Nobody Asked Me, But...

I’ve hinted before I’m not the biggest fan of how Robin treats Patrice in How I Met Your Mother. It’s intriguing the show includes such an obvious flaw in a main character, left uncorrected (sort of) because it makes the character that much more relatable and human to a TV audience. Perfect is boring! That…might be why Robin finds Patrice insufferable, actually. More on that list in a second.
First, I want to look into the snickerdoodle that is Patrice and her essence, and why she’s Robin’s choice whipping-post candidate.

The World Wide News employee gained ground in season 7, as did the welcomed and expected rebuttal-quote, “Nobody asked you, Patrice!”
According to Future Ted, Patrice is…or becomes…Robin’s arch-enemy. Perhaps she’s Robin’s arch-enemy even now, behaving in every way Robin does not. To begin, she’s as sweet as the cookies she bakes for when “someone is sad,” keeps her kind thoughts in and kind words out. She made notable headway in The Stinson Missile Crisis when she congratulated Nora, whom received many gifts from Barney Stinson. Robin, bent, called out Patrice on her eagerness (literally—she shrieked it). And Patrice’s enthusiasm didn’t stop there. Every episode to follow through seasons 7 and 8 involved Patrice directly or indirectly attempting to make Robin happy.
She succeeded only once…in a certain Final Page season finale!

But what does Robin love in a person most? Someone she can go get—not someone that comes to her. We all saw the lobster effect; the same goes for friends in Robin’s world. According to Robin, Patrice was too “smothering” in her saccharinity, too cloying, too close for the anchorwoman’s tastes.

And, I’ll admit, Patrice seemed her happiest when Robin was least. Maybe there’s some nemesis blood in the fig-newton yet.
We shall see, we shall see…