Guess Who's Not Coming to the NBA Game?

So, NBA commissioner Adam Silver dropped the hammer on owner Donald Sterling, banning the LA Clippers owner for life and asking the other owners to kick Donald out of their very exclusive club.  As Groucho Marx said in A Night at the Opera, “Let joy be unconfined. Let there be dancing in the streets, drinking in the saloons and necking in the parlor.”

Because I’m that kind of guy, let me offer a defense for Donald Sterling.  He is a reprehensible human being, if indeed he is one, and the comments that were recorded by his mistress (who is about one-fourth his age) were beneath contempt.  Yes, this is my defense.  I’m just warming up.

A couple of points.  Everyone knew Donald Sterling was a racist before these comments came to light.  They knew he was a racist 41 years ago when they approved him buying the Clippers.  They knew he was a racist as he managed the Clippers so badly they were a laughingstock since before his mistress was born.  They knew he was a racist when the US Department of Justice brought charges against him of racial discrimination, charges that he agreed to in a settlement.  They knew he was a racist thanks to innumerable stories from dozens of individuals, including former Clippers GM Elgin Baylor.  So, what’s changed?  If it was okay for him to own the Clippers for 41 years despite being a racist, why is it not okay now?

Secondly, the “crime” he committed was making comments in what he thought was a private phone conversation that was taped by his mistress (who, apparently, has no first name).  The legality of the taping is dubious as in California it is illegal to tape a phone conversation without the knowledge of all participants.  He committed no act with the intension of bringing shame or disrepute to the NBA.  He is probably more upset than anyone that the tape was made public.

Compare that to the actions of Toronto Raptors’ GM Masai Ujiri, who addressed a fan rally in Toronto and purposefully, and with malice aforethought, dropped an F-bomb on the crowd when referring to the Brooklyn Nets.  This is a highly placed employee of an NBA team, dressed in a suit and representing his organization, deliberately and without provocation cursing like a stevedore in front of a crowd that presumably included a few young people not old enough to appreciate his delightful bon mot.  To me, that is far worse than an owner’s secret beliefs being made public against his wishes.  Ujiri was fined a paltry $25,000.

But what is Sterling’s punishment?  A $2.5 million fine? Help me out here, is the fine for having racist beliefs, for having impure thoughts, or is it for allowing his much younger mistress to tape him expressing those thoughts?  Generally people should be held accountable for actions they had control over, and I don’t think releasing the tape was his idea.

Besides, UCLA announced they are returning a $3 million gift Sterling had made to the school.  So, UCLA agreed to pay his fine for him, with change.

His other penalty?  He has to sell the LA Clippers.  The lowly Milwaukee Bucks recently sold for just over half a billion dollars; speculation is that the Clippers, an up-and-coming franchise, might fetch as much as $1 billion.  That’s right—his punishment will be to cash a check for one BEEEELION dollars (as Dr. Evil would say).  That’ll teach him not to believe that all men are brothers.

You want to punish Donald Sterling?  Strap him in a boat on the It’s a Small World ride at Disneyland and make him go through it until his ears bleed.  Instead of making him sell the team, confiscate it and refund his initial purchase price, plus nominal interest.  But to think you are striking a blow for equality that is equivalent to the Emancipation Proclamation by making a known racist pocket $1 billion is ridiculous.

Reports are that Sterling will fight the sale.  He’s done stupid things before, so this would be another.  How did such an idiot acquire so much money in the first place?  Mark Cuban I understand, he’s smart; but Donald Sterling obviously is, um, not.

But at least some good will come out of Sterling’s team of high priced lawyers being able to stimulate the economy by buying yachts and fur coats with all the money he’ll pay them.  Come to think of it, A-Rod’s legal team is available; maybe he should hire them.

The Supie Awards

Superman is undoubtedly the most enduring superhero in the mythic pantheon of extraordinary individuals.  He has survived World War II, Lex Luthor, kryptonite, and Brandon Routh (barely).  In adapting the role to the silver screen, then the television screen, a variety of liberties have been taken; Lois and Clark was basically a rom-com for the two main characters, while the creators of Smallville promised “no tights, no flights” (how well they kept that promise is open to debate).

Given the many incarnations of Superman over the years (including some I have purposely overlooked like a syndicated TV series called Superboy way back when) it is time to reflect and acknowledge the actors who gave the best performances in the various roles.

role	Adventures of Superman	Superman The Movie (I-IV)	Lois & Clark	Smallville	Superman Returns	Man of Steel
Superman/Clark Kent	George Reeves	Christopher Reeves	Dean Cain	Tom Welling	Brandon Routh	Henry Caville
Lois Lane	Noel Neill	Margot Kidder	Teri Hatcher	Erica Durance	Kate Bosworth	Amy Adams
Jimmy Olsen	Jack Larson	Marc McClure	Michael Landes/Justin Whelin	Alan Ashmore	Sam Huntington
Perry White	John Hamilton	Jackie Cooper	Lane Smith	Michael McKean	Frank Langella	Laurence Fishburne
Lana Lang		Annette O’Toole	Emily Proctor	Kristen Kreuk
Lex Luthor		Gene Hackman	John Shea	Michael Rosenbaum	Kevin Spacey
Ma Kent		Phyllis Thaxter	K Callen	Annette O’Toole	Eva Marie Saint	Diane Lane
Pa Kent		Glenn Ford	Eddie Jones	John Schneider		Kevin Costner

Best Superman: Christopher Reeves

The catch phrase of the film was, “You will believe a man can fly.”  The main reason why that was true was not the special effects, but Reeves’ performance; he acted like he could fly.  He played Superman as an accessible ideal; powerful, caring, self-effacing, sincere but not humorless.  An unknown actor at the time, he immediately became Superman.  He returned to the franchise on Smallville, providing a nice coda to his work.

Best Clark Kent:  Dean Cain

Cain did something remarkable—he made Clark Kent more interesting than Superman.  While Christopher Reeves played up the “bumbling” Clark Kent persona, with over-large glasses and a goofy grin, Cain simply played him as a nice guy who was more than worthy of Lois even without super powers.  He reminded us that, as he put it, “Superman is what I can do; Clark Kent is who I am.”

Best Lois Lane:  Teri Hatcher

Easiest call of all.  Hatcher was perfect; she played Lois as gorgeous, intelligent, fearless to the point of reckless, and just messed up enough so it was credible that she didn't have a steady boyfriend when Clark showed up.  Hatcher subsequently got an Emmy nomination for Desperate Housewives but this role transformed her image from a buxom bimbo to something more (although it is easy to forget that one of the first internet sensations was a photo of Hatcher apparently wearing nothing but Superman’s cape).

Best Jimmy Olsen:  Jack Larson

A thankless role, Larson established the “gosh Mr. White, I’ll never be as good a reporter as Clark and Lois” personality.  He later revived the role on Lois and Clark (when Jimmy was exposed to something causing rapid aging) and had a cameo in Superman Returns.

Best Perry White:  Lane Smith

While John Hamilton made the phrase “Great Caesar’s Ghost!” legendary, Smith updated and supplanted it with his, “Great shades of Elvis!”  Smith was more caring, less blustery than the other Perry Whites, one who cared about Lois and Clark and didn't just yell at them to get their copy in.  He’s been portrayed by fine actors in the movies, but the role has been made smaller.

Best Lex Luthor:  Michael Rosenbaum

Luthor has been played by two Oscar winners (Gene Hackman and Kevin Spacey) and was given a star turn by John Shea, but I am picking Rosenbaum.  He had the advantage of playing young Lex Luthor, and so played the tug-of-war within him as he tries to do good but ends up making decisions with bad consequences.  Lex Luthor as Clark’s friend gave Rosenbaum more chance for nuance than the other actors in the role had.

Best Ma Kent:  Annette O’Toole

I pick O’Toole over K Callen mostly because she also played Lana Lang in Superman III.  Callen redefined the role, making her an avant-garde artist in addition to Clark’s mom, but O’Toole was the model of motherly support (until she was written out of the series by being elected Senator).

Best Pa Kent: Glenn Ford

Eddie Jones and John Schneider were both excellent, but Glenn Ford is the essence of fatherly wisdom when he tells his teenaged son, “You were sent here for a reason, and it wasn't to score touchdowns.”  Ford imbues his brief role with such humanity that his death is painful, even after only a limited amount of screen time.

Finally, a special award to Allison Mack in Smallville for Best Non-canonical character.  She was the heart and soul of that show; I've always liked the fact that in the episode featuring the nascent Justice League she functioned as Watchtower despite the fact that she had no super powers, she was just Chloe Sullivan.  Why young Clark Kent preferred Lana Lang over Chloe is a mystery to me; Chloe was smarter, funnier, more into Clark, and frankly she had bigger boobs.  What more could a budding Superboy want?

When Exclamation Points Attack!!

Historical epochs often generate the seeds of their own undoing.  Something becomes dominant, and then everyone being dominated focuses all their energy on upsetting the prevailing order until it happens and a new dominator is anointed.  For example, the 1950’s was an era of offense for baseball, with the Yankee sluggers achieving such domination that a musical was written about how other teams felt about the “Damn Yankees.”  In the 1960’s the Yankees faded into obscurity, and baseball embraced players like Sandy Koufax and Bob Gibson and pitchers ruled the roost.

A similar changing of the guard occurred in, well, musicals.  The 1950’s were the apex of the Arthur Freed unit at MGM, with musicals like An American in Paris and Gigi winning Best Picture Oscars, not to mention Singin’ in the Rain, now considered the greatest musical ever made.  But then came the 1960’s and the big budget film musical almost became extinct.  What happened?

An answer to this question is currently being offered in a new book by Matthew Kennedy called Roadshow!  I should clarify that the exclamation point at the end of that sentence is in the book’s title; one of the nutty trends that happened in the 1960’s is that producers tried to convince filmgoers that a movie was important or historic by adding exclamation points to the title.  Thus there is not only Hello Dolly! but also lesser efforts like Star!, Tora! Tora! Tora!, and I Do! I Do!  I tell myself that the exclamation point in Help! is meant to be ironic.

Producers of film musicals fell under two other psychopathologies in the 1960’s.  One was a nearly-religious belief that spending money on musicals would increase the gross, no matter what the money was spent on.  If putting antique beadwork on the dresses worn by extras standing ten feet away from the film’s star in a long shot cost $10,000, then that was money well spent.  The goal was always to top the gross of The Sound of Music, a film that spent 33 weeks at the top of the box office (now if a film spends three weeks at #1 it is nothing short of a miracle).  The assumption seemed to be that more input would result in higher grosses, with no one noticing that The Sound of Music was a low budget film.

The second psychopathology in the production of film musicals was the immediate reflex to cast non-singing actors in leading roles in musicals.  The theory seems to have been that if it worked for Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady, then it would work for [fill in the blank].  This is why film audiences were subjected to the musical croonings of Walter Matthau (Hello Dolly!), Richard Harris (Camelot!), Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin (Paint Your Wagon!) and Peter O’Toole (Goodbye, Mr. Chips, one of the few musicals discussed in the book that looks good in retrospect).  Almost every time a musical was greenlit, the names of Gregory Peck and Richard Burton were run up a flagpole.

Throughout the decade of the 1960’s studios kept pumping money into bad concepts until the studios collapsed like lumbering dinosaurs.  The amazing thing is not that the musicals that were produced were bad; it is that they are almost entirely forgotten.  In reading the book I had to concede that I could not recall big budget musicals like The Happiest Millionaire (Disney’s follow up to Mary Poppins), Star! or Half a Sixpence.  Surprisingly, even though these films are obscure, they are available ion DVD on Netflix.

It is hard to say what was the last gasp of the big budget studio musical: Oliver!, the last musical until Chicago to win a Best Picture Oscar (a decision that is widely derided today), or Cabaret, which won a Best Director Oscar for Bob Fosse in 1972 and pointed the way to a better, more efficient method of producing musicals that simply couldn’t be replicated by anyone less talented than Fosse (which was everyone).

Roadshow! Does an admirable job of keeping all the balls in the air regarding the numerous fiascos perpetrated by studios in the 1960’s (I haven’t mentioned Doctor Doolittle, the poster child for Bad Film Musical Concepts).  I would have liked a little more delving into the economics of the title format, a method of selling advanced tickets at higher prices to “prestige” movie events.  The roadshow format, with its higher potential grosses, drove the studios to create their brobdignanian productions, but after a few references at the beginning Kennedy focuses mostly on production and spends less time dealing with the marketing aspect of film musicals.

So if you've ever wondered why there were no great movie musicals produced in the 1960’s, here is your answer.  If nothing else, you’ll find a wealth of films to add to your Netflix queue.  And most of them will have exclamation points in the title.

It's Dave Clark's world, we only live in it

Last week PBS televised what has to be one of the most self-indulgent pieces of film-making since Eddie Murphy decided to write, direct and star in a movie (you all remember Harlem Nights, right?).  The Great Performances episode dedicated to the wonderfulness of the Dave Clark Five (DC5 to friends and fans) ran like a Bizarr-o world version of This Is Spinal Tap, set in a universe where the band had actually been competent instead of, um, not.  People like Bruce Springsteen and Elton John extolled the greatness of the Dave Clark Five unreservedly, and said their influence was wide spread (even though they get virtually no air play on the oldies radio station I listen to).  Such fawning over a little remembered band from the mid-60’s was puzzling until all was explained at the end when the credits rolled and it was revealed that the two hour extravaganza was written, produced, directed, and starred Dave Clark.

To paraphrase a line from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, if there is anything out there larger than Dave Clark’s ego I want it hunted down and shot now.

The show made some valid points. DC5 wasn't a one hit wonder, although from Tom Hanks’ spirited speech at their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame they clearly must have been part of the inspiration for his film That Thing You Do about a fictitious one hit wonder band.  They are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, despite having a limited shelf life in the United States (one thing I loved about the show was the way they cited chart action in the UK and tried to make it sound like they were talking about the American charts), so they must have some credentials.   And their music was quite distinctive.

So, were fans in the mid-60’s crazy to be so nuts over the Dave Clark Five, or are we ignorant for not equating them with the Beatles, as was done at the time?  The truth lies somewhere in the middle, I suppose.  They weren’t a one hit wonder, but their US career consisted of less than 10 trips to the Top 40, so putting them in the same class as The Beatles and the Rolling Stones is revisionist history.  They did have an infectious beat, a unique sound due to their combination of guitar, organ and sax, and a dedicated fan base at the time.

But the truth is that you really couldn't even call them the best of the British Beatles wanna-bes, a distinction reserved probably for Herman’s Hermits.  Their biggest US hit, Over and Over, is a typical piece of mid-60’s two-minute magic that is not really remembered today (except it plays on an endless loop in Hell for classical musicians who were also EVIL).

The most amazing thing about the show was the revelation that Dave Clark was an actor who starred in a movie.  Not only does he lack charisma, he is a charisma vampire, sucking charisma away from people who are interesting.  He is so wooden and stiff on screen that the idea of him going to acting school is one of the funniest things I've seen on PBS in a long time.  When archival footage shows him being asked how it feel for the DC5’s first hit to knock the Beatles out of the #1 spot on the charts (again, in the UK, not America) he pauses three seconds, smiles stiffly and says, “Glad all over,” which of course was the song’s title. Any comparison to Clark and the natural screen ebullience of the Fab Four is absurd.

Don’t get me wrong, I like the Dave Clark Five despite their current lack of air play (the show made a note that Clark wisely owned all of the band’s masters; is this why they don’t get airplay, because he’s “protecting their brand” by not licensing air play?).  But for PBS to waste two hours that could have been better spent watching dying polar bears or Rick Steves visiting a Norwegian brothel, well they’ll have to give me a lot of tote bags to make it up to me.

Why Baseball Is Doomed

Baseball, unlike other major American sports like football and basketball, revels in its history.  As well it should, as it has survived for around 150 years with very little change.  A basketball game from the 1950’s would be impossible to watch today, with all the two-handed set shots, no dunks, and no one over 6’2”.  Football from that era would be 3 yards and a cloud of dust; no Peyton Manning or Drew Brees to make running backs irrelevant.  But a baseball game from the 1920’s would look pretty much like today, except no closers, no bulked up infielders, and, well, no Negros.

Baseball has survived a lot; decades of institutionalized racism, the rise of player unionization (which every person in management said would destroy the game, which is pretty much the NCAA’s line right now on college players), and the pharmacopeia revolution.  But there may be something baseball can’t survive, something that will slowly destroy an essential piece of the fabric of baseball’s universe.  I am talking about instant replay.

When instant replay was trotted out in pre-season and in Australia, it was heralded as a big success.  Plays could be reviewed in under two minutes!  The game would not be delayed, and the calls would be right!  Who could argue with that?

The truth about instant replay is rearing its ugly head.  One replay took over 5 minutes to review, because the crack team in New York in charge of reviewing plays was busy reviewing another play when the second challenge was made.  Gee, that never happened in pre-season; maybe because all the teams weren’t playing at the same time.  However long the review takes is irrelevant, as we now have to put up with managers delaying the game until the team reviews the play before deciding whether to challenge or not.  And if the manager makes a challenge and is wrong, then there is no chance of reviewing a later decision that is more obviously wrong.  When this happened, the cry of many at ESPN was to demand replay on every play.

When baseball was played 100 years ago, when a right handed batter hit a ground ball into the hole and the shortstop backhanded the ball, planted his feet and fired to first base, it was a bang-bang play.  It still is today.  Baseball is a game of dozens, maybe hundreds of close plays.  Was the ball down the line fair or foul, did the fielder catch the ball before he dropped it or not, was the tag applied before or after the runner reached the base?  One game was delayed when the catcher asked what the count was and the umps had to check instant replay. 

Baseball managed all these close plays because fans believed that umps were right 99% of the time, and those few errors would even out over a long season.  Baseball wasn't like football or basketball, where subjective refereeing was accepted.  Kobe Bryant gets foul calls lesser players don’t.  The Heat get foul calls the Sacramento Kings don’t.  The refs “swallow the whistle” during the last 30 seconds of a close game because the players should determine the outcome, not the refs (so if a defensive player hits someone on the other team with a crowbar, hey let’s not stop the game for THAT).

Baseball umps were seen as nearly perfect arbitration machines as have ever existed.  It is the only way anyone could have faith in the system over the course of 162 games.  They navigated the dozens of close plays that happened in every games throughout the season, and once the call was made the game could proceed, except on those occasions when some deranged managers decides to entertain the crowd by acting like a lunatic.

But that’s all gone now.  We don’t rely on the utter infallibility of umpires any more.  Almost anything other than ball and strike calls can be challenged.  The play can be reviewed, dissected, analyzed, and the “right” call can be made.  But if the goal is to get every call right, how long will games last?  Right now we limit the number of challenges, but if the important thing is to get every call right, why should there be a limit?  Let’s review every ball down the line, every tag, every catch.  Why have umps?  We can just let the crew in New York ump every game.

ESPN just reported that someone has suggested “speeding up” games by stopping after seven innings.  This can be shrugged off now, but that will become an imperative once unlimited replays are in effect.  Seven inning games?  Why have starters?  Just have three closers pitch two innings each and a fourth to mop up. 

The whole idea behind a 162 game season is that all the close plays that were called wrong would even out in the end.  But that’s not good enough for us these days.  No, we have the technology; we can make baseball slower, more tedious, more correct.  Wake me when we get to 5 hour games.

Baseball functioned when we blithely assumed the umps were competent and honest.  The whole thing about yelling at umps for being blind only worked as a trope because we knew it wasn’t true.  But thanks to slo-mo instant replay, we aren't so sure anymore.  We've been given the gift/curse of knowledge, and now we demand every close play be reviewed by a higher authority at MLB HQ in New York.  Once the door has been opened, once we've been given the knowledge of how to make fire or build nuclear weapons, the genie can’t be put back into the bottle. 

Baseball has survived a lot, but can it survive instant replay?  I guess the Mona Lisa has survived several centuries of art critics.  But I, for one, am worried.

RIP, Television Without Pity, we hardly know ye

Many years ago my favorite radio station changed formats, from oldie rock to heavy metal.  To announce the change they looped some metal song that featured a bell tolling and played nothing but “Dong . . .Dong . . . Dong” for 24 hours straight.  Then the old time rock and roll went away ad was replaced by talentless hacks whose only distinguishing characteristic were amps that went to 11.  At the time I said it was like losing a family member; not a brother or parent, but a cousin or a distant aunt.

I feel much the same way this week as the Television Without Pity website announced it was ceasing operations on April 4.  This was my second favorite website, following only the invaluable Internet Movie Database, and I cannot fathom what my internet experience will be without it.

TWOP saved my sanity.  I found it about ten years when one of my all-time favorite series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, was in its last season.  The thing was, I thought it stunk.  Oh, it was still better than 99% of the drek on TV, but compared to the first five seasons it was decidedly inferior.  Many fans of the show share my belief, and most of us blamed show runner Marti Noxon for the drop in quality after Joss Whedon turned over the reins to her after season five.

The problem was, all the Buffy episode websites I regularly visited were occupied by dewy-eyed naïfs who just thought every episode was one of the best ones ever!  That view was so pervasive I started to doubt my artistic judgment.  Maybe I was too old to be a fan of Buffy.  Maybe I didn’t get it.

Then I found TWOP, whose motto is (was) “Spare the snark, spoil the show.”  Their philosophy was that if you are a fan of a show, you should hold the creators to a higher standard.  The recappers there pointed out every illogical plot twist in Buffy season 7 episodes.  The posters on their comment board railed against every easy cliché and overly-familiar line of dialog.  At last I had found kindred spirits!  People who loved Buffy but hated seasons six and seven. 

I followed shows on TWOP ever since, from lesser efforts like John Doe (I knew the show would be cancelled when new episodes generated less than two pages of comments) to shows deeply in need of immediate analysis like Lost.  The recaps were hilarious, the posted comments incredibly insightful.  I still recall a posted comment on the Suits forum that suggested that the reason why the character of Louis Litt was so popular despite being the “bad guy” was that the part was written as a generic foil for the main character, but they cast an actor who invested the role with more than was written on the page.  This comes to mind every time I see actor Rick Hoffman nail a scene.

I don’t understand the economics of running an internet site, but it is sad whenever someone who produces a quality product can’t make it in the American marketplace.  In the ten or so years I’ve visited TWOP, I’ve only had one criticism: they keep nominating the Doctor’s TARDIS for their “Best Performance by an Inanimate Object” award, when everyone knows the TARDIS is NOT inanimate but is very much alive.

So farewell, Television Without Pity!  I still own your book “752 Things We Love to Hate (and Hate to Love) About TV” to remember you by.  I will keep your bookmark as a memorial to a website that was a point of light in a sea of dismal offal.  Fare thee well!

The How I Met Your Mother finale: the aftermath

Series finales are funny things.  First of all, few shows are able to go out in a premeditated fashion and allow the creators to tie up all the loose ends at the end.  For those that do have advanced notice of their mortality, it’s a mixed blessing.  The final episode could provide fans of the show with the closure they desire by allowing things to end as the majority of fans want; but that would be dull.  Creators seem to want to surprise fans with sudden revelations, or open-ended plot devices that seem unsatisfactory to fans of the show.

Patrick McGoohan said after the finale of The Prisoner fans confronted him in the street and shook their fists, angry over the fact that the final episode explained nothing.  There was outrage over the last episode of St. Elsewhere, which revealed that the entire show had taken place inside the imagination of an autistic boy with a snow globe.  Chuck went out not with Chuck and Sarah living happily ever after but with her having amnesia and them starting their relationship all over again.  And then there is Lost, which assured fans that the Island-dwellers were not dead and not in limbo, only to reveal that they were dead and were in limbo.

A similar fate awaited fans of How I Met Your Mother.  Nine seasons after Ted told his kids that their mother wasn't their “Aunt Robin,” and eventually telling them that Aunt Robin married Uncle Barney, the last three minutes of the show revealed that the Mother (now named Tracy) had died, Robin had divorced Barney, and Ted and Robin were going to end up together after all.  Fan reaction was swift and negative.

The first few dozen posts on the show’s comment board at Television Without Pity all contained short, scatological epithets.  One website had an on-line poll that had 64% of those responding saying they hated the ending (the percentage of dissatisfied Lost fans was 53%).  AV Club posted an article that asked if a series finale could single-handedly ruin an entire show (their conclusion: no, but this was a close call).  The Rotten Tomatoes website determined that the critical reaction was Rotten.

What went wrong (assuming that the creators weren't going for “fan dissatisfaction” as the desired response)?  A couple of things.  First, the show lasted far longer than anyone anticipated at the start.  This required Ted and Robin to be in relationships with other people and not each other for several years, making a reconciliation less plausible.  Second, the show had to try really hard to make Barney and Robin a plausible couple, which meant getting the audience to invest in their relationship only to have them split up in a couple of years.  Not awesome. 

Third, it is a case of trying to have your cake and eat it too.  How I Met Your Mother had numerous episodes in which the writers took pride in psyching out the audience, making them think one thing but revealing something different.  For example, in one episode events seemed to be taking place at the same time but were, in fact, taking place over three days.  But the ending was the ultimate bait and switch; they told us for nine years that Ted does NOT end up with Robin, only to have Ted end up with Robin.  So Ted had this magical romance with The Mother (excuse me, Tracy; after nine years it is tough to put a name to the character), and then he gets to go back to his favorite bedmate, Robin.  So he has an adorable relationship with Tracy, then he goes back to bangin’ Aunt Robin.  Way to scar your kids for life.

This also has a huge “ick” factor in that Robin slept with Barney and Barney slept with half the under-25 women in the Greater New York City area.

Speaking of Barney, his arc ended on a cliché-filled note.  One of the bimbos he boinked after splitting up with Robin got pregnant and somehow saddled him with the baby, who naturally was a girl.  So now Barney is instantly reformed from being a womanizer to being the protective father of a future bimbo.  Of course we thought he was reformed before when he married Robin, so fool me once and all that.

The thing I find the most unsatisfactory about the How I Met Your Mother finale was that, in casting Cristin Milioti, they found an actress who seemed to be as special as The Mother was supposed to be.  The character was everything we wanted for Ted.  So what’s her arc?  She falls in love but the guy dies; she swears off men for about ten years; she gets into a relationship but dumps him for Ted, with whom she has two kids and then marries; then she dies.  This is a sitcom; characters we like in sitcoms are not supposed to have lives that tragic.  I know the creators would say “Life is like that,” but this isn't life, it is a sitcom.  How could you create such a special character and then kill her off just because you wanted Ted to end up with Aunt Robin and Tracy staying alive was inconvenient.

So way to muck things up, How I Met Your Mother.  I hope you enjoyed your nine years on the air because now you are dead to me.