"Okay, I'm ready, where is she?"
"And there she was."
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"The Take."
How I Met Your Mother is a show about a man looking for his soulmate.
But while Ted Mosby finds the woman of his dreams
in the very first episode,
Robin Scherbatsky doesn't share his fantasy of life-changing romance.
"What is this doing in my champagne?"
Despite attracting the admirations of a long line of men,
"After you."
"Oh, thank you"
Robin has other things on her mind besides finding the perfect guy.
"Guys are like the subway.
You miss one,
another one comes along in five minutes."
Refreshingly, this character,
who was the center of the show's major love triangle,
fit the archetype of the quintessential career woman,
who puts ambition before love, doesn't want kids
and is okay with being single.
"I don't want kids, I've never wanted kids,
and never, in a million years, will I ever want kids."
Robin made choices like these appear not only valid
but even aspirational, representing a powerful moment
for a character type that rarely gets positive treatments in pop culture.
Yet in the show's home stretch, How I Met Your Mother arguably
let Robin down by turning her into a stock love interest,
there to deliver a happy ending for its protagonist.
"It is meant to be, and you know why?
Cause I mean it to be,"
and not following through on the person she really was.
"It's a great look.
But you're looking at the wrong girl."
Here's our Take on Robin, and why her role as a professionally focused woman
on an influential love-centered sitcom mattered.
"Welcome to Robin 101."
You're watching The Take.
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The premise of How I Met Your Mother is that Ted is the male version
of the stereotypical rom-com heroine,
looking for someone to sweep him off his feet.
"Nothing hotter than a guy planning out his own imaginary wedding, huh?
He's so in touch with his feelings that he throws himself at Robin
on their very first date.
"I think I'm in love with you."
"What?"
Ted has a plan that's more traditionally assumed
to be the fixation of women.
He wants to fall in love, get married, have kids,
and live out the Norman Rockwell American dream.
But Robin doesn't want that dream.
"I don't know where I'm going to be in five years, and I don't want to know.
I want my life to be an adventure."
The inverse of Ted, Robin is driven by priorities
our culture normally associates with men
ambition, intensity, selfishness, and living for the moment
without her future set in stone.
"I don't plan out every second of my life like you do."
"I don't plan out-" "Oh really!
What is all of this?"
When she meets Ted, what she really wants isn't a boyfriend
but a group of fun friends to take the edge off.
"I only moved here in April and I'm always working and
I just haven't met a lot of good people so far."
She's passionate about becoming successful in TV news,
"Because I care, Don!
I care about the show,
I care about my career!"
and almost always chooses her work over the possibility of romance
"They want me to anchor the news tonight."
starting with the night of her very first date with Ted.
"We got a jumper!
Some crazy guy on the Manhattan Bridge.
Come on, you're covering it."
"Um, alright I'll be right there."
Robin's whole personality is also stereotypically male,
from her taste in liquor
"I love a Scotch that's old enough to order its own Scotch."
and pop culture,
"Can quote obscure lines from Ghostbusters?
"Rey, when someone asks you if you're a God, you say yes!"
to her comfort with guns.
"You have to clean your gun!"
The conceit of the man who acts like a woman,
pining for the woman who acts like a man,
was central to the romantic tension driving How I Met Your Mother.
"You know Ted, not everyone is as much of a woman as you."
Co-creator Craig Thomas said, quote, "We wanted to show a guy
who is in love with this girl and she just doesn't want that."
"Look it would not be smart if we got together.
I mean, I'm looking to settle down, she's looking for-"
By flipping the stereotypical gender attitudes
toward romance in Ted and Robin, the show got the opportunity to explore
both male sensitivity and vulnerability,
and female independence and self-determination.
As the woman who acts like a man
"I'll have a Johnnie Walker Blue, neat and a Monte Cristeo number two."
Robin is a prime example of the "cool girl" trope.
The Take made a previous video about.
"A chick who's like super-hot, but then like, loves Xbox,
down for pizza."
Just like one of the guys but much prettier, she's a male fantasy.
"Hey, you wanna go upstairs and watch Sports Centre?"
She's basically a collection of male tastes and behaviors
in a hot female body
"Surprisingly good."
"Right?
I told you so."
and men obsess over her at least in part because she expresses
not wanting the commitment that the more stereotypical woman demands.
"I mean, the most I can handle right now is something casual"
Looking closer, though, Robin's tomboyish behavior
has more complicated roots stemming from her childhood.
Robin's father wanted her to be a boy
"He wanted a son and the fact that I was a girl didn't change his plan."
"What do you mean?"
"My full legal name is Robin Charles Scherbatsky, Jr."
So she is the way she is because her father raised her
to embrace stereotypically male activities like shooting,
smoking, drinking and hockey, until he could no longer
keep denying the fact that she was a girl.
"Teammates don't kiss!
Oh, my God.
I have no son."
Though the show usually plays Robin's boyishness
for laughs or as an attractive quirk,
her acting like a boy while growing up was her way of trying to please
and be accepted by the first man in her life.
And as an adult, she's still haunted by her father's rejection
"Robin's deep-seated need for attention can be traced back
to her father's emotional distance."
So this suggests that, on some level, Robin's "cool girl" persona
down to her beliefs that she isn't like other girls
and doesn't want a relationship
is rooted in the desire to be desirable to men.
"My father was a cigar fanatic, it was the only way to get his attention.
"Father issues.
Hot."
Robin actively avoids the appearance of being like other women
"What is it with you and women?"
"Ugh, they're so annoying.
I'm glad that you're my only female friend.
Girls are always whining and crying over every little thing."
and is deeply upset when her jealousy for Ted makes her not recognize herself.
"Look at me.
I'm acting crazy and jealous and paranoid."
"This is how people act in relationships."
"And that's why I avoid relationships."
And whenever Robin has feelings that aren't convenient,
like for Ted or Barney, she represses them,
always playing the "cool girl" instead of expressing her real emotions
"I have to go to Germany and surprise her."
"Totally what I was thinking.
Get out of my head, man!"
Moreover, being a commitment-phobe also doesn't automatically mean
she doesn't want a commitment but rather that she's scared of it.
"She thought about how opening yourself up to another person
usually means opening yourself up to going a little crazy.
She thought about how much easier it was just to be alone."
How I Met Your Mother suggests
that Robin's really trying to avoid the possibility of getting hurt.
"The second you get close to a guy, you want to bail."
And these fears are justified when, in her relationship with Don,
she uncharacteristically turns down a career opportunity
in order to put romance first,
only to be burned when Don chooses that very job over her.
"Can you imagine what its like to have the phone ring
and it's your dream job on the other end?"
"Yes, I can.
Good luck in Chicago Don"
Robin's character development eventually shows her becoming a person
who does want real love.
But actually the man who helps her discover this most naturally,
and in spite of herself is not the uber-romantic Ted,
who's long been obsessed with her, but the equally commitment-phobic Barney,
the member of the gang most like Robin, whom she eventually marries.
"We both think the marriage-commitment thing's a drag,
we both want something casual and fun, and we clearly get along really well."
Even though they get divorced in the finale, for most of its run
How I Met Your Mother makes a compelling argument that Barney
is a much better match for Robin than Ted.
Not only do both of them share a love of cigars, booze, and laser tag
"You just saved my life, didn't you?
"Thank me later.
Let's keep moving.
These little bastards are everywhere."
but both of them are also adamant
about their lack of a desire to ever have children.
"Ok yes, kids are not my favorite thing in the world but I like them"
"Well, you don't want to have them"
"I like sports cars
but it doesn't mean I want to push a ferrari through my vagina"
Robin's lack of interest in kids, her desire to put other priorities first,
was an important, positive alternative to most female role models on screen.
Despite her not having this end goal,
Robin and her happiness were still valued by this romantic comedy.
"Mom, I'm not marrying some future possibility of starting a family.
I'm marrying a girl.
Who means more to me than kids."
Like her relationship hang-ups,
Robin's feelings about motherhood are also complex.
She's painted as having a phobia
".scared...of...babies" "What."
and when the choice is taken away from her,
because she discovers she's unable to have biological children,
her response isn't what she, or we, expected.
"I guess, its just nice knowing that you could someday do it
if you changed your mind."
Ultimately, there's honesty in the fact
that she's conflicted about big life questions,
that her behaviors are shaped by her environment
and that she has to confront doubts about the decisions she's made.
"I'm always putting my career ahead of my relationships and
to be honest there's a lot of lonely nights in that job description."
In the end, though,
the show let down the complexity it had built up for Robin,
as it barrelled toward its rom-com fairy tale ending.
Often, the story of the single career woman
is captured in the question: Can women have it all?
"You really do want it all."
"I can do it, I can have it all!"
The traditional example of the Working Woman onscreen
is trained to avoid emotional attachment
"Starting now, you are a hard, heartless career gal.
Go to work, be awesome at it,
and don't waste time on foolish flights of fancy."
focusing on her professional success
and putting relationships second, or not worrying about them at all.
"There's no simple answer to why a person isn't married.
"How many different reasons can there be?"
"65."
Modelled on the tenets of Second Wave Feminism from the 60s to the 80s,
inspirational pop culture about the Career Women like Mary Tyler Moore
put forward a version of female life that prized workplace equality
and access to the same opportunities as men.
Women in this time period were encouraged to act just like men,
to have any chance of succeeding.
"The conversation of a raise is not inappropriate, at this moment,
but do not be timid.
You presented like a man, now act like one."
Later examples, from Working Girl in the late 80s,
to Sex and the City starting in the late 90s,
reflected the conversations of their time periods as well,
by working the questions of femininity and romance back into the picture.
"I have a head for business and a bod for sin."
In Sex and the City, four female characters
have prioritized work well into their thirties and set out to be
"Women who have sex like men."
But as they remain unattached,
these working women also question their decisions
"Single and Fabulous, question mark?
There was no question mark implied.
I would never have agreed to be in an article,
Single and Fabulous Question Mark"
and spend a great deal of time fixating on their interactions with men
"How does it happen that four such smart women
have nothing to talk about but boyfriends?"
Career women characters since then
have continued to juggle finding fulfillment in their work
"You're married to your job."
[Gasps] "Oh my god"
with deciding how much of a traditional domestic life they want,
while being presented with an ever-shifting set of role models
"I grew up wanting to be you."
"I grew up wanting to be Samantha Stevens on Bewitched."
And we can see the influence
of the career woman's history shaping Robin as well.
"But I don't actually cry in front of people, or cry at all for that matter"
She's incredibly driven with an enviable work ethic,
even when she's toiling in obscurity on a little-watched show.
"If I can't even get my best friends to watch, who's gonna watch?"
She repeatedly watches her romances suffer due to work,
and finds that men are not as okay with her all-consuming ambition
as they profess to be.
"This is so not great!"
"I'm sorry that I have to work while I'm here.
It's called being on assignment"
Her commitment to what she wanted in spite of all of that
made Robin an important entry
in the pantheon of Career Women characters throughout the years.
She's the most professionally accomplished among her gang.
"Robin got famous.
In the next few days, she would meet the mayor,
go on Letterman and even have a deli sandwich named after her."
and that's not even counting the whole other career
she has behind her
"I was a teenage pop star in Canada."
What happens to these women,
as they get older and it's time for the TV show to end?
Generally speaking,
they wind up settling down, no matter how much they've protested.
"I love you.
I love you, Steve."
As University College Dublin Professor of Film Studies and Screen Culture
Diane Negra put it, Sex and the City "came to closure
in a strikingly ideologically conservative fashion
with the safe settlement of its four ensemble members
into commitment and motherhood."
"And in the end, Carrie Bradshaw married John James Preston
in a labelless dress."
"I do."
30 Rock finds a more practical, modern solution
by marrying Liz Lemon to a man willing to do most of the domestic work
around the house.
"I hate work and evidently you miss it."
"I know, I'm a terrible mother."
"Oh my god, if you were a dude you would not even be thinking that."
Peggy Olson on Mad Men finds her romantic happiness inside the workplace,
ending up with her co-worker and so does
Bojack Horseman's Princess Carolyn, who marries her former assistant, Judah
"While you're signing things, I have a stack of holiday cards for the staff.
I took the liberty of writing little personal messages
to everyone on your behalf."
"Thank you."
"Mm-hmm."
Some of these working women also navigate motherhood,
but in the most realistic-feeling examples
this is not always something that comes as naturally to them.
"Work makes sense to me, and I'm good at it.
I don't feel that way about my baby."
and their most defining relationships may still be at work.
"I love you too, Jack."
Like so much of pop culture,
How I Met Your Mother pays lip service to the idea that women can and should
be fulfilled without needing a traditional partner and family.
"Besides, there are other ways to have kids.
Adoption, surrogacy."
"No, Kevin.
Its not just that I can't have kids, I don't want kids"
only to undercut that idea with its resolution.
By the end of How I Met Your Mother,
Robin has achieved the level of professional success she always wanted
"I am not everywhere!
Okay, I'm some places."
but winds up traveling to such a degree
that it damages her relationship with Barney,
eventually leading them to divorce.
"Is this just not working anymore?"
This is the same problem Robin's had in all of her relationships,
so this break-up seems to confirm the message that
Robin's career is incompatible with a forever romance.
While the divorce is a disappointing resolution for fans of the couple,
having How I Met Your Mother leave Robin as a content, single woman
would have made a lot of sense.
But that's not what happens.
Robin no longer fits into the group now that she's not dating Ted or Barney.
"The gang is my ex-husband hitting on slutty cops right in front of me.
And its the guy I probably should have ended up with,
with the beautiful mother of his child"
In the shows' final moments, Robin's rescued from her
lonely existence and winds up with Ted,
proving that, no matter how much Robin insists
she wants to be and is comfortable being alone
"Ted, you know how I feel about marriage."
this can't be considered a happy ending.
"The point of this story is that—"
"Is that you totally, totally, totally have the hots for Aunt Robin."
Robin's resolution with Ted feels both inevitable and forced,
which it was
the conclusion scene with Ted's future children
was shot eight years before the show actually ended,
long before the story followed Robin's career taking off
and developed her chemistry with Barney.
The best parts of
How I Met Your Mother give Robin a complexity
outside of her relationships with both Ted and Barney
but as the show goes on,
those parts of her identity become harder and harder to find.
Even though Robin has never wanted children,
and even though she's made her priorities clear,
"This way there's no one to hold me back in life.
No one to keep me from traveling where I want to travel.
No one getting in the way of my career."
she still feels a little too sad and melancholy
when that door is actually closed to her.
"Of course, it's one thing not to want something,
it's another to be told you can't have it."
When Barney is finally so happy to become a dad at the end of the show
"You are the love of my life"
the implicit message is that
Robin wasn't able to give him what he really wanted.
And she's ultimately pushed into Ted's existing family,
even though there's no reason to believe
her work ethic won't present exactly the same problems
it did for her and Barney,
which will only be compounded by adding Ted's kids into that picture.
And so How I Met Your Mother like so many other TV shows
that started out differently than they ended up
winds up arguing that the only way women can truly be fulfilled
is through a romantic relationship
one that often serves her male counterpart's story
more than it makes sense with her own character development.
"And when you love someone you just don't stop.
Ever.
Even when people roll their eyes or call you crazy!
Even then.
Especially then!"
A more fun, consistent, and interesting version of Robin
could have stuck to her guns and found genuine professional happiness
without needing Ted.
Because if you're paying attention, this is who she's really been all along
an independent woman who's doing just fine
without being rescued by a fairytale.
"I guess I just liked the idea of putting
all my Robin Scherbatsky knowledge to good use, you know?"
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