This week we’re talking about the ways you demonstrate intimacy between characters. A good romance author will tell you that kissing and even sex are not markers of intimacy. If you want your audience to root for a couple or believe in a friendship, you’ve got to do a lot more work to show how close that relationship is, to show the real connection.
This episode opens with a montage of Ted and Robin engaging in an inside joke. It’s a tough joke to tell, but a really easy one to show. Every time they hear a phrase that begins with a military rank (general knowledge, corporal punishment) they salute and say the phrase as if it’s someone’s title. It’s cute, and it’s totally believable as an inside joke. But more than that, this montage shows three things really well:
Ted and Robin engage in this automatically and turn to each other and laugh
Everyone else has a pre-programmed response to it; that response is its own form of intimacy. Random people nearby, or people that hardly know Ted or Robin would probably just blow past this with an “Anywayyyyyyy…” but Lily makes the same face all three times, Barney flat-out says “We HATE you” when they do it. That casual hyperbolic bullying is something that’s only okay between very, very, very close friends.
After Ted and Robin are broken up, they have an opportunity to do the joke (major pay raise), but instead they both perk up, look at each other, instantly read the other’s mind, and choose not to engage. It’s intimacy that they can’t act on. This is as demonstrative of their connection as when you see tv couples running around, hiding their relationship. Ted and Robin know they can’t behave “like a couple” anymore, so they stuff that down, even though this joke isn’t the slightest bit romantic.
Oddly enough, the end of the montage shows a few more bits of intimacy:
Ted is sharing a raunchy story with his friends, something he wouldn’t share with people he isn’t close to
Ted respects Robin’s feelings and doesn’t finish the raunchy story while she’s in the room
Barney says “I have to go” and leaves without any explanation
Lily says she’s going to pee (rather than using a polite euphemism)
Robin avoids Ted by saying “I’m going to help Lily pee”; a statement that a) would never work among, say, her work colleagues and b) shows she feels safe running to Lily in this moment
We then find out that Marshall is planning to use one of his five precious slaps on Thanksgiving (which is in a couple days). Barney pretends - not very convincingly - to not be scared. Then Robin brings her new boyfriend Bob, who is 41 (she’s 27), to meet the group. Ted and Bob might be kissing in this scene, but there’s none of that intimacy we’ve been talking about. We don’t know Bob, we’re not invested in this relationship. Robin even downplayed it: she invited Bob to Thanksgiving but only because “he had nowhere else to go, what was [she] supposed to say?”. She doesn’t claim that this is an important relationship to her, she doesn’t demonstrate that they’re joined at the hip these days. Lily underscores this with “You’ve only been on three dates, we haven’t even met him yet”. This demonstrates the intimacy of the group (we haven’t met him yet) and distances him from them (only three dates - Ted and Robin only officially went on one date before we were rooting for them).
Lily reminds everyone to be at Robin’s on Wednesday night to bake pies, since Marshall can’t be trusted with pies in the house overnight. Ted decides to show up late, so he and Robin aren’t alone together, which ends up happening anyway. Even in demonstrating how awkward this is, they show how close they really are.
Robin brings up random trivia, something that would appeal to Ted
Ted remembers that Robin is allergic to pecans and immediately guesses why she’s being cagey about the pecan pie
I do want to point out the brilliant use of non-linear storytelling here. The quick flashbacks to the awkward pie night in between conversations between friends are used to push the story forward and show how Ted and Robin are not on the same page. The runner of slap puns is hilarious, Barney’s “relapse five” is gold.
Barney and Marshall argue about the slap, Lily declares “No slaps today!” because she wants a civilized holiday. Then Bob shows up with jello shots. Even this juxtaposition demonstrates the cohesion of the group.
An outsider - Bob - misreads the vibe entirely. He’s on a different wavelength, he didn’t ask where Robin is, he’s mismatched in every way possible.
So really there have been three general ways that we show intimacy: 1. We show characters behaving in intimate ways (inside jokes, sharing private information, predicting each other’s behavior, touching, exchanging meaningful glances) 2. We show reaction to this intimacy (negative reactions like the groaning and the “WE HATE YOU” commentary) and 3. We show someone specifically not engaging in the same level of intimacy. I don’t think it’s an accident that Bob feels like a byproduct or a bystander in this story. These writers absolutely could have made him feel important within the scope of one episode, but they chose not to. They put a lot of distance between Bob and the rest of the group.
Ted and Robin have a private conversation where Ted points out that they’re not friends. They’re two people who pretend to be friends because it would be inconvenient not to. I don’t know that I’ve seen a sitcom handle this in an honest way before. Characters break up but hang around because the cast member still has a contract. Here, they give a real reason for Robin to still be around.
At dinner, Lily is pissed, Barney is obnoxiously triumphant, but Marshall gives a sweet toast. He is optimistic about this new tradition, even though Robin and Ted have agreed that they will steer clear of each other from now on. After the toast, Bob jumps in and talks about his family’s holidays and uses the phrase “Major Buzzkill” and Ted and Robin automatically salute.
The intimacy is automatic. They just slept together again, they had this difficult heart-to-heart conversation, and so they fall back into an old pattern really easily.
Just as easily, the rest of the group falls back into their pattern. “Oh no” and “I thought we were done with that”
(And, um, spoiler: Robin says, I guess we’re not done with that, and Ted agrees. Again, we can ask why Ted chose to tell this part of the story. Why this Thanksgiving? Why this story?)
Marshall slaps Barney and then sits at the piano to show off the song he composed just for this occasion. NGL, it’s a bop. Robin sits next to Ted, not with Bob, though, and then Ted and Robin have lighters to wave in the air; Bob uses his cell phone, again showing how he's not really in sync with everybody else.
The tag on the end includes “Major Cleanup” and that’s the “General Idea”.