How I Met Comedy... Or Didn't

Four years ago, How I Met Your Mother released its final episode which left many viewers in shock. The moment we have all been waiting for was quickly taken away. Ted, the narrator who we waited nine years for to find his wife, found her, but then she seemed to have died much more quickly. In the final moments, we see Ted and Robin (his girlfriend from the very beginning of the show) leave for a date without ever getting to see the long term romance between Ted and his wife.

The show, at the time, definitely satisfied my conception of comedy. It had hilarious jokes alongside random and silly events that just made it funny. It was the funniest (and, really, the only comedy) I had seen. However, if comedy, according to Aristotle, demonstrated the rise in fortune of a sympathetic character, then How I Met Your Mother wasn't cutting it for me.

Sure, we see Ted advance in his career and eventually find love with his wife (who's name I don't even remember because that's how insignificant they made her seem to me). But then she dies. This part seems more tragic than comedic. I suppose we can account for his rekindling his romance with Robin as the ultimate rise, but the rise at the expense of the titled Mother didn't seem comedic.

Throughout the nine seasons we get to see Ted and Robin act as a couple, but we were lead to believe they didn't work together. If we group this show into the romantic comedy, then Ted and Robin would apparently have to be meant for each other. Are we supposed to just ignore all the other times their relationship didn't work out? Are we supposed to believe there was love all along when we didn't get the chance to see it develop in the final season? Maybe I am wrong and there was love all along; I was just blind to it.

Additionally, Ted may have passed the ordinary person role of comedy, but as for a sympathetic central character- that is debatable. I never really had the biggest appreciation for him. Yes, he was a reasonable guy, but he was never my favorite. In fact, I found him as one of the more annoying characters of the central group. I feel like the other characters could have been more sympathetic than Ted for many viewers.

Maybe the whole show was a satire for how, in this day and age, people don't marry the right person all the time; or maybe the message in the end was that a person will always find their true love regardless of the path it takes to get there. But, I cannot group it into Aristotle's definition of comedy.

Regardless of Aristotle's definition, How I Met Your Mother is still a fantastic show, and by far, funnier than Pride and Prejudice.