If Ted Mosby is an unreliable narrator, then the Barney Stinson we see inHow I Met Your Mothercould be an inaccurate exaggeration. Acrossnine seasons ofHow I Met Your Mother, Ted recounted the story of how he fell in love, got married, and started a family in great detail to his eternally patient children.
Although Neil Patrick Harris gave a great performance,Barney was shown to be a pretty horrible person. All throughout the series, he objectified and exploited women and was shown to be a borderline sociopath. But the show dropped a few hints that Ted wasn’t telling his kids the whole truth, so maybe Barney wasn’t actually that bad.
There’s Compelling Reason To Believe Ted Was Lying About Barney In HIMYM
Ted Resented Barney For Marrying Robin
Ted lied to his kids about a lot of things inHow I Met Your Mother, but it was usually to protect them from inappropriate subject matter. Whenever he and his friends smoked a joint, he told his kids they ate a sandwich. When he called Lily a bad word, he told his kidshe called her a Grinch.
How I Met Your Motheris available to stream on Netflix and Hulu.
But there’s still reason to believe that he was lying about Barney, too. Ted exaggerated a lot of things to make the story better, and he openly admitted that he resented Barney.Ted always thought he should be with Robin, despite wanting a very different future than she did, and he was secretly upsetwhen she married Barney.
Barney’s Character Makes A Lot More Sense If Ted Was Exaggerating His Stories
Barney Is An Absurdist Caricature Of A Womanizer
Barney is such a ludicrous, over-the-top caricature of a womanizer thatit would make sense if Ted was presenting him as a ludicrous, over-the-top caricature of himself. It’s likely that Barney slept around a lot and was afraid of commitment, but he probably didn’t sleep with hundreds of women, and he probably wasn’t such a blatant misogynist.
Assuming That Ted Is An Unreliable Narrator Completely Changes How I Met Your Mother
Take Everything Ted Says With A Pinch Of Salt
If you go intoHow I Met Your Motherwith the assumption that Ted is an unreliable narrator, it plays like a totally different show.If you take Ted’s claims at face value, it’s a heartfelt romantic comedy about the perfect guystruggling to find the perfect woman. But if you dig a little deeper,Ted isn’t all that perfect.
How I Met Your Mother paints Ted in a positive light and excuses his toxic behavior as romantic gestures, because he’s the one telling the story.
Ted cheated on Victoria, then broke up her marriage. He pressured Robin into dating him and made her get rid of her dogs. He broke up with Natalie on her birthday — twice.How I Met Your Motherpaints Ted in a positive light and excuses his toxic behavior as romantic gestures, because he’s the one telling the story.
