EC Blog: HIMYM

So one of the prompts under the extra credit blogs where "Watch a film or TV show with a prominent love story and critique it using our disciplinary concepts.", which is awesome. I chose one of my favorite shows, How I Met Your Mother. Now, for any of you who have seen it, you know how it ends, does this count as a love story? Well, I'm not sure, SO I am going to critique several of the relationships shown throughout the series, I hope that is okay. Let's start out with one of my favorites- Marshall & Lilly
Their relationship has up's and down's much like any relationship of course. So, starting with a feminist stance, and how we see the gender roles played throughout their relationship. When the series first began, Marshall was going to school to be a lawyer (typical male job *groan*) and Lilly was a teacher...typical, right? But Marshall mentions in one of the episodes how bad he feels that Lilly was supporting him while he went to school, which I feel is not stereotypical for a female to do. Marshall is also a very emotional man, he has no problem crying and telling Lilly how he feels. He even sings her a goodnight song when she goes away for a trip. Although they do split up for a little while, there is no doubt that they were meant to be together.

Another stereotype the show has is Barney. He has a rule book and all the lies he tells women to get them to sleep with them, and I feel like they are trying to make him into a stereotypical man who only wants to hook up with women to have sex with them. However, there is a part in the series where he and Robin get together, and get married, which I feel like shows that even though he was a man whore, he was still able to settle down and find love for a little bit.

Another relationship we could look at would be Ted and his wife, who ends up dying in the end, can we even count that as a happy ending? I don't think so. BUT Ted does fall in love with Robin, and it shows throughout the whole series, he may be on the lookout to find his true love, but from the very first episode, he was all about Robin. He hosted a party just so that he could see her again, he stole a blue french horn for her. Ted was a romantic, and I feel like that is opposite of the normal gender stereotypes.

So throughout the series, I feel like they challenge and also support several gender stereotypes.

Also, pretty salty that they took it off Netflix.