How I Met Your Mother: 5 Ways Robin Is An Overrated Character (& 5 Ways She Is Underrated)

Robin is either a good or annoying character on How I Met Your Mother, depending on who you ask. Could she be both?

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Deemed “the new one” of the core group, Robin Scherbatsky quickly became Ted’s primary love interest. Their relationship took up much of the first two seasons before she got with Barney and devoted herself to her budding career. However, all this was wiped aside in the final episode, when we discover that Ted is still harboring deep feelings for Robin and they get back together in late middle age.

Robin is either a good or annoying character, depending on who you ask. But why not both? These are five ways Robin is an overrated character, and five ways she is underrated.

10 Overrated: Cliché Love Drama

It’s a shame that a strong female character like Robin is so often caught in petty love drama throughout much of the show. Most sitcoms devote themselves to the love lives of their main characters, and How I Met Your Mother is no different.

Unfortunately, this results in some banal and tiring storylines, and Robin’s on-again-off-again relationships with Ted and Barney quickly grow stale. They’re not boring, necessarily – just a little been there, done that.

9 Underrated: Her Canadian-ness

One of the most appealing aspects of Robin’s character is her Canadian background. In a show so devoted to its New York setting, it’s refreshing to see a character with such a unique backstory.

We’ll delve into more detail the further we go down the list, but Robin’s Canadian heritage provided a rich abundance of material for the show, and the character, to work with. It was very refreshing, and often very funny.

8 Overrated: Her Over Canadian-ness

Unfortunately, we have to take the good with the bad, and there was some bad contained within Robin’s Canadian background. The show often devolved into trivial and hackneyed stereotypes about Canadian culture, all of which Robin inhabited.

Fighting, hockey, funny accent, Tim Hortons – it’s all there, and it’s all a little derivative. The show was often better than trite Canadian jokes we’ve heard a million times before.

7 Underrated: Emotionally Closed Off

Most of the main characters are highly emotional people, but aside from Barney, Robin is the most emotionally closed member of the group.

She is often insecure about many of her idiosyncrasies and flaws, and she doesn’t often let people in. Even Barney remarked on her impenetrable exterior, and that’s saying something! It’s refreshing to see a female character with these traits, as they are often relegated as “the romantic ones” in fluffy sitcoms.

6 Overrated: Believing In Destiny

Throughout the series, Robin served as Ted’s thematic counterpart. While he was an idealist who believed in concepts of fate and destiny, Robin was a realist who dismissed such concepts. That is, until the final season when she suddenly starts listening to destiny in regards to Barney and Ted.

Maybe she was simply trying to fool herself regarding its existence, but it’s still a weird character departure that didn’t make a whole lot of sense.

5 Underrated: Tomboy

Another great character aspect of Robin’s is her tomboyish personality. Robin is a tomboy through and through, from her tough upbringing in Canada (in which she literally dressed like a boy) to her tough exterior to her love of cigars and guns.

It distinguishes her within the sitcom canon, and it makes her a highly entertaining character to watch. You never know what you’re going to get with her volatile personality, and that’s half the fun!

4 Overrated: Clingy Jealous Girl

Why sitcoms keep going back to the “clingy jealous girl” well over and over again, we have no idea why.

It’s boring, trite, and even a little insulting. And while Robin inhibits many unique character traits, she, unfortunately, inhabits the bad as well. She ordered Ted to get rid of various belongings and actively tried sabotaging Ted’s relationship with Victoria and Barney’s with Nora and Patrice. Maybe it makes for good drama, but we’ve seen that drama a thousand times before.

3 Underrated: Robin Sparkles

Now, what other sitcom contains a character who was once a Canadian pop idol? Robin Sparkles is one of the most popular episodes and aspects of How I Met Your Mother, largely because of how fresh and original it truly is.

We’ve never seen a character trait so outlandishly goofy yet endearingly adorable, and it’s just another part of Robin’s bizarre upbringing that makes her character so endlessly fascinating.

2 Overrated: Robin Sparkles

Again, we have to take the good with the bad when it comes to Robin Sparkles. This was a very funny one-off joke that quickly outgrew its welcome and became an increasingly unfunny running joke throughout the series.

We got another single (the “serious” one), an appearance in a goofy children’s show, and an emo phase in which she went by Robin Daggers. Running jokes produce diminishing returns, and that was certainly the case with Robin Sparkles.

1 Underrated: Her Relationship With Her Father

The show’s writing can be great. Robin isn’t just a tomboy because she’s a tomboy – it’s actually a byproduct of her dangerous and borderline abusive childhood.

Her father clearly wanted a son and went far out of his way to treat Robin like a boy. Her abusive upbringing has clearly left her with some emotional scars, and it led to her emotional insensitivity and tomboyish behaviors. It’s a great instance of a backstory shaping a character.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/himym-how-met-your-mother-ways-robin-overrated-underrated-character/