Food in Film (Er, Television) Part VII

How I Met Your Mother, "Ring Up!"

"How I Met Your Mother" is neither the funniest, nor most groundbreaking television on air right now, but if it succeeds at one thing, it's droppin' real life knowledge, albeit with some situational comedy contrivance, when it comes to dating and relationships, whether in the form of rules (i.e. The Platinum Rule - don't date people you see regularly), allegories (i.e. relationships are like highways in that they have specific, pre-determined exit points), or just fairly accurate depictions of different situations. "Ring Up!" provides the latest of these in its depiction of the disaster that ensues when Ted dates a 20 year-old girl.

While very hot, and very quick to fetishize Ted's "old" age, Ted quickly finds he can not connect with Carly on any issue. He discovers that he is unable to keep up with the social media platforms she uses, nor the up-and-coming neighborhoods she frequents. Worst of all, when they go out dancing, her contemporaries look like toddlers in Ted's eyes. Not to mention, her obsession with his age, which is far younger than she appears to think it is, gets a little unsettling - she even asks him "Were you in 'Nam?"

Food is, in fact, one of the primary devices used in Ted's recounting of the debacle/date. One of his primary criticism's of Carly's age-group is that "they subsist on pointlessly weird combinations," as he tells us in the voice-over narration. Cut-to Carly and Ted at some food truck in Brooklyn and she inquires "Do you want to split a Bacon-Kimchee cupcake? I hear they are the best here!" Which signals, not only the draw to pointlessly bizarre foods, but also the idea that there is more than one eatery at which one can acquire such a cupcake. To this, Ted replies, "Yeah, it will go great with my Cucumber-Jalepeno Egg-Cream," as he sullenly sips his trendy smoothie. 

The exaggeration of trendy urban foods is comically absurd, of course, but it does effectively access some of the idiosyncrasies of dating outside of your age-bracket. It forces me to contemplate if the Bubble Tea I so often consume looks like some strange space-era drink to generations older than me, or if, frozen yogurt, even, looks more like "trend" than source of sustenance to older observers. 

I'm also struck by how true to New York (or at least one part of it) is in comparison to the rest of the show. Usually, "How I Met Your Mother" suffers from "Friends"-syndrome in its depiction of large, Manhattan apartments that don't appear to break the characters' banks. Or at least, if it does, they never say it. "How I Met Your Mother's" New York is also pretty safe and free of panhandling, poverty, or gentrification. It's all white. It's inexpensive. It's convenient. It's maneuverable. Most of us know this is not true of the Big Apple in reality. But, "Ring Up!" seems to accurately - with some comedic exaggeration, of course - access some important issues about New York, actually. Ted mentions that he's never heard of any of the neighborhoods in which Carly wants to hang out in, indicating the speed at which trendy neighborhoods seem to crop up in NYC these days, making an important commentary on gentrification running rampant through the city. The trendiness of Carly's food orders only highlight the mode of this gentrification: she personifies the ironic, privileged, hipster that seems to be usurping these neighborhoods from their original owner. I'll chalk this one up to the zeitgeist rather than authorial ambition. Or perhaps someone said "Make this show more like 'Girls!'" in a board meeting. 

Carly's subscription to bizarre good trends is one of the primary ways their age difference and Ted's complete inability to relate to her is articulated, once again proving the power of food not only off-screen, but as a narrative device.