hey stephen

There was a point while watching the season finale of How I Met Your Mother on Monday night that I thought to myself: This show used to be sooooo good and now it’s just not that funny anymore.  Sure, there were a few funny moments here and there, but it’s not like I found myself thoroughly enjoying the show like I used to.  I remember when it first aired, I was on the bandwagon from episode one, and after the first season finished, I bought it on DVD because I loved it so much, and after going through the DVDs, I went through them again from the beginning because that first season was just that good.  Now though, I find myself watching just to reach the end, when they do the final reveal.

Then one of my favorite blogs linked to this article on NPR, which was written in December of 2011.  This article, entitled The Optimism of Inevitability, ended with  three amazingly insightful paragraphs.  These paragraphs have reinvigorated my feelings for this show, and I’m excited for the fall as the show enters I believe what is its final season.  Moreover, these paragraphs mirror what I deep down truly believe in life: That we should have faith in the fundamental goodness of life, that love will be returned, that perseverance pays off, that friends are just as loving and loyal as family.   [Warning: There is one very small spoiler in this about a plot point that happens in December.  If you don’t want to be spoiled, then don’t read on.]

How I Met Your Mother engages in a certain amount of magical thinking. It believes in signs, in the power of coincidence and the broader meaning of things that seem unimportant. It’s not afraid of fairy dust and the idea that if the sad, difficult things hadn’t happened, the good things wouldn’t have happened either, because everything is part of a whole.

That’s what allowed them to explore how really sad Robin felt last night without it seeming to me like pointless wallowing. It’s not that Robin’s infertility literally enables Ted to meet his future wife. It’s that sad things go with happy things, not because it’s literally cause and effect, but because when you gut it out through divorce or death or loss, you do so in the belief that you will also get to run through the streets hugging everyone. It operates on a kind of faith in the fundamental goodness of life: that your love will be returned; that your perseverance will pay off; that the family you choose — your friends — can be just as loving and loyal as the family you were given.

It doesn’t always work. They’ve done plenty of things wrong, and they’ve meandered through dumb stories that haven’t persuasively fit into that larger picture. But when they get it right, it’s a very elegant and thoughtful larger story about how crushingly sad things have to be placed into a context beyond themselves. It doesn’t really have to show you the mother; it’s not a show about her, even though its storytelling structure is critical. It’s a show that has a specific vision of how life works, and that vision is basically a happy one. It might be one of the happiest shows on television, and I continue to be grateful for that.

Most really well-written TV shows will pull off a crazy twist at the end of the season to hook viewers into coming back for the next season.  Many critics use the word “game-changer” to describe such a twist, which if executed well, puts a wrap to the season that just completed and sets up the series for the next season.  If it is done REALLY well, viewers are left with their mouths hanging open at the very last scene saying OH MY GOODNESS.  And if it is done EXTREMELY well, viewers are left buzzing about what they just saw for the entire summer.

Here’s the thing about The Vampire Diaries, which I now insist, with a complete straight face, is the most well-written show on television.  It doesn’t just pull off ONE twist like the one I just described.  It pulls off many.  And it doesn’t wait until the finale to pull off the surprises.  It does so in pretty much almost episode.  But going back to my point about multiple twists, in this past season’s finale episode, entitled The Departed, by my count there were EIGHT such twists.  EIGHT!  Most good shows can only summon up one good one, but for TVD, one is no longer good enough.

This show has spoiled me so much.  This finale was perfect.  Perfect.  Not a single wasted scene.  And if you follow the show and think about it enough, every action of every scene makes complete sense based on every character’s development up to this point, and there is just so much depth and complexity to the characters on this show.  If you can get over the fact that this show is about vampires, it’s really such a quality show.

Anyway, after watching this past week’s finale, I went online to see what other people thought, and I cut-and-pasted excerpts from reviews of it, but I was careful not to spoil anything.  But just check out the reactions to it.

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Entertainment Weekly:

You know what’s brilliant: The way producers had us talking about whether Elena would choose Stefan or Damon for months so none of us would see the finale’s real twist coming — ELENA IS [SPOILER]. Julie Plec and Kevin Williamson are like Patti Nyholm and Louis Canning, making us look here when we really should have been looking there. (Yes, I also watch The Good Wife.) But when you look back at the episode, after you finally stop repeating your shock-and-awe swear word of choice, you do see the buildup, why now is the right time for [SPOILER], and what kind of new layers and story lines it brings to the show.

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Entertainment Weekly:

Okay, if you haven’t watched the season 3 finale of The Vampire Diaries yet then please stop reading now and get your priorities straight!  Now that the obligatory disclaimer is out of the way… WHAT.JUST.HAPPENED. I thought my reaction to tonight’s episode would be all about Elena’s choice or Klaus’ apparently-not-so-final send-off. But really who cares about all of that when Elena [SPOILER]. I knew that this episode was going to be epic—and it was—but I absolutely was not expecting the writers to take it this far so soon.

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E!:

Excuse us, do you mind if we borrow your spatula? Why, you ask? Because we need it to help scrape our jaws off the floor after The Vampire Diaries’ season three finale, which packed an emotional punch to the gut. Seriously, from Elena (Nina Dobrev) choosing between Stefan (Paul Wesley) and Damon (Ian Somerhalder), to Tyler (Michael Trevino) and Caroline’s (Candice Accola) heartbreaking scene in the cave, to the two (yes, two!) deaths, we felt all the feelings!

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HUFFINGTON POST:

I know that I’ve said this before in relation to The Vampire Diaries — and it’s going to sound extremely cliche, but I just need to say it one more time — OH MY GOD.  I should have known the finale was going to leave me speechless. (I don’t even know how I’m writing this recap.) While I was watching, I felt like I was being pulled in so many different emotional directions, until the final 10 minutes, when I was pretty much devastated. There wasn’t just a death; there were multiple deaths.

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TVLINE:

Did that just happen?! That was the reaction heard around the Internet after the shocking season finale of The Vampire Diaries.

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VH1:

I’m not sure what hurts more after last night’s season three finale of The Vampire Diaries, my eyes from all the crying or my neck from all the head-spinning. Like every finale (and yeah, every other EPISODE) the show has given us before, this was a game changer for Elena, the Salvatores, their friends and their enemies.

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BUZZFOCUS:

Now, that’s how you end a season. The Vampire Diaries Season 3 finale was everything that a fan could hope for. And, this fan in particular, was impressed at the brilliant storytelling and performances presented in The Departed.   While we can always speculate on what will happen in a series beforehand, nothing could quite prepare us for the level of chaos and bedlam that we witnessed. Choices were made. Characters died. And, hearts were broken. It was a well-articulated blend of smiles and cries. In one instant I was yelling, “Holy s—-!” In the next, I was crying out, “Nooooo!” Thank you TVD showrunners.

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BUZZSUGAR:

Season three of The Vampire Diaries has come to an end, folks, and forgive me if I am still sitting here with my jaw wide open. The finale is eventful, to say the least, and like seasons past, we saw the deaths of a couple of characters — along with the red herring deaths of a couple of characters. Oh, and by that I mean that something super crazy happens in the final moments of the episode that we’ll be talking about all summer.

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TVOVERMIND:

Like many viewers of the season 3 finale of The Vampire Diaries I think this might sum up that ending: shjadfjvsgfjhgvjdkvmcbvbmnmhkl!?vhgxhfvsohv.  Yep that is how my brain is feeling after that stellar episode complete with an unexpected and huge twist. The writers and cast played the best misdirection in their promotion leading up to the finale with all the ‘who will Elena choose?’ discussions. While this was important to the narrative they made sure that the ending would put all that to one side for a moment. This really is an epic finale with so much action and emotional moments that ends season 3 on a high.