HIMYM: interview with series creator; relationships and romances

[timepiececlock]

I hugely enjoyed reading this interview with HIMYM series creator Craig Thomas about season 4 of How I Met Your Mother, and the relationship subplots that will be touched upon.

Warning: It is "directional" spoilery... the answers from Craig Thomas do say what overall relationship storylines will be discussed in the beginning of season 4, and references to the finale of season 3, but there's nothing here that I'd say is hard core spoilery. It's really not much worse than you'd be able to speculate yourself. Nothing about explicit plot. The answers to "In what general direction will the show go?"


The whole article is good, but I really liked these paragraphs:

And the flipside of that is what Neil said at the New York Emmy event: how do you do this without making Robin look like an idiot for getting with a man she knows treats women so badly?

CT: The funny thing is, they were so sweet together in that Sandcastles episode where he put his arm around her and told her how awesome she is. You just buy it. There will never be a more perfect woman for Barney than Robin. I kind of just buy it, I don't feel like we have to prove it to the audience. Ultimately, it's about exploring what the hell would Barney do with this. Obviously, when he was Hippie Barney, 10-12 years ago, he had feelings for a girl, and probably hasn't had one second of considering that since. I think it's going to be a Neil powerhouse episode.

Do you think at this point the fans are more invested in Robin and Barney than in Ted and whoever the mom turns out to be?

CT: I think fans have been watching Robin and Barney for two years, so until we say someone's the mom, the fans aren't going to freak as much about that as they are about Barney with Robin. And that's fine with me. The fans are invested in the mom no matter what we do, but Barney andRobin, that glance he took at Robin, I'll be honest, that was thrilling to us. That was a great little gracenote in our finale and it's given us a lot of rocket fuel for our first six.

Those are all I wanted to hear. The explanation, also in he article itself, about how Barney can be Barney having feelings for Robin WITHOUT losing his Barneyness... I get it. I hope they play it out on screen like it is in my head, tricky though the balance will be. Still, I'm excited by the attitudes expressed here... it sounds like the creators look at the ship in a very similar way to how I look at it.

My speculation: I don't think season 4 will involve Barney and Robin finding true love or getting married or whatever. I do think that it will begin with Barney going through some changes as he tries to deal with this New Thing his heart is feeling. But that's his issue, and I don't think that even if he confessed Robin would jump into a romance with him. They have the ability to stretch this out for a while. We're sure about Barney's feelings; we're not as clear about Robin's. It took Robin a long time to admit to her feelings for Ted, and Ted is a lot easier to like as boyfriend material than Barney is.


That being said, however, I'm now feeling more certain that unless they get unexpectedly canceled ::coughFarscapecough::, it sounds like they'll plan to carry the Barney/Robin thing through to the end of the series. It might end up being more of a potential thing than an actual relationship until the very end "future" stuff, but that's okay with me. Gives us time for fanfic.


Is this cool or what?

Comments

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

I actually start questioning their brains.

Yeah, that does puzzle me. Hopefully if they do another show, they'll have figured out the system. It's not like fandom preferences for shipping are hard to predict, since you see a lot of patterns in the "ships" chosen across multiple fandoms. In fact, for my case, Harry/Luna is just about the ONLY pairing I have that doesn't follow my usual ship preferences* for fandom. In everything else, I tend to pick certain types: friends/partners ships and enemies/rivals ships.

Robin was smoking hot in that black suit. I want to buy a suit that hot. But first I have to exercise I think.



*I suppose my preference for Harry/Luna is also repeated again in my preference for Edward Elric / Noah from FMA. Maybe I have a third "ship" type? Hero/outcast, or something.

hmm... now that I think about it...

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

Friends/Partners:
Mulder/Scully
Van/Hitomi
Kakashi/Sakura
Barney/Robin
Doctor/Rose
Roy/Riza
Vash/Meryl

Enemies/Rivals:
Zuko/Katara
Kakashi/Kabuto
Draco/Hermione (don't ask!)

Both rivals/enemies/partners/friends, or changing from one to another:
Buffy & Spike
Ahiru & Fakir
Zuko/Katara in season 3


Other:
John/Aeryn
Harry/Luna
Edward/Noa
Wolverine/Rogue (movieverse)


Looks like I tend to ship mostly friends-turned-lovers, but 3 of my strongest ships actually fall under both categories, since the characters begin as enemies but ultimately become excellent partners/companions later in canon.


John/Aeryn of Farscape, an OTP very near and dear to my heart, falls under every category because they begin as very reluctant ship-mates, slowly become comrades, and the evolving "friendship" isn't really a friendship at all but actually a slow-burning, beautifully developed romance. They're never really friends, and it takes a long time for them to be partners... they sort of become all those things at the same time.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

We can hope they get the pattern down. Is it wrong that part of me things the real problem is that both creators empathize so strongly with Aang that they can't handle Katara (the girl they want) being with someone else, and so many people rooting for her to get together with someone else?

And yeah, I want a suit like that too.