Fans Talk: TV Tropes II

Akin to references across the series, every well-known sitcom is going to have similar stories and plots and characters to other, perhaps lesser-known stories. Everybody’s human and everyone’s a critic. The popular website tvtropes.org knows a thing or two about the nuances and styles of narrative—from character types to relationship formats to how the next season finale will likely end.

A pretty useful site for How I Met Your Mother, yes?

The fans talk about what they may. Tropes the website spies in our beloved show include:

Hilarity Ensues. The common catchphrase following the main, oftentimes incredibly dire, plots. If hilarity didn’t ensue—and much of the time, it does not—the results for the character would be very grim indeed. Take our Ted Mosby. If hilarity didn’t spring from Jeanette wrecking his apartment, he’d be left homeless. If the Rule of Funny didn’t have his back, he’d spend his seasons lost and alone. Doesn’t make for very good TV.

Romantic False Lead. As the title suggests, this character either creates tension between the main character and the true romantic lead, or blindsides the audience by ending up not the actual endeavor. See: Robin Scherbatsky. For fluxuating seasons we called her the Mother. Now? We’re happy to see her blossom into Aunt Robin.

The Casanova. “The sexual predator — a man who relentlessly pursues, lands, loves and then abandons members of the opposite sex.” Gee, I-wonder-who-this-could-be.

Unreliable Narrator. One typically assumes the narrator tells the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth…until you land yourself Future Ted. With a memory fit for 2030, Ted Mosby often forgets small details or twists the true tale for our audience. As in the last episode…still not sure what happened there.

The best part of How I Met Your Mother? Its suit isn’t four-pieced. Check out the rest on tvtropes.org!

Yes To All!

The whole reason The Big Bang Theory can keep their shtick is because they make so many present-day fandom references. Fandom, some of you might ask? I shouldn’t divulge the lingo, but fandom means merely a group of fans. Nearly every culture reference has a fandom (can you say Star Trek?), yet The Big Bang Theory works because they draw in all of them at once—sometimes a few per episode! Let’s take a look at some of the culture references the sitcom made over the last six seasons:

In alphabetical order,

BBC America

Sheldon watches the broadcast of BBC America every Saturday morning; when he isn’t saying “yes to all!” things Star Trek, of course. He tunes in mainly for the Doctor Who episodes.

Doctor Who

Sheldon rises at 6:15 AM on Saturday morning for these episode premieres. Talk about morning-cartoon-loyalty. More than once the friends critique the sci-fi show, usually alongside lamenting date nights and costume ideas. In season 4, Stuart dressed as the main character (in his fourth regeneration) during the New Years Eve party. In season 6, Raj and Stuart’s Halloween party photo booth replicated the TV show’s iconic “T.A.R.D.I.S.”

(Super) Mario

Sheldon states the only happy memories of his childhood he has were those playing the Super Mario videogames. Sad day for Shelly.

Spock

Spock easily becomes Sheldon’s source for logical and emotionally-devoid inspiration in the show. Besides earning Leonard Nimoy’s autograph on a napkin from Penny, Sheldon receives advice from Spock in a dream from season 5, voiced by Leonard Nimoy.

Star Trek

Star Trek earns the credit of being the most-mentioned fandom in the entire series. That being said, I’m sure any BBT fan can think of at least one reference off the top of their heads. The most notable include season 7, when the scientists tried hitchhiking in complete Star Trek cosplays, and the bonus of them all being able to recite Spock’s dying words.

The Lord of the Rings

Can you say, “The Precious Fragmentation?” The four scientists find a prop ring from the Lord of the Rings franchise and spend the entire episode going Gollum over it. They’re all just a little enthusiastic over the trilogy and book series.

Time Warp

Hello. This is future blogger, telling past blogger they’ll spend the last two minutes of this How I Met Your Mother episode with their hands over their mouth, thinking, is it the mother? Is it not the mother? Did this happen? Did none of it happen?  What the heck is Carl’s last name?!

Present blogger is more concerned with the Robin Scherbatsky.

We learn a boatload more about the mother in the beginning of the episode, when Ted deliberates going to Robots vs Wrestlers “Legends.” Supposedly, Barney coaxes him toward going while Marshall and Robin spend the rest of the episode in the backdrop, debating who named the “Minnesota Tidal Wave/The Robin Scherbatsky” first. Lily might have sided with Marshall a tiny bit.

But we learn from commercial cut one that something isn’t up to speed. Both Barney and Ted can’t be imagining 20-years-from-now Barney, or 20-years-or-20-minutes-from-now-Ted—unless Barney built a time machine, and really, I wouldn’t put it past him. The back-and-forth’s may have been legen…wait 20 years for it…dary—including the guest star, Glee’s Jayma Mays—but they proved themselves the more creative counterparts of Ted’s mind when the audience, and the children, learn they’re fabricated. Not only that, we’re not exactly sure when the episode takes place in the time frame. Five years from the present-day? After he met the mother for the first time?

Who else really, really wanted the running-to-the-apartment scene to occur?

I have other burning questions, but my brain’s already baffled enough by the potential apartment scene! Is it the mother? Is it not the mother? Did this happen? Did none of it happen?  What the heck is Carl’s last name?!

(There we go.)

Quotables:

“Level with me…you…us…”

-- Future Ted to Present Ted

“You’re Zuckerberg-ing me?”
-- Marshall to Robin

“You’ve been dating for a long time, Ted. Has it ever gone any other way?”

-- Coat-check-girl to Ted

The Apartment Above MacLeran's

Quick, name the significance of MacLeran’s Irish pub.

No, I’m not thinking about the 50-reasons-to-have-sex napkin.

One How I Met Your Mother newbie realized the entire five-part main cast lived in “The Apartment” Lily and Marshall now share, the one previously espoused by Ted, then Robin. Let’s break down the cast and what they spent their hours (seasons) achieving in the two-bedroom-two-bathroom suite.

Ted Mosby: The Apartment’s front-runner and renter for the first seven seasons. His original roommates, if you care to think back, were Lily and Marshall pre-engagement, back when Lily taught kindergarten and Marshall still studied law. The Intervention came to show how The Apartment earned its marks of toil and triumph over the years, arguably making the place as fitting into the main plotline as Rachel and Monica’s in F.R.I.E.N.D.S.
Ted moved out of The Apartment, leaving it to Lilly and Marshall, in season seven, episode eighteen.

Lily and Marshall Eriksen: Ted, Lily and Marshall met during their college years, regrouping and sharing the space when they left school to pursue their life’s passions. Once Lily and Marshall married, however, they went back and forth on a new Apartment for them and their budding brood, only to find their kitschy home was here to stay. Ted afforded them the home in Karma, after he’d made peace with all his sentiments of girlfriends past, and they still live there to this episode.

Robin Scherbatsky: Robin took the spot of renter from Lily and Marshall once they moved during season 4, staying through to season 7. While her tastes in dates changed—Ted had quite the time trying to figure out what to do with Robin’s room when she moved on to date Barney—we’ll never forget the Blue French Horn, the dozen yellow umbrella’s, nor the forty-deal. Keep in mind Ted is 52 at the series’ start.

Barney’s slept in The Apartment a grand total of three times: twice in the bathroom and once during Blitzgiving. Way to be the bro, Stinson.

Meet The Parents

While CBS gives way to March Madness, I’m sitting over here elbow-deep in characters off their own rockers: parents. Big Bang Theory parents, specifically. What do we know about the harping Hofstadters and caging Coopers? Do we ever really want to meet Raj’s family outside a Skype screen? The lowdown on what we know—and don’t—of our sitcom stars’ hometown broods.

Leonard Hofstadter: Ah, yes, the son of Ebenezer himself. He never saw a birthday cake, nor Christmas tree, growing up, thanks to his mother Dr. Beverly Hofstadter’s practices. Accomplished psychiatrist and neuroscientist, she concentrated his childhood into a series of experiments and tests. If any of those were measuring how quickly she could spur his son to build a “hugging machine,” he passed with flying colors.

Sheldon Cooper: Contrary to Leonard and the others, Sheldon has the background one wouldn’t take for a prodigy experimental physicist: a household with a fundamentalist Christian Texan mother and outgoing twin sister. Fortunately, the mother doesn’t spend her time thumping bibles and her religion isn’t exactly debated. She chooses instead to spend her energy thumping sense into Sheldon when he adopts six cats on a career-change binge. Blog writer-favorite right here.

Howard Wolowitz: Fun fact—of all the characters, Howard’s parents have never held screen time, minus the flash-in-the-pan shot of his mother, Ms. Wolowitz, cruising by the kitchen doorway in The Spoiler Alert Segmentation. Howard grew up with the overbearing “crazy old lady,” his words, when his father left him as a child. Despite the trauma, he’s the only married character in the series…so far.

Raj Koothrappali: Raj enjoys painting the picture of growing from the Indian slums—an effort halted all too soon every time his gynecologist father and his wife, Dr. and Mrs. V.M. Koothrappali, come onto the screen. Both his parents, “Richie Rich rich” according to Sheldon, live in India, own (at least) one Bentley, and previously housed servants. Their consistent meddling and nit picking often drives Raj to cam with them from the neutral setting…of Leonard and Sheldon’s apartment.