Episode 3.5 - How I Met Everyone Else

Oh boy, does this episode do a whole lot of stuff that this show is famous for.

Right from the top: we are reminded that Future Ted is a very unreliable narrator. He tells his kids, “listen it’s been 23 years, I can’t remember everything” and then refers to a woman he dated briefly as Blah Blah, but then immediately shortens it to Blah. Throughout the episode, no one refers to her as anything other than Blah, which is especially funny as she’s deeply insecure but also has a lot going for her, so it’s constantly “No, you’re great, Blah, I promise”

Non-linear storytelling is at its best here. There are flashbacks then re-flashbacks showing the same story from a different point of view, then at the end of the episode there is a flash-forward (in which they just barely avoid a continuity problem - they flash forward to 2020 and are sneaking marijuana, and marijuana wasn’t legalized in NY and CT until 2021).

But what we’re talking about this week is the post-adolescent behavior of college kids. Darci and I both write predominantly YA fiction, and one of the biggest complaints about YA fiction is that “these teens just acted like such idiots”.

I have teens, I taught at a 7-12th grade school, I work with the youth in our church. I love teens. They are smart and plugged in and I cannot wait to watch them change the world. They are incredible people, thriving in a world that is so pressurized most adults can’t fathom it.

But they do some epically dumb shit. Even the really smart ones.

This episode is a really good chance for us to point out some dumb shit teenagers do, how it’s completely in-character, completely normal, and would fit in a YA/NA novel and if you don’t like those kinds of stories… then you shouldn’t be reading YA or NA novels.

(Before we get too far into this: Barney’s Hot-Crazy scale is improperly represented. He makes the woman less crazy instead of more hot, and vice versa. It’s fine. I’m fine. I’m not bothered by it. Don’t talk to me.)

Ted keeps trying to distract from Barney being a jerk and he gets Marshall and Lily to tell their How We Met story and we get a flashback. Lily is making a questionable fashion choice and she meets Marshall because she can’t get her stereo hooked up. In the details: we learn that she’s up on the second floor, he’s on the first. Marshall, in the flashback, uses a dumb voice to tell Ted “wanna tap that”. It’s crass, it’s juvenile, it’s unromantic and… it’s exactly the type of thing an eighteen-year-old would say.

Real quick: When Blah Blah asks how Robin and Barney met, and Robin says “no” over and over again, they couldn’t get through it. NPH’s job was to just count the “no”s so he could accurately deliver his line, because that was the only way to get him to stop laughing was to give him a tedious job to do.

Then Ted tells the story of how he and Marshall met. Marshall is “eating a sandwich” (which is clearly code for smoking a joint). Smoking a joint in your dorm room, on the first day of school, is really dumb. This is underscored by another kid running into the room and telling Marshall to put it out. But… it’s also the type of thing an eighteen-year-old would do. He then tries to put it out in an ashtray and spray air freshener, like a college dean wouldn’t know what weed smells like.

Teenaged Ted walks in, wearing what we know are “decorative spectacles” and Marshall thinks he’s the dean. Ted’s dressed like a pretentious wang, but he’s clearly too young to be the dean, but Marshall is a little high and isn’t thinking clearly.

Marshall calls Ted “sir” and Ted thinks this is entirely normal for some reason? Again, dumb teenager stuff. Later that night, Ted is also smoking weed, which is just as dumb as when Marshall was doing it.

Barney and Ted meet when Ted is 23 and a new-ish college grad. Barney uses Ted to pick up a woman and Ted reveals that he actually helped the girl get away from Barney instead. Everyone laughs and Barney reveals Ted’s secret that he met Blah Blah online. To try to make Blah Blah feel better, Ted tells her that Lily and Marshall’s story was a little different, and we get another college flashback.

College kids partying and here’s the dumb stuff they do:

• Ted says he doesn’t use the word “freshman” because it’s sexist so he calls her a freshwoman (she uses the term “first-year” which is definitely less stupid than “freshwoman”)

• They’re drinking underage

• Marshall does a keg stand

• Ted tries to be fancy by drinking wine, but he cuts it with fruit juice because it’s too strong

• Ted tries to quote Descartes

• Lily makes out with him for doing so

• Ted makes out with a girl, despite having a girlfriend

When Lily tells the story of meeting Ted, it flashes back to college again. Teen Lily walks into the dorm room with Teen Marshall, and Teen Ted is tearfully confessing his drunken makeout to his long-distance girlfriend, again quoting Descartes. He tells her he loves her. But he’s talking to her answering machine and then says he’s also going to email her.

Teen Ted and Teen Lily gave stupid nicknames to people they made out with (“too much tongue guy” and “too small mouth opening girl”), which is, again, crass and juvenile. But realistic.

For some reason, adult audiences are able to read adult fiction, or watch adult fiction, and handle flashbacks like this with no problems. But then when they read YA fiction, or watch YA shows, the teen behavior is suddenly seen as stupid, vapid, unrealistic, or even reprehensible. (I think teen tv has done a much worse job of this; teens don’t tend to be involved in murder plots and orgies, though violence and sex are both part of their lives, for sure)

We’re going to talk soon about how good fiction is made up of bad decisions, but this goes doubly for teen fiction. Ironically, people often complain that teen characters are acting too adult.

But that’s what the teen years are: This incomprehensible mix of childhood and adulthood. Freedom and restrictions battling against each other constantly. Teens do stupid stuff not because they are trying to be stupid, but rather because they’re trying to figure out how to Not Be Stupid. They are trying to figure out who they are and what they want to be and that takes a whole lot of trial and error.

This is why love triangles are so popular in YA fiction: each option represents a version of the main character. In Twilight - is Bella going to stay human and stay connected to the community that has been welcoming her, or is she going to chase eternal perfection, even if it means saying goodbye to people she cares about? In Hunger Games - is Katniss going to forget what happened to her in the arena so she can go back to her “normal” life or is she going to carry that trauma around with her and need a partner in life who can understand what she went through?