Looking Backward: The Karate Kid Theory: Updated

I read Arkham Asylum: A Serious House On a Serious Earth by Grant Morrison and illustrated by Dave McKean. I say ‘read’ and not ‘re-read’ because I don’t remember ever reading this story before—even though I’ve had the book for years. In my mind, I had conjured up images of Batman entering the asylum, and with the threat of murdered doctors and orderlies—Batman is forced to comply with the demands of The Joker and other elements of his rogues gallery.

So far, so good.

Where my mind takes a strange turn is that I remembered Batman being put on trial—a trial judged, of course by The Joker and prosecuted by Two-Face. This apparently did not happen in ‘A Serious House On a Serious Earth’. The story by Morrison was much cooler than my memory, though the McKean imagery of the trial seemed so real.

But where did the memory come from?

I’ll spare you the internet research and conclude by saying that I had remembered an episode of Batman: The Animated Series, entitled, “The Trial”, in which these very memories played out. My mind had taken David McKean’s macabre art, and reconstructed it to fit into the children’s animated show of my youth.

What we remember and what actually happened are funny sometimes. I’m sure there’s a name for this phenomenon. I’m sure I could even look it up. But for now we’ll call it, the “Batman the Animated Series Drawn by David McKean Syndrome”.

I re-watched the final season of How I Met Your Mother, thanks to a subscription to Amazon Prime Video that I keep forgetting that I have. The season as a whole is solid. The introduction of the Mother is great. I almost wish they had brought her in and developed her story much sooner, like in season 8, or maybe even 7.

But I say this with some apprehension.

We the audience may have grown tired of her by the final season. “Have them meet already!” would have a much louder effect with a face to the name. Her limited presence in the last season kept us wanting, which was probably the desired intention of the showrunners.

The ending, even after watching it again, was awful. I’m not going to spoil it here. But I will say: we can’t all get our happy ending, even in a comedy. And the show ultimately was about Ted—Ted’s story, to his children.

The original ending isn’t great. It’s so not great that the DVD version contains an alternate ending. YouTube also has said ending, which I’ll share here.

In my opinion—which is the only opinion that matters here—is that the ending of How I Met Your Mother deserves the same treatment as the Karate Kid movies:

There were only two Karate Kid movies.

The Karate Kid, and the Karate Kid 2.

In those movies our hero: underdog, Daniel Larusso, moves into a strange place (California), gets bullied, learns Karate, gets the girl, wins a tournament, loses the girl, goes to another strange and exotic place (Okinawa), gets the girl (and does an ancient tea ceremony so you know it’s true love) fights to the death and comes out the hero. Karate Kid 3 (which doesn’t exits) is just a rehash of the true and only movies. Four, the reboots—garbage, they didn’t happen—some strange mistaken memory that your mind got wrong.

What about Cobra Kai? Alternate universe in which Johnny Lawrence is that hero of the piece, so the inconsistences with Larusso’s character are easily forgiven—it’s not about him. No matter how much the show tries, it’s all about Johnny. (Sweep the Leg).

The same rules apply to How I Met Your Mother. The above ending is the only ending. Anyone to say otherwise is lame.