Top 5 Reasons Ted Mosby is The WORST
Why yes, it has been over two years since the final episode of How I Met Your Mother aired on tv, and no, I’m still not over it. But while I could rant on about why that last episode was such a disservice to the characters, the story, and frankly the audience, I really want to focus on the glass shattering effect it had on the rest of the show.
I am of course referring to the glass shattering sound effect used in the episode “Spoiler Alert” where our heroes have their perceptions of each other shattered as they realize each other’s worst flaws.
In this episode, we are led to believe that Ted Mosby’s worst flaw is that the majority of things that come out of his mouth is him correcting people right and left. Which, don’t misunderstand, I completely agree, is a frustrating quality for a person to have, but it’s far from Mosby’s worst.
Now I had decided to rewatch the series since it had so handily appeared on Netflix, determined to rekindle my love for the show and simply stop before the finale. I had, after all, loved it enough to follow it rather diligently through all 9 seasons. It got me through college, it was a weird comfort during some weird phases of my life… and it had been completely ruined by the last episode.
Because the glass-shattering realization (if you hadn’t noticed before) is that Ted Mosby is possibly quite literally the worst.
Which brings me to the main point of this article: Friends don’t let friends date Ted Mosby.
This show centered its story around this character, and even cleverly placed him next to a character like Barney which, to be fair, makes anyone look like a decent human being. But chances are, you’re not going to meet an actual Barney in life. But if you really stop and think about it, you already know at least one Ted.
Ted is that guy who insists he’s wonderful, who will bend over backwards to convince you he’s Mr. Right, and god help you if you dare to disagree.
So I’ve compiled 5 big reasons, in no particular order, as to why Ted Mosby is not the catch this show would have you believe.
1. Pretentious – Let’s just get it out of the way since we’ve already mentioned it. Ted is an “Actually” guy. Some people now call this mansplaining but his condescending explanations and corrections do not extend to just women and I’m all about pointing out equal opportunity douchebaggery. We have all known this guy. Some of us have even dated this guy. A fellow so insecure about himself that at every turn he must prove that he is smarter than everyone else in the room by correcting any thing he can possibly spot as potentially being inaccurate. And for the love of god while he may have a point about the original pronunciation of a word, no one in the US still pronounces it that way, so no, it is NOT EncycloPEYdia. Our language evolves with our culture, and this is one of those instances, you pretentious son of a bitch. If you date this man, you’re going to have to bail your friends out of jail because someone’s going to get booked for aggravated assault before the night is over.
2. Transphobic – I’m sorry, but if you’re transphobic you’re just a freaking garbage human, I have no further point to make, so I’ll simply site a few episodic examples:
Season 2, Episode 9
[Ted is guessing what could have happened when he left for the bathroom that would make his friends instantly dislike his date so much. This example is put on par with the others he suggests which includes killing puppies and having a man falsely imprisoned for statutory rape.]
Ted: I’ll be back in one second.
Kathy: I bet he’s going to the urinal. Yeah, I remember when I had a penis.
Season 3, Episode 8
Ted: If there’s some potential “Ohhh….” [dealbreaker] moment, I want know about it right away. I mean, what’s the alternative?
[Cut to fantasy sequence Robin and Ted at the altar]
Priest: I now pronounce you man and wife.
Ted: I love you.
Robin: I used to be a dude.
Ted: Ohhh….
Season 7, Episode 5
[Ted wonders why his date is secretive. A fantasy sequence ensues where Ted is in the bathroom of the restaurant and Janet comes in.]
Ted: This is the men’s room.
[Janet strides to the urinal and hikes up her dress.]
Janet: I know. I’m a dude.
Ted: [gasp of horror]
3. “I’m in Love with You” on the 1st Date is Creepy – I need you to forget what bullshit romcom cinema has been trying to force into our brains for decades. Imagine you met someone at a bar the previous night (or a coffee shop or whatever), and even if you’re a romantic and want to get married and have kids REALLY THINK about what Ted does on that date. Someone you have spent a collective of what… 5 hours with, tells you they’re in love with you. And then when you are clearly uncomfortable with this, they proceed to talk about how they’d be a great spouse and parent. Look, I once dated a guy in high school, which while we’d been going out for almost a year, I was in freaking high school. The fact that he started talking about marriage and kids before I even knew what college I was getting into was absolutely terrifying. And I feel like having that conversation with someone on the first date is a pretty damn similar move, without the excuse of teenage stupidity. When you’ve only covered things like favorite movies and what you do for a living, and thus that person has not had enough time to actually get to know you as a unique human… they cannot profess true love and start planning your future together. That. Is. Psychotic. This is a person who is in love with the idea of love and will attempt to fit you into a mold that they have already made for their life. In fact, Ted is CONSTANTLY re-imagining Robin as wanting to get married and have kids (see various fantasies), or pushing her into changing anything he’s not a big fan of (her career ambition, her guns, smoking etc). Back away and bring a baseball bat. It’s not safe to go alone.
4. There is literally an episode about how to turn a “No” into a “Yes”. – Watching Ten Sessions is absolutely painful, and I’m not sympathizing with the idea of Ted having to get a butterfly tattoo lasered off his skin painful. That part I kind of enjoyed. What’s painful about this episode is that Ted asks out his dermatologist, and when she politely turns him down, he proceeds to ask, and ask, and ask. Now the frustrating thing is the writers made this out to be such a romantic gesture, but again, put yourself in Stella’s shoes. You said ‘No.’ At that point, your reasons for saying ‘no’ are kind of irrelevant. You gave an answer and it’s not being respected. This episode then goes on to perpetuate the idea that 1, guys are entitled to a ‘Yes’ when they ask a woman out–No, seriously, Ted sincerely believes he deserves that yes–but 2, it gives support to the myth that when a woman says ‘No’, she secretly wants to say yes. Amusingly, when Ted gets left at the altar, he realizes Stella’s issues with Robin were actually because she herself had unresolved feelings for her ex, but never seems to make the connection that the issue stemmed all the way back to him pushing her into the relationship she’d refused in the first place. When someone tells you ‘No’, trust that is what they mean. Don’t push, don’t persist, respect their freaking decision.
5. THE ENTIRE PREMISE OF THE SHOW– I’m sorry, I can’t not rant about how shitty this show ended. It’s called “How I Met Your Mother”, but the mother is barely in the last bit, is killed off in literally a sentence and we discover that the entire point of telling this phenomenally long story about how he banged all these terrible women was to awkwardly pivot back to being obsessed with a woman who we were proven time and time again they do not work together. Ted Mosby, you son of a bitch, you did not deserve Tracy. We should have had a show about her and her friends. They seemed pretty badass. I want more of that. Less Ted. Fuck Ted. I think that’s more of a gripe to the show runners more than anything, but let’s try to get this back on track. Do not date the person who is still hung up on “the one who got away”. Idealism is to be admired, but only when it’s still within the realm of possibility. Idealism is only admirable when its outcome does not depend on the suppression of someone else’s humanity. This is not a journey of a hopeless romantic trying to find “the one”. This is the revenge fantasy of a man who got turned down by a woman and decided to devise a story where he found another woman who gave him everything he wanted, for long enough to make the first woman miserable and sad and jealous for years until he finally rescues her from her tower.
What the fuck was this show even?
Do not let your friends date a Ted.
Just don’t.
