He relates his story about envisioning Bob Barker as his father when he was growing up and mentions how when an “old friend” (Marshall) lost his father, it inspired him to track down his own. The conversation from there introduces fans to a sweeter, more caring, more respectful version of Barney. He decides to listen to her sordid tale of potential daddy-daughter love and let her off the hook for his car if the story is “juicy enough.” But more importantly, he shows mercy on the clearly troubled young woman. He explains it’s an experimental new electro-shock treatment, and the device is programmed with thousands of problematic statements that, should he utter one, will trigger it.īarney flubs a few times, suffering through enough electricity, as he describes, to “power Staten Island.” It brings fans back to the old Barney who could barely go a moment without saying something inappropriate. When he makes an inappropriate comment about her chest, his STD (shock therapy device) goes off and he shudders in pain. In fact, before Sophie can even speak, he reads from a piece of paper introducing himself as a “recovering serial womanizer,” delivering an apologetic speech he has likely recited more times than he can count in case the woman happens to be a victim exacting revenge. This puts the now single Barney (the timeline in How I Met Your Father would occur long after Barney and Robin had divorced) in a perfect position to try and bed a vulnerable young woman who now owes him for the damage. He buttons up his suit jacket and declares “dude?” when he sees the damage and the scared young woman who is responsible. She was preoccupied on a phone call, frantically revealing to her mother that she thinks she might be dating her father. When he first appears in How I Met Your Father, Barney emerges from his car after Sophie rear-ends a vehicle with the license plate LGNDRY. It was too late to redeem Barney, leaving a scar on an otherwise hilarious comedy. How I Met Your Mother ended in 2014, years before the MeToo hashtag and the exposé of Harvey Weinstein kickstarted a firestorm against the mistreatment of women and a put a spotlight on women’s rights. The character was creepy, deplorable, and disrespectful. He had a Rolodex of elaborate schemes to pick up women, wrote a book called The Bro Code, and never shied away from a challenge to manipulate and use a woman. Some of his worst antics ranged from hiding a scale at his doorway to weigh potential mates before granting them access to his bachelor pad to lying about who he was to bed multiple women in one day. Barney’s misogynistic comments and atrocious behavior would no longer be considered funny today, regardless of how humorous the portrayal was. The show first premiered in 2005, long before the #MeToo movement and a renewed and intensified focus on feminism. He portrayed Barney more like a caricature of a human than an actual person. His behaviors, actions, and words were wildly inappropriate, only squeezing out hearty laughs because of Harris’ spot-on, exaggerated performance. Many of these came at the expense of breakout character Barney. How I Met Your Mother was a lighthearted sitcom that generated plenty of laughs. Fitbit Versa 3Ī look back at Barney Richard Cartwright / CBS
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