam (The Office), Mindy and Danny (The Mindy Project), Eliza and Henry (Selfie)

My least favorite will-they-won’t-they: Ted and Robin, How I Met Your Mother.

WHY ARE ROBIN AND TED GOOD FOR EACH OTHER?

I’m serious. I never loved Barney and Robin together that much (no chemistry), and I never loved Ted and The Mother together that much (I did like the mother – but I felt like she was too similar to Ted, too manic-pixie for my tastes) but at least on paper I understood why it made sense. Why do Ted and Robin make sense? Because it was the plan. Because they filmed the ending from the beginning, and they had to stick to that structure.

That meant that everything really didn’t matter. Ted and Robin weren’t growing toward each other, but toward a foregone conclusion. In fact, because the showrunners had to waste nine years of time, Ted and Robin actually grew apart from each other in a way I felt was natural: Ted was growing out of his “Robin” fantasy, growing to appreciate how much he could love Robin not as his soulmate but as a friend, and when he finally let her go (as he cheesily did in the ninth season), he would open his eyes and meet the love of his life.

But because of the powers that be, Robin and Ted had to be together. And that meant, above all things, the sacrifice of Robin Scherbatsky, one of the most badass characters on television – whose story following the boring-as-heck wedding season was practically "Robin is jealous of Ted’s happiness and vanishes for 15 years until she sees him again. Oh, and her old husband – who was stated MANY TIMES as feeling differently for Robin than he had for anyone before, accepting that she couldn’t have kids, accepting her career, accepting the way she changed his entire philosophy and made him love again – well, he broke up with her FOR BETTER WI-FI."

I get, in some way, how you can be happy for Ted. Ted, who realizes that people have more than one soulmate and in the process lets go of some of his romanticism (despite the very pathetic blue French horn). And I get that How I Met Your Mother is more about our ensemble than it is about the in-and-out Mother. I never questioned that, because I understood that wasn’t what the showrunners were investing our time with.

But maybe I thought that too strongly. Maybe I believed the show was too much about the characters that made up our ensemble, because for Ted’s half-happy ending, no other character receives an ending worthy of their preceding story. Especially poor Robin, who is forced to relive a scene from twenty years ago (or whatever it was) rather than live something new. #smh

(I also never got Ross and Rachel, and as someone who hates the "Guy wore me down" trope, I don’t think I will ever like them – but I haven’t watched enough Friends to know!)

The next four installments of Ann's series will be out throughout the coming weeks, so be sure to stay tuned for those and let her know what you thought of this post down in the comments section! :)

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The 'How I Met Your Mother' Series Finale Was... (Wait For It)... Awful.

Kids, this is the story of how Carter Bays and Craig Thomas wrote themselves into a corner.

I’ve done this before, personally, and it’s not great. You create characters and construct circumstances and you intend for your writing to go a certain direction. But then the characters change or the circumstances become too complex and before you know it, you’re surrounded by walls that have been subtly growing for a while with no way to escape.

When I was in college, I had a professor for both my Creative Writing and Creative Writing and Publication classes. His name was David Athey and was, to this day, the best professor I ever had. I remember approaching him one day about a piece that I was working on. I told him that everything had been going well but that I had just hit a wall when I was writing. After a moment, my bespectacled professor smiled at me and uttered these wise words: “There are no walls in writing – only secret passageways.” That sentence has stuck with me ever since, and whenever I find myself backed up against a wall, instead of trying to break it down or run away, I look for the secret passageway behind the bookcase or beneath the rug.

How I Met Your Mother was a series that, from the very beginning, was constructed to end a certain way. The kids’ reactions were filmed years upon years ago, back when it wasn’t certain whether the series would last another thirteen or twenty episodes. Nine years later, Bays and Thomas discovered that they had written themselves into a corner by planning the ending from the beginning. But instead of finding the secret passageway, they charged forward, breaking and shattering every single wall of character development they had beautifully and intricately constructed over the course of nine years in order to salvage an ending that wasn’t even meant to be.

The fact is that they didn’t have to do that at all. Bays and Thomas didn’t have to use the footage they had shot back when Lyndsy and David were playing Ted Mosby’s teenaged children. Here are some alternatives that could have occurred. (Bear in mind that I just saw the episode twelve hours ago.)

Scenario #1:

[Ted finishes telling the story of how he met their mother. We have a shot of the kids just staring at him – it’s been nine years so I’m sure they have plenty of footage.]

[Ted, frustrated, enters his and Tracy’s bedroom] Can you believe it? Nothing. I got zero reaction from them. After all of that… zip. Zilch. Nada.

[Tracy, smiling, takes a hold of her husband’s hand] Ted, they don’t get it. They’re teenagers. They’re more e concerned with who gets booted off that one singing competition we both can’t stand because seriously, that thing has been on FOREVER. [Ted raises an eyebrow at her. Tracy smiles wider and slings her arms around Ted’s neck] They don’t get it. They don’t realize that the most amazing, wonderful stories are the ones that take a long time to get to the end. But it was worth it: every stupid little moment and bump, because it ended up here. With you meeting me.

[Sappy adorable and perfect music plays. The end.]

Scenario #2:

If Bays and Thomas were so concerned with Tracy dying, we could have still ended it with Ted exhibiting character growth because, you know, great love of his life.

[Voiceovers at the end of Ted and his children talking about the mother – flashbacks in hers and Ted’s relationship. Ted delivers a stunning monologue about how all of the pain was worth it because he met her and got them and he’ll love her “to the end of his days and beyond.” Bam. End with Ted at her grave with the back of the kids’ heads – not them, obviously – or something.]

Look – I just took ten minutes to come up with an ending for How I Met Your Mother that was worlds better than what Bays and Thomas concocted. Here is why, in a nutshell, I took such issue with the finale:

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Jenn's Pick: Top 5 Most Emotional Moments in "How I Met Your Mother"

I’m a huge fan of comedies and television comedies are no exception. Throughout the years, I’ve fallen in love with my fair share of television shows – Community, New Girl, The Office, Ben and Kate, Go On, etc. – and each of these series, as you may know, is a comedy. But the beauty of each of these shows is that they are distinct in the way that they make us laugh or connect with us emotionally. New Girl and Community are both typified as “comedy” but both approach all that entails – the punch lines, the emotional heart, etc. – differently. Similarly, shows like The Big Bang Theory and Girls are classified as “comedies,” and yet both are entirely different TYPES of comedies. It would be difficult to compare them, to note which is “better” but alas, that is what the Emmys do year after year.

One comedy I always admired and loved throughout college was Scrubs. The show was witty and quirky, but also relatable. The characters were completely unique and distinct in personality and in humor (Elliot had a specific brand of ditzy, fast-talking humor while Dr. Cox was dry and sarcastic). It was a long-running series, too, where viewers felt emotionally invested in the journeys of each of these characters, where they grew alongside J.D. as he navigated his career as a doctor. But there was one element of Scrubs that consistently impressed me and still does to this day – its emotional steamroller.

What IS an emotional steamroller, you ask? This is something that is – strikingly – very rare in comedies today. It’s this secret power that writers and showrunners have, and because of that, choose to release infrequently so as to not diminish its prowess or drive the show into the drama category. And there’s nothing wrong when shows do not possess this emotional steamroller. I love Community and New Girl, but these series don’t pack the powerful punch that could classify them in “steamroller” territory. There are only two series that I (personally) believe possess these powerful weapons: Scrubs and How I Met Your Mother.

Now, I’ve contemplated the presence of the “emotional steamroller” in both of these series and realize why this weapon exists in the series’ arsenals: it launches the show into uncharted territory. Scrubs was always a very quirky show – the entire series was narrated by J.D. as he went about his daily life at Sacred Heart. A typical episode’s desire was to extract laughter from the audience (it was a single-camera show, so there were no laugh tracks or live audience) by utilizing dry humor, pratfalls, or flashes into the weird and insane reality of J.D.’s thoughts. Similarly, How I Met Your Mother’s goals from episode-to-episode are similar: extract laughter from the audience (which is deceptively not a multi-camera sitcom even though it looks and sounds like one with the utilization of a laugh track/live audience) by utilizing its quirky characters and placing them into weird or awkward situations that require them to do something insane and/or hilarious to get out of them.

Both of these series were and are good at what they strive to accomplish comedically. But what takes them to the next level – what makes them stand out above all of the other comedies I mentioned at the start of this article – is the utilization of the “emotional steamroller.” Because just when the audience feels like they’re wading through territory cultivated by The Big Bang Theory or Modern Family or Friends, the writers and creators release the emotional steamroller, throwing the audience from their feet and into a sobbing mess on the floor.

Scrubs and How I Met Your Mother are the only two series that I’ve found myself literally SOBBING during. And these moments are completely unsuspecting (hence the “steamroller” part of my analogy) because we, as the audience, anticipate comedy and slapstick and general absurdity from characters like Doctor Cox and Marshall Eriksen. But just as we become comfortable in these generalizations of these people, right at the moment we’ve decided that they are snarky or hilarious and nothing much more, we are hit with the emotional weight of what these people can and will suffer – what we, the audience, so often ignore or are not shown. So when Doctor Cox loses his organ transplant patients and walks out of the door, blaming himself for their deaths, we grab the nearest box of tissues and cry until our eyes are rimmed red because the fact of the matter is that we never think of Doctor Cox as a dimensional character until we are forcefully hit with that reality. And Scrubs was never more profound, more relatable, and more beautiful than when viewers were hit with these truths.

My relationship with How I Met Your Mother began in high school (yes, high school, because that is how long this show has been around in conjunction with how old I am) when my male friends began watching it and would obsessively quote the show to one another at lunch. Seizing the opportunity to join in on conversations (and what they informed me was a hilarious series), I began watching. Somewhere, years down the road, I fell off the HIMYM bandwagon, jumped back on, fell off again, and then began to ride the wagon with one foot dragging on the ground.

(Basically I started and stopped watching the show in spurts throughout the years, in case the metaphor isn’t sticking.)

I am never more in awe of this show than when it sends its emotional steamroller barreling toward its audience. And I am convinced that the actors always shine their brightest when placed into these emotional situations.

So in the spirit of making lists, I decided to compile the top five most emotional moments in How I Met Your Mother’s history thus far. You all tweeted some wonderful suggestions (and Audrey nearly matched my list exactly!), and really four out of these five were winners without any contest. If you’re ready, then, click below the cut and we will discuss some of the saddest, most heart-wrenching emotional steamrolling moments in this comedy’s history.

(You might want to find some tissues as well.)

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Jenn's Pick: Top 10 Television Pilots

Television pilots are tricky things. And by that, what I really mean is that hardly anyone (at least anyone who I have met) will say that their favorite episode of any television series is the pilot. It takes a good, long while for some shows to establish the tone of their show and to develop their characters. For some shows, this may take a few episodes. For others, it will take seasons. But pilots are integral and necessary to a show – I’ve always held fast to the belief that, to measure the progression of a show, you should watch its pilot and the most current episode to date. It is then that you can determine whether the show has progressed or regressed in terms of plot, consistency, character development, etc. Take, for example, the pilot episode of something like Doctor Who. The 2005 pilot, “Rose,” introduced us to a shop girl from London and a 900-year old, time-traveling alien. The ninth incarnation of the Doctor was dark and pretty self-hating. Rose Tyler was young, optimistic, and someone we (or at least I) assumed would always be the damsel-in-distress. As you might know, if you watch the show, Doctor Who has progressed so much in terms of developing characters, plot, and yes, even special effects. (They have come a LONG way since 2005, let me tell you!)

So, I’ve decided to list ten pilot episodes of shows that have passed every test in my book and landed in the “solid pilot” pile. But what you’re about to discover is something pretty interesting: I don’t like some of these shows anymore.

“But Jenn,” you might say, “I thought you said that these shows passed your test!”

While these series may have developed pilots that passed with flying colors, some of them are shows that I merely fell out of love with, and some – shockingly! – I even detest now. Pilots are episodes that are important, as I said earlier, but are not always indicative of a show’s consistency to be spectacular. Also, it’s interesting to note that the exact opposite is true.

(Spoiler alert: you will not see Community or Doctor Who listed. Though these are two of my favorite shows to date, their pilots weren’t enrapturing enough to make my list. I didn’t fall in love with Community until five episodes later, and Doctor Who took me until “World War Three” to really connect with.)

So just because a show is absent from this list or, conversely, because it’s on it, don’t assume that this is indicative of my present feelings toward the series.

With that, are you ready to see which pilots made it onto my list? (Don’t worry, guys. I still have a LOT of great pilots that have been suggested – LOST, Alias, Friday Night Lights – that will not be on here, merely because I have not seen the series yet.) Well, then, let’s head back to the very beginning!

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