Well, we also have to consider what the shows premise is, that being that they are supposed to be comedies.
Sam doesn’t give up, sure, but he has yet to rape a women, that we know of. Forced kiss, ok, I’ll grant you, that was wrong, but it’s not like it was a “Very Special Episode of Cheers” where Sam is accused of rape and gets arrested or something. The audience still identifies it all as being for laughs. The same can be said for Barney. We know its supposed to be a comedy and played for laughs, so we don’t think about the real world implications.
Ok, I voted Sam from Cheers, but I have to be honest and say I didn’t vote based in the characters they play. I’m just not a fan of Ted Danson and he kind of creeps me out. I guess my vote doesn’t count!
The question qualifier “in the context of…” makes it a bit trickier, in part due to the awareness of Unreliable Narrator in the more recent show. Still, both are player tropes as understood in their respective time. Sam is portrayed as not particularly bright – he only looks good on that aspect by comparison to those around him and that’s a low bar to clear, an aware audience should have noticed that as they watched. Barney, meanwhile, is just too clever for himself but the set-up directly ridicules him for it.
In the end I cannot find greater fault upon Sam, in-universe. He’s a doofus savant in the dating department who is confused when he runs into a woman in whom he is interested but on whom his mojo doesn’t work, can’t understand why not, and can only keep trying in oblivious idiocy.
I didn’t like the last couple seasons much, but aren’t you supposed to think that relationship is stupid? Relevant to this poll, Ted isn’t just a vaguely unreliable narrator when he’s talking about Barney. For the entire series he’s actively putting Barney in a bad light because he married and divorced the woman that Ted’s been in love with for years.
Whoa. I have never given this show much thought, but now I think I need a sandwich*. I have never considered that the narrator’s unreliability is the source of the over-the-top ironic nature of Barney’s douchebag persona, out of spite.
*fyi, the HIMYM narrative euphemism for getting stoned.
I don’t know. I’d think that if you wanted to put someone in a bad light, you’d portray them as stupid or incompetent and not so successful at nailing random young women that it’s ironically bad and leads to a line of physical books. I realize that the books don’t exist in the HIMYM universe but it’s hard to argue that he’s being ironically portrayed as terrible and then run a bunch of books promoting his awesomeness.
Maybe Ted is as poor at being spiteful as he is at everything else. Anyway, I tend to view events in the show as happening as described simply because we have no other baseline and could spend forever making up our own versions and saying “But he’s an unreliable narrator”.
And I have an immediate** willing suspension of disbelief** * watching anything. Psychoanalysis doesn’t appeal, and as being subjective, is as treacherous as wild guessing.
Apparently Coleridge; who knew ?
Coleridge would have enjoyed HIMYM. But not as much as Wordsworth.
Barney’s lies are so ridiculous that they really can’t be taken seriously (“rub my dick and a genie comes out that grants wishes”? SecretNASA?) while Sam’s are just…disturbing.
There was one where Rebecca’s long-estranged sister came back to reconnect and apologize for stealing boyfriends and Sam tried to play them off each other, not caring what it did to their relationship. Or one where Sam hears Rebecca tell Frasier about an erotic dream she had about Sam that was really disturbing her and Sam’s immediate reaction is to gather every bar-crony and employee together to mock her publicly.
There was another one that kind of mirrored the Woody Allen thing. Sam was “Uncle Sam” to a kid when she was young (she needed to hold Sam’s hand when crossing the street) and Sam was dating her mom. The mom comes back, the girl’s now about 18 and Sam tries to use her childhood relationship with him to get her to sleep with him. It’s not pedophilia, or incest, but it’s a close cousin to both and the episode was just creepy as fuck.
Meanwhile Barney does stuff like wear diapers and a baby bonnet while talking in baby talk to try to pick up girls. Or try to pick up a woman without using the letter “E”. Or while wearing a dress. It’s as much a challenge (and humiliating) for him as for the girl.
Barney’s a sleaze but would never intentionally hurt a woman (he DOES hurt women–no doubt about it) but it’s not intentional. Sam intentionally sets out to damage women as much as possible because that, along with too much after-shave, seems to be his only move. Sleaze up to them and if they’re not knocked out by his cologne, try to find a way to psychologically fuck with them. Seriously: what kind of sleazebag hears a privileged conversation and his FIRST thought is to use it to humiliate the woman as much as possible (because that will…somehow…get him teh sex?)
ETA: his “plan” is to give her warm milk, play lullabies and then, when she’s dreaming, rape her while she thinks she’s still dreaming. That’s way below anything Barney ever tried. (I haven’t seen the whole episode yet, but still)
I never saw it as spiteful; I always felt like Ted really did have genuine affection for Barney, and embellished the stories for comic effect, giving us both exaggeration in the number of Barney’s conquests and in just how sleazy and comical he is in trying to get laid. Similarly, I have a feeling that a lot of Robin’s canuck-isms were played up as well for comic effect. And stuff about all the other characters as well.
At the point where you can fill a 64-person bracket with people potentially upset enough with you to want to ruin your life, it’s time to stop playing ignorant that what you’re doing is hurting people. It’s 100% intentional if only by virtue of you not giving a shit. For that matter, being able to name those people means you knew they were hurt by you all along; again, you just don’t give a shit.
No,thry got together because the show’s creator’s were trying to spin out the plot for extra seasons. Barney was the worst scum of the earth, and brought out the very worst in Robin. Go back and watch episode one again. It was very clear from the start that Robin and Ted would get together in the end, the the whole “mother” search was one big long red herring. Unfortunately, it was too good a red herring, and viewers actually believed in it.
I honestly believe they set the mother up to be so terrific that any actress who wound up with the thankless job of fielding that role in the last season would disappointingly fall short – at which point the viewers would say, yeah, seeing as how she didn’t live up to our expectations, let’s go back to rooting for Ted and Robin.
Problem is, Cristin Milioti actually does radiate that much warmth and charm.
There’s the unreliable narrator aspect: From what Ted said, Barney had less than 200 women when the Bracket episode aired. It’s hard to believe that something like 64/200 women (8/25ths) of women were deranged-level damaged by him. I think Ted’s exaggerating the number. (As an aside, Sam claims, in Season 7 or so, to have slept with over 1000 women. I think that’s exaggerated too, especially since I doubt Sam can count that high )
Say whatever you want–although we both agree that tricking women into sleeping with you is reprehensible, but it’s not as bad as actually drugging (ok…as much as warm milk is a drug) a woman and trying to physically rape a woman in her sleep. Both are rape, but one involves unwanted physical contact and a degree of force.
The creators say that, but in S01E09, when Ted goes to the stripper bar for Thanksgiving and buys the homeless guy a lapdance, the stripper comes over and says “That was a nice thing you did. I’m Amber.”. Ted replies “I’m Ted”. The stripper says “Actually, my real name is Tracy.” Ted says, “Still Ted.” It cuts to the future and Future!Ted says “And that, kids, is how I met your mother.” The kids are shocked as hell and yell “What???” and Future!Ted says “Just kidding”.
But as early as the ninth episode, we knew (from the kid’s reaction) that the mom’s name was Tracy, not Robin. So I’m not sure I buy the “Robin was THE ONE all along” theory.
I don’t buy into that as an excuse. As mentioned earlier, all we have to go on is the story as told and we can make up anything we want if we’re just going to handwave with “unreliable narrator”. I may as well claim that since Ted is an unreliable narrator, Barney actually murdered each woman and baked her into a pie but Ted is hiding that fact from the kids.
As told, we know that Barney hurt at least sixty-four women (really, many more than that since they had to narrow the list) enough to make them want to ruin his life.
You mean, unless Barney was a serious asshole who habitually used and hurt women? Huh
I’m not familiar enough with the Cheers episode you’re referring to to say “This is worse” but you’re obviously cherry-picking from Barney’s exploits to try and make him seem not so bad.
That said, while Barney is a complete sleezebag-conman, Ted regularly tries to get women drunk, drug them, deliberately ruin their lives, etc. Barney lives for “The Game”. He’d think that the stuff Sam does would be unsporting and cheating. And in all seriousness, so do I.
PS-the Cheers episode is either the last of S7 and the first of S8 or the first two of S8.
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