The Value from How I Met Your Mother: Season 2
A Look into the Lessons and Wisdom from Season 2 of HIMYM
*Contains spoilers to season 2 of How I Met Your Mother
“All this stuff I’m telling you is important. It’s all part of the story,” Future Ted explains to his kids about his younger life in 2006 and how it ties into him finding their mother. Season 2 picks up immediately after Marshall and Lily break up and Ted and Robin start dating, a situation we didn’t expect to happen.
Two of the greatest themes of the whole show (and especially evident from season 2) are friendship and love.
Friendship
Many shows now put a greater emphasis on friend circles rather than family relationships; HIMYM certainly falls into this category. Shows like it display how important friendships are, perhaps because they’re just as important as family. While Future Ted is narrating the story halfway in the season (in the episode “How Lily Stole Christmas”), he even explains how he chose to spend that Christmas “celebrating with my other family” when he was with his friends.
Nevertheless, right away in season 2, we see how much Ted helps Marshall get over the breakup, using tough love, food, good pep talks, but especially just being there. “You’re a good friend,” Marshall explains to Ted after he stops Marshall from making some post-relationship mistakes, such as calling Lily. In another friendship, Marshall seems to be getting frustrated with how Barney is treating him. In “The Scorpion and the Toad”, Barney continually takes Marshall out to have fun and meet other girls, but at the end of the night he goes home with the girl Marshall had been talking to. “It’s impossible that you’re doing this to me again,” he says to Barney, making him appear like a bad, selfish friend. Yet, we later figure out in the season that Barney had Marshall’s best intentions in mind. Near the end of the season (episode “Bachelor Party”), Lily discloses to the group that Barney flew out to San Francisco after they broke up and convinced Lily to come home and get back together with Marshall:
“Marshall is one of the best people I know, and it won’t be long until someone else realizes that, and you’ll lose him forever. I can’t stand the thought of that happening, and I cannot keep stealing chicks from him forever.”
This scene displays what the show does so well — intertwining stories episodes or even seasons apart. Barney especially undergoes drastic maturity, and his pivotal role in getting Marshall and Lily back together is a great aspect for it.
Friends are possibly very important to Ted because we also see his family struggles in the season. In “Brunch”, Ted’s parents visit and explain to him how they’ve been divorced for 10 months and even separated for almost two years. It makes sense why Ted puts a lot of emphasis on friends; they’re his new, perhaps better family. Like a family, the friend group has traditions which they cherish, such as watching the Super Bowl together every year as we see in “Monday Night Football”. There’s more of how they all got so close in “Arrivederci, Fiero” with Marshall’s old car, the Fiero, being a catalyst for great stories of them bonding. Ted explains that car was something Marshall cherished dearly: “Sometimes life forces us to be someone we didn’t want to be. When that happens, we often try to hold on to a little piece of who we were,” and Marshall chose to hold on to the car. Ted and Lily both explain how they became best friends with Marshall and Robin, respectively, as a result of the Fiero.
Season 2 only scratches the surface of friendship, but definitely sets a great stage for it throughout the series. I believe the friendship in HIMYM is almost unmatched from other shows, making it so great.
Love
Just like how friendship is in many shows, love is another theme extremely evident from HIMYM, especially in season 2. It might be the most important season of love from the show because we explore two large relationships — Ted/Robin and Marshall/Lily. We start the season with just Ted and Robin dating but end with Marshall and Lily getting married while Ted and Robin break up.
Though they eventually break up, Ted and Robin have a great relationship. They encounter milestones together. Robin’s introduced as a woman who values her career over her romantic life, so it’s incredible to see her fall so hard for Ted. He calls her the “woman of my dreams” and he was equally important to her. “She thought about how much easier it was just to be alone, and then she came to see me,” (In “Ted Mosby: Architect”) Future Ted says to his kids, discussing how he helped her to value relationships more than her career, since that’s what’s truly significant. Ted also showed Robin sketches he made for a building, apparently she was the first person who saw and encouraged him to pitch his design; she helped him follow his dream to build a skyscraper. Later (In “First Time in New York”), Ted is even the first guy Robin says “I love you” to. It’s evident that she was someone different for him and vice versa. Yet, maybe they were too different, causing them to break up. Robin didn’t want to have kids or get married soon while Ted did, and many other reasons. His parents’ divorce (explained in “Brunch”) foreshadowed this: “We just realized we’re very different people.”
On the other hand, Marshall and Lily get back together and eventually get married, showing that love takes work and isn’t always perfect. Once she came home, Marshall told Lily that they can’t get back together, “at least not right now.” In time, of course, they start dating again (“Swarley”):
“So right there, in the exact same place that six months earlier I had walked up and found Marshall alone crying over his breakup with Lily, I found him again. Only this time he wasn’t alone, and he was happy.”
Their love is starting to renew and grow. As we saw at the end of season 1, as one love ends, one starts; Or in this case, restarts.
Love and friendship run throughout the series, but season 2 highlights them in a great way, so I wanted to draw attention to it. After Marshall and Lily get married, we’re left with Ted and Barney exclaiming that they’re “back,” and it’s going to be “legen-wait for it-…”
My Top 3 Season 2 Episodes
- Arrivederci, Fiero (Episode 39)
- Lucky Penny (Episode 37)
- Aldrin Justice (Episode 28)
My Top 3 Season 2 Quotes
- “Never underestimate the power of destiny. Because when you least expect it, the littlest thing can cause a ripple effect that changes your life.” — Ted Mosby (“Lucky Penny”)
- “Because sometimes, even if you know how something’s going to end, that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the ride.” — Ted Mosby (“Monday Night Football”).
- “If you lived your whole life thinking one thing, it would be pretty devastating to find out that wasn’t true.” — Barney Stinson (“Showdown”).
*My favorite episodes are often because of great quotes (because they correlate with great stories/lessons), but this was a rich season.
I’m quickly learning (or relearning) how fun it is to dissect a show like this, so I hope you enjoy reading and seeing how much value is in HIMYM. So, thank you for reading! If you like the show or reading about it, here are two other articles relating to it:
