With his legendary one-liners and absurd womanizing tactics, the character of Barney Stinson quickly became a fan favorite for “How I Met Your Mother” enthusiasts. I would go as far as to argue that Neil Patrick Harris’ portrayal of Barney Stinson has come to be one of the most lovable lotharios on television since Joey Tribianni of “Friends.”
When the story arc of a romance between Barney and Robin Scherbatsky appeared, for the first time viewers got to witness Barney in a loving, monogamous relationship. By no means was their liaison flawless — the pair’s first attempt at dating ends when they both feel they have lost themselves in the relationship. Later the two cheat on their respective significant others together, ending in heartbreak. However, somehow Barney and Robin end up getting it right and get engaged in the show’s eighth season. Consequently, almost all of “HIMYM”’s final season is devoted to the weekend of his and Robin’s wedding.
By the end of the show’s nine seasons things were really looking up for Barney — that is, of course, until “HIMYM”’s controversial series finale. Within the first 30 minutes it’s revealed that Barney and Robin get a divorce. On the topic of his failed marriage and possibly pursuing love again Barney laments, “If it wasn’t going to happen with Robin, then it’s not going to happen with anyone.” All the work that Barney has done growing as a person and overcoming his fear of commitment is completely diminished with this one line; not only has he lost his soulmate, but he then gives up on love entirely.
The writers feebly try to save Barney with the revelation that he impregnated one of his many hookups and subsequently had a daughter, Ellie. When he stares into her eyes for the first time he tearfully utters, “You are the love of my life. Everything I have and everything I am is yours. Forever,” a line he sarcastically feeds earlier in the episode to a female bar-goer to further drive home the point to his friends that he will never find love with a woman. Now I recognize what the writers are trying to do here — by Barney sincerely declaring that exact statement to his daughter they are trying to show that while he may never find romantic love, he finds unconditional love nonetheless and his life still has meaning. But if Barney truly never knew love till he laid eyes upon his newborn baby, couldn’t he have done better than a facetious remark he once told a random woman in order to prove a point?
For the sake of the argument let’s assume that Barney, master of storytelling, is simply uncreative and cannot come up with an original way to express his love for his daughter. Try to imagine how his life, as a single dad, is going to be. While the first decade raising his daughter may prove endlessly fulfilling to him, his fatherhood becomes ironically depressing when puberty enters the picture. As soon as Ellie begins to navigate the world of dating, Barney’s parenting job becomes not only exponentially more difficult but his daughter’s love life, at least temporarily, will likely mirror his past sins. As Barney lovingly wipes the tears off his daughter’s face, it is inevitable that all the pain he has caused women in the past will become glaringly clear to him. Hell, maybe he deserves it.
The most controversial and talked-about event of the “How I Met Your Mother” series finale was the death of Tracy McConnell, narrator Ted Mosby’s wife and the mother of his children. The show received a lot of flack for killing off “The Mother,” a character whose personality and presence viewers had only come to witness over the course of one season, but there’s something I found far more disconcerting — the death of Barney Stinson as we came to know him.
