Podcast

Sunday, November 08, 2020

Believe Care Invest: How I Met Your Mother

Why Ted might be hard to identify with: 
  • He’s whiny, he’s a stick in the mud, he’s kind of dippy. He’s drawn to Barney, who is a racist misogynist (“Lebanese girls are the new half-Asians”).
Believe
  • We just believe in him a bit. The details of the imaginary wedding he’s planning make him feel real. (“So do you think you’ll ever get married?” “Well maybe eventually …some fall day, possibly in central park, as simple ceremony, we’ll write out own vows, band, no DJ, people will dance, I’m not going to worry about it”)
  • It always helps with believability when heroes have personal theories like his “Olive Theory” (“Every relationship should have one person who loves olives and one person who hates them”).
Care
  • He’s lovelorn. Our heart breaks for him when we find out he’s planned out his wedding carefully but can’t find anyone to marry.
  • He’s losing his best friend, which we’ve all been through.
Invest
  • He’s good enough at making charming conversation with Yasmin and Robin that feel like we can root for this guy to find love. He cleverly and ironically wins Robin over: She’s supposed to be showing solidarity with her friend who got dumped, so he tells Robin that she can throw her drink in his face in front of her friends. He wins by looking like a loser.
  • But ultimately he’s a dip and it’ll be hard to root for him over the course of the story.
Five Es
  • Eat: He and Robin go out to dinner.
  • Exercise: Never. (Never in the history of the show?)
  • Economic Activity: Not really. He mentions he’s an architect, but concerns about work and money don’t seem to be a big part of his life.
  • Enjoy: Not really.
  • Emulate: He’s torn between wanting to be like Barney or like Marshall, two very different role models.
Rise above
  • No, he’s not focused at all on work (we don’t even know if he has a boss or not), so he can’t rise above it.
Kind:
  • He’s enthusiastically helpful to Marshall in planning his proposal.
  • He cheers up Robin’s friend by letting Robin throw a drink in his face.

3 comments:

Raphael RKD said...

Exercise- Not true, one of the most iconic scenes in the series is the sword fight. Also, the episode at the gym is great => https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FKDLET3ftE

Matt Bird said...

Those gym clips only confirm my claim that Ted will resist exercise like the plague!

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