Fat Suit Sighting: How I Met Your Mother
Oh Neil Patrick Harris. How I love you. How everyone loves you! However. Not only was last night’s episode of How I Met Your Mother very upsetting (we can talk in the comments, fellow viewers) there was also a whole lot of “Barney eats! Barney gets fat! NPH puts on a fat suit!” humor. (Also it was weird, because in that fat suit NPH looks just like Jiminy Glick.)
The weight gain was presented in the show as not very true-to-life; Ted had a line to the effect that “Barney and Robin only ‘let themselves go’ a little bit, but we saw them like this…” so it was deliberately exaggerated for comic effect. I hate the phrase “let themselves go” a lot, and I didn’t find the scenes of Barney eating or all the jokes about all his food intake all that funny.
Not that the fat suit upset me all that much, especially in relation to the truly upsetting developments, but as I’ve said before, I consider it a cliche way to get cheap laughs. Are fat suits done yet?
Posted by mo pie
Filed under: Celebrities, Fat Suits, Humor, TV
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I was even more disappointed about this than I would usually be, if only for the fact that HIMYM is consistently one of the highest quality comedies on television. They’re always smart and clever about their humor, and it surprises me that they would write a storyline that’s so base. That’s not to say that fat jokes should be off-limits, since they’ve managed to make gay jokes and race jokes that were kind-hearted and inoffensive — I’m just not sure why they had to go this route with a fat joke. I expect better from this show.
The only good – well, okay, not good, but not-as-horrible-as-it-could-have-been – thing about that fat suit was that it was on Barney and not Robin. “Letting yourself go” is generally seen as a female thing, so at least the awfulness was equal opportunity?
And it was nice to see that they still cared for each other at the end regardless of how they looked. A fat person actually got a kiss and it wasn’t on a dare or as a joke!
But yeah, it made me cringe. They could have made the point just as well by having Barney dress badly.
As I Tweeted last night: WORST. HIMYM. EVER. A fat suit? AND THEN all the other stuff? SAD. ANGRY. NOT HOW I LIKE TO FEEL AFTER WATCHING HIMYM.
This episode of HIMYM made me want to pull my hair out. Of course fat people are fat because they “let themselves go”; of course they are fat because they eat only ribs and chicken wings and order five of everything on the menu; of course they are ashamed and horrified to be fat; of course they want to eat pizza instead of have sex. They’re fat!
I’m trying to find some comfort in the fact that it was Barney and not Robin (although Robin despairing that she looked old was cliched and problematic and anti-feminist in an entirely different way).
But I actually felt kind of betrayed and, I’ll admit, way more upset than is appropriate for a stupid sitcom. I guess I just thought better of that show, which is usually silly and clever and fun.
I didn’t find the fat suit thing as offensive as I thought I might, but it was incredibly stupid. Fat jokes and fat suit jokes are the epitome of cheap humor and usually (though with the occasional huge lapse) HIMYM is much funnier than that. It didn’t come off as cruelly as this sort of stuff often does, but it was disappointing nonetheless.
I saw Neil Patrick Harris on the tonight show last week, and he was lamenting the fact that when he flirted in the fat suit, he got at best no response. I found it sad that he thought that was funny, and felt no empathy for people who can’t take off the suit at the end of the day. You can see the clip on Hulu.com, search for Neil Patrick Harris.
I knew there was a reason I stopped DVR’ing this show a few weeks ago. It’s REALLY gone downhill this season, and this proves it. No longer worth watching. Which is sad, because it used to be so awesome.
Ugh. I giggled at “relationship gut” because I took it as gentle teasing at someone as vain as Barney putting on a couple pounds. But then they broke out the fat suit and started in with the fat jokes. My husband and I made it through about 5 minutes of that before changing the channel over to Gossip Girl in disgust.
I was pretty disappointed because I like the show. However, I am glad they didn’t put the fat suit on Robin! They just limited her to unwashed gray hair.
I actually didn’t find this use of a fat suit offensive.
1. As other people said, I was happy it was on him rather than Robin
2. They didn’t make any claims about all fat people eating a lot, they specifically had him binging on comfort food and gaining weight. Most people do gain weight if they eat like that. The majority of fat people don’t eat like that, but I think it’s probably a safe bet to say that the majority of people who binge like that are overweight.
3. The point was that Barney and Robin had changed a lot from their usual selves – and it was particularly notable for Barney because he is such a vain character.
The fat gut didn’t bother me but the fat suit was an issue. I find it unsettling anytime fat as portrayed as something people can gain or loose really quickly.
He goes from being a really skinny guy to being a really fat guy and back to a really skinny guy, with seemingly no effort. I contend that, for most of us, weight is not that fluid.
What bothered me most was when Marshall and Lily were saying that they had put on weight when they settled into a relationship. I can’t remember the exact line, but I remembered the episode before their wedding that I loved so much because Lily was so nervous that she lost weight and her dress didn’t fit.
I know that stressed and nervous is the exact opposite of being comfortable and happy, but I loved that episode because it really seemed to acknowledge that people are different and deal with life situations in different ways… even if both those ways involve food. It was funny and not judgey and wonderful. I hate that now “everyone” puts on weight in a relationship.
Isn’t it statistically true that people in happy, stable relationships tend to gain weight? I believe I read that in Men’s Health or Women’s Health.
I like the show but I hated this episode. I’d like to know how the hell Barney lost all the weight at the end in about five minutes.