My Favorite

How I Met your Mother

            My favorite television show is How I Met Your Mother.  This show centers around the character Ted Mosby, his search for the woman of his dreams, and his four best friends, Barney Stinson, Robin Sherbatsky, Marshall Eriksen and Lily Aldrin Eriksen.  There are many stereotypes contained within the show pertaining to each main character and some reoccurring characters. 

Ted Mosby

            Ted is a Midwesterner from Ohio who teaches architecture at a college in New York.  Ted feels he is a true New Yorker, often voicing his hatred for “that place across the river”, New Jersey.  Most stereotypical about Ted is his constant search for love and how sappy he can be when he meets a new love interest, often professing his love way to earlier in a relationship and thus the romance faltering.  He often speaks of destiny, signs and fate and believes “the one” is out there and he is determined to find her.  In flashbacks to their college days, Ted portrayed as a somewhat hippie stoner.  Instead of a blatant reference to marijuana, the group calls it eating a sandwich and when the flashback is supposed to depict them getting high, it instead shows the group sharing a submarine sandwich. 

Marshall Eriksen

            Marshall is Ted’s best friend and they attended college together in Ohio.  He is from Minnesota.  His family is of Nordic descent, hence the last name, and the entire family is stereotyped in such way.  Marshall is the tallest of the group standing well over six foot but is actually the smallest of his siblings.  Flashbacks often depict he and his brothers rough housing in extremely physical ways.  The flashbacks also show them playing ice hockey or even ice fishing as one might think someone from northern Minnesota might do.  When visiting his family, his mother is the typical “make sure everyone has enough to eat” type of mother.  She is often shown making outrageous dishes such as multilayered salad with several layers of mayo, gummy bears, cookies and other outlandish ingredients.  Marshall has a goal of saving the planet through his profession as an environmental lawyer and is shocked by blatant industrial pollution and waste.

Lily Aldrin Eriksen

            Lily and Marshall are college sweethearts who are married.  She attended college with Ted and Marshall as well.  She was at one time a kindergarten teacher and has a very overbearing motherly persona.  She often moderates the group members’ problems and is often intervening in their personal issues. She can very manipulative like most mothers when they want to get their way.

Robin Sherbatsky

            Robin hails from Canada and is heavily stereotyped in this way.  She loves most things Canadian like hockey and Tim Horton’s and had a huge crush fellow Canadian Alan Thicke.  Canadian slang often slips through in her everyday verbiage as she tries to hide it with a “normal” accent.  She is also stereotyped as the career minded female who does not want kids but chooses to focus on work and leisure time.  This disdain for having kids negatively affects most of her relationships. 

Barney Stinson

            Barney is probably the most stereotypical of all the characters. He is portrayed as a womanizing New Yorker who will do almost anything to sleep with as many women as possible.  He even has a play book with scenarios and ruses for tricking women into sleeping with him, often times portraying himself as another person in order to achieve this goal.  He always wears suits and has even been seen wearing pajamas that resemble a suit.  His apartment is the typical bachelor pad with a life size star wars storm trooper, very modern décor, hidden cameras and everything else a successful bachelor could want.

Conclusion

            The shows stereotypes draw mostly on the social and cultural aspect of what many people believe is the typical New Yorkers life. The characters are always busy doing something fun or entertaining and are often seen together as a group or a partial collection of the group in their favorite local pub “Maclarens”.  They live in the city, take cabs everywhere, don’t own cars and can be seen going to places like The Empire State building or Times Square.  They all have chic jobs such as environmental lawyer, art curator, new anchor, architecture professor or, well they never say exactly what Barney does except for the fact that he has a successful career with GNB(Goliath National Bank).  The show plays off all these stereotypes very well which may be one reason it has made to a ninth season and has never had to change time slots.  Most people can find some element of themselves in one or more of these characters which would explain why the show has been so successful.