It would be the fourth worst thing.
Number one, supervolcano.
Number two, an asteroid hits the Earth.
Number three, all footage of Evel Knievel was lost.
Number four, Ted calls Karen.
Number five, Lily gets eaten by a shark.
This is Marshall Eriksen.
Throughout the primary narrative of How I Met Your Mother,
Marshall provides the perspective
of the man in a committed relationship.
He's Ted Mosby's best friend and often serves
as a vehicle to demonstrate emotional sensitivity.
However, Marshall operates at an extremely reduced capacity
during the show's ninth and final season,
and his near omission is often considered
to be a large part of why How I Met Your Mother's final season
felt so unsatisfying to watch.
It seems a bit strange to have such a primary character
relegated to flashbacks and a few scenes in a car.
So what happened here?
The process of greenlighting a sitcom can be a tricky thing
and goes well beyond just creating something
that would be widely considered to be
entertaining to the general public.
You essentially need to convince studio executives
that your show has legs while affirming that your project can
generate profit over multiple seasons,
and a huge part of that is in how the show's performers are
contracted.
Lengthy contracts basically guarantee a level
of consistency that writers can expect in exactly who they
are writing for.
In the case of How I Met Your Mother,
the principal performers were contracted
for approximately seven years of production,
which is the longest legal contract possible in the United
States.
This ended up translating to eight seasons' worth of work.
The only problem there is How I Met
Your Mother was greenlit beyond the initial eight-season order.
This didn't pose too large of a problem for most
of the show's principal cast.
Josh Radnor, Cobie Smulders, Neil Patrick Harris,
and Alyson Hannigan all signed up
to complete the show's final season.
Jason Segel, on the other hand, was
somewhat reluctant to return for the ninth season.
Over the course of How I Met Your Mother,
Jason Segel's star power was rapidly growing
on the big screen.
He had found major success in his role
as Peter Bretter in the film Forgetting Sarah
Marshall, a film that Segel also wrote himself.
You shall not pass!
His playful performance as an up-and-coming puppeteer
garnered a ton of critical acclaim,
so much so that he was given the opportunity to essentially
bring The Muppets back to the forefront of entertainment
in the 2011 film The Muppets--
Citizens of Earth, the Great Gonzo is back.
--which would go on to win an Academy
Award for Best Original Song.
It spawned a sequel and several television shows.
Animal do nudity if tasteful.
Thanks.
That's very generous.
The final season of How I Met Your Mother
also had a somewhat unique structure in juxtaposition
to the show's previous seasons.
The entirety of the show's final season
took place over a single weekend,
which meant that the shooting schedule had to be condensed.
The final season was shot over a period of six months,
with each episode requiring roughly five days to shoot.
Headspace matters.
It doesn't matter what you do.
Your vision for your own future can play a huge factor
in your decision-making process.
Jason Segel's vision for his career
extended well beyond being seen as this lovable sitcom
goofball, and when a performer is ready to spread their wings
and fly, being attached to a project
that you are growing tired of can feel like it's anchoring
you to the ground and preventing you to achieve
what you see for yourself.
Sitcom jobs are one of the most coveted positions
in the industry.
The work is steady, consistent, lucrative, and predictable.
In the beginnings of a blossoming career,
attaching yourself to a long-term sitcom contract
is, by all means, a smart move.
Consistent work means stability, which
is a rare commodity for a fledgling actor.
However, once an actor starts to break--
and by that, we mean they start to become a household name,
and it becomes lucrative for studios
to attach the performer to projects-- things change.
Instead of wondering where your next paycheck is
going to come from, you start wondering which
paycheck you're going to take.
This is where managers and agents come into play.
At the time of filming the final season of How
I Met Your Mother, Jason Segel was represented
by United Talent Agency.
This is one of the largest agencies in Hollywood.
They know how to market their clients,
and they know how to get them the right work
at the right time.
Jason Segel was a hot commodity, and prior
to signing the ninth season contract of How
I Met Your Mother he agreed to work on the film Sex Tape
with Cameron Diaz.
That film was scheduled to shoot in November of 2012, which
was smack dab in the middle of How I Met Your Mother's
shooting schedule, leaving Segel wholly unavailable to work
on episodes 10 through 12.
He barely shows up, and most of his scenes
were filmed ahead of time.
This would have been a significantly smaller problem
if the season was structured differently,
but the fact that the entirety of season 9
takes place over such a short period of time
makes the exclusion of Marshall's character
feel completely strange.
It's like he just disappears from the narrative,
only to reappear without explanation.
It probably seemed OK from a production standpoint,
but to a viewer, it seems really disjointed,
almost as if the final season is held together with duct tape
and staples rather than being something sturdy and concrete.
Another issue Jason Segel had can be
tied to creative differences.
Creative differences, for all intents and purposes,
can be the death knell for any project.
From Topher Grace in That '70s Show
to Dan Harmon on Community, when essential cast and crew
depart over creative differences,
it seems like it's only a matter of time
before the show runs its course.
Jason Segel was having creative differences
with the producers in regards to the development of Marshall
Eriksen.
While the extent of those creative differences
are unknown, they were definitely there.
When you look at the character of Marshall Eriksen,
he definitely seems to degrade over time.
In the earlier seasons, Marshall comes off
multifaceted and showcases a lot of depth.
He's focused on getting through law school.
He struggles with doubts, insecurities,
and relationships.
He is often seen as an extremely positive sounding board
for Ted Mosby and is just an all-around good person.
Sure, he comes off as a little goofy sometimes,
and sometimes, he can be overly emotional.
But that's all part of what makes his character so great.
What is the matter with you?
How could you put us through that?
That goodbye was emotionally devastating.
A certain delicate flower cried all night in the shower.
And I was pretty bummed, too.
We all have those people in our lives
that seem like they might be a little too sensitive
or a little too dependent on their friends.
Marshall Eriksen felt almost a little too goofy.
"Fart went to the fart to fart fartly."
[LAUGHS]
Nice.
That's good stuff.
In the show's later seasons and more specifically in the show's
final season, Marshall devolves into a parody of himself.
His character was relegated to these seemingly zany slapstick
bits that feel extremely forced and out of place.
For the last time, I did not leave the bag of oranges
you bought on the roof.
[THUDDING]
These changes in the character didn't resonate well
with Jason Segel, who was trying to book more serious roles,
and felt like continuing this type of work
on How I Met Your Mother was almost
a hindrance to his career.
In a 2013 interview with The Independent,
Jason Segel stated that the final three
years of working on How I Met Your Mother
were increasingly difficult and that he was in need
of an artistic check-in.
Artists need to grow, or they can easily
stagnate and pigeonhole themselves into being typecast.
How I Met Your Mother's final season
is riddled with problems.
This is not a secret.
These failures don't all fall on Jason Segel's shoulders,
but his character operating at a reduced capacity
certainly didn't help.
Sitcoms are complicated, and performers
can be even more complicated.
In the entertainment industry, there are no guarantees.
Being attached to the right project at the right time
could launch a performer into stardom seemingly overnight.
Inversely, when your career is starting out,
you never know when you may have another opportunity,
so you might attach yourself to a long-term project
to secure yourself a job for the better part of a decade.
In the case of Jason Segel and Marshall Eriksen,
it was a little bit of both.
Segel attached himself to a long-term project,
but in the middle of that project,
his career began to take off.
Not only was Segel reluctant to return to
How I Met Your Mother for a final season.
He was also hard at work on a number of other projects, which
limited his capacity to really bring necessary closure
to Marshall Eriksen's story.
Do you have any idea what happened right here
in this very bar?
No.
What happened?
All kinds of stuff.
And that's it for this one, folks.
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