American sitcoms have given the world a slew of characters whose plights have delivered gut-busting laughter to those who enjoyed the shows. Be it F.R.I.E.N.D.S, The Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother or Brooklyn Nine-Nine, the shows have been able to achieve a certain amount of popularity the world over, but that also comes with some criticisms levied towards the characters once the laughter stops.
When the characters from these sitcoms are looked out of their context, more than a few people have come to the realization of what horrible people this character would actually be in real life. Be it the emotionally immature Ross, whose love-life forms the core conflict of F.R.I.E.N.D.S, or the similarly lacking Ted from How I Met Your Mother, fans have quickly realized that these are not people who would get along with polite company, and that one is actually worse than the other.
How I Met Your Mother is essentially F.R.I.E.N.D.S but from Ross Geller’s exclusive point of view
Reddit users have come out of the woodwork with the notion that Ted Mosby, played by Josh Radnor in How I Met Your Mother, is actually a worse version of the already horrible Ross Geller, one of the protagonists of F.R.I.E.N.D.S, played by David Schwimmer. The posts essentially dictate that while Ross Geller relies on his friends overtly for mental support and his own emotional shortcomings with women, Ted takes these traits to another degree altogether.
While it is all fun and games in the context of the shows, it really does paint the characters in sitcoms like F.R.I.E.N.D.S and How I Met Your Mother in every bad light when audiences realize how unhinged these characters act in relation to each other and people around them.
Be it Ted Mosby, who essentially is a serial monogamist with a perfectionist attitude towards women, or Ross Geller, who has SEVERE anger issues, or even characters like Jake Peralta (who literally can’t take care of his own health despite being a cop), these characters might be great to laugh at but tend to end up being the exact thing that people try to avoid in social circles.
While terrible people to be with, characters in sitcoms might not merit such deep analysis from a real-world lens
There was a mildly popular edit of F.R.I.E.N.D.S that made the rounds a few years ago, one which saw Ross Geller’s infamous sandwich outburst re-edited to feel like a part of a psychological thriller. Keeping the scene intact, a change in the color of the scene and the music turned what is a hilarious scene into something out of a murder mystery.
While entertaining to watch, the clip very well depicted how exaggerated and outlandish the character felt when compared to real people, which is something that needs to be kept in mind when audiences talk about these characters.
In a sitcom, characters are crafted for the purpose of comedy, which means that a lot of their behaviors are geared towards getting a rise out of the audience. It is easy to launch at them because of how removed they are from the audience’s situation, allowing them to do some really harrowing stuff to get a laugh out of the audience. Therefore, trying to look at the characters from a serious real-world perspective is not only futile, but ultimately not merited by the genre they belong to, or the behaviors that they display as a result.
How I Met Your Mother can be streamed on Hulu. F.R.I.E.N.D.S can be streamed on Max.
