How I Met Your Mother 200th Episode Review: "How Your Mother Met Me"

In my recent “Rest of 2013” piece, I criticized the writers of How I Met Your Mother for not using The Mother more in the final season.  Introduced in the closing moments of the eighth season finale, The Mother (played by Cristin Milioti) has been a breath of fresh air for the show.  How I Met Your Mother is in its ninth season and like just about every show that makes it to this point, the quality wanes.  The Mother’s appearances have been highlights, but unfortunately there’s the small detail that she and Ted (the ‘I’ of the title) can’t meet in the present part of the timeline until the finale.  While she’s shown up in other character’s storylines and in flashbacks and flash forwards, she’s been largely relegated to the sidelines until the 200^th episode “How Your Mother Met Me”.

The episode plays a bit like what I call a “Zeppo” episode (after the Buffy episode), where the show shifts its focus from the usual characters to supporting characters.  “How Your Mother Met Me” serves to fill us in on what The Mother has been doing for the past eight seasons.  It starts on a surprisingly tragic note, as she learns the man she believed was “the one” has died, and on her 21^st birthday no less.  Nobody at 21 expects something like that to happen, so that traumatic event expectedly echoes throughout her twenties.  Milioti nails the heartbreak, and the pace of the episode keeps it from being maudlin.

Most of the episode plays catch up as we follow The Mother across the major road markers of near misses Ted and she have had over the years.  They manage to cram a lot of call backs from the show in this episode’s 22 minutes; from The Mother being friends with “The Naked Man” Mitch to all the small details about her that Future Ted’s sprinkled throughout the run.  I definitely wish we could’ve seen more in this episode (or better yet, more of it), but for a single episode, they made excellent use of their time.

It culminates with The Mother, having decided to move on alone, singing a haunting rendition of “La Vie En Rose”.  “La Vie En Rose” is a beautiful song, but what makes this scene so potent is Milioti’s performance both as a singer and actress.  It might not be how she would sing it if she were cutting the song for an album, but it makes sense that that’s how The Mother would play it.  All the grief and heartbreak is there (anytime it appears that her voice breaks a little is a master touch), yet there is that sense that deep down The Mother is still a romantic like Ted, who no doubt fell in love with her hearing her sing it over the partition between their adjoining rooms.

Before they introduced The Mother, there was the common belief that the show should have ended the moment Ted and The Mother met.  Ultimately this episode proves just how bad an ending that would’ve been.  If that had happened The Mother would be just an object.  It might as well have been some expensive item Ted saved up for for eight years.  Having us meet The Mother before Ted does was the right thing to do and this episode serves to get us invested in her story so we end up falling in love with her and rooting for her to find that second chance we know is coming.

No doubt casting The Mother was a difficult process.  Finding someone to live up to the hype of eight seasons of TV, not to mention justify the existence of a subpar ninth, could have been a complete disaster with the wrong woman.  Luckily they found the perfect woman for Ted in Milioti and the case made for her here was Emmy worthy.  I understand the frustration some viewers have had in reaction to this episode after sitting through filler episodes (this reinforces my initial complaint that she was underused in the season so far), but this episode could be one that redeems the season.  This episode shows that while the series has seen better days, the heart of the show can be as strong as ever.

Miscellaneous:

-Among the things debunked: the Mother wasn’t the ideal match from the dating service Ted blew off in season one, nor was he the random woman who Ted bumped into during St. Patrick’s Day 2008.

-No confirmation on her name though, so the “Tracy” theory from way back in season one’s “Belly Full of Turkey” (Where Ted tricked his kids into thinking The Mother was a stripper with that name) is still valid.

-Louis is played by Louis Ferrigno Jr., Lou Ferrigno’s son.  Also Linus is played by Robert Belushi, Jim Belushi’s son.

-I may be wrong, but is this the first episode where neither Robin nor Marshall have any lines?

-I don’t know if they intended this, but both episodes divisible by 100 ended in musical numbers, though they couldn’t be more different.  “Girls Vs. Suits” ended with the elaborate song and dance number “Nothing Suits Me Like a Suit”, complete with dozens of backup dancers and Neil Patrick Harris being funny.  This one ends with a stripped down, intimate performance of just a ukulele and Milioti.  I don’t know which one I prefer, but both were fantastic.