In the episode of “How I Met Your Mother” named, False Positive, Lily and Marshall take a
pregnancy test that turns out positive. They tell their three best friends
(Barney, Robin and Ted) the good news which leads to each character to make
rash decisions about their own lives. When each the Lily and Marshall find out
that the test was a false positive test they text their friends. The episode
goes through each character’s life decisions between the original good news and
the announcement of the false positive.
One of
the characters the show looks into is Robin. Robin has recently quit her dead
end news anchor job and is in the process of finding a new job. In an earlier
part of the show, Robin has announced her dream of being an anchor on a large
news network to Ted. Recently, Robin has been accepted at a lower end job that
would not require much effort on her part. In hearing the original news of Lily
being pregnant, Robin decides to apply for a job at the large news network as a
lower end researcher and to tell the lower end job that she isn’t interested,
but in the middle of telling the lower end job that she has lost interest,
Robin gets the news that Lily is not actually pregnant and accepts the lower
end job. Later, when Robin announced her
decision to take an easier job, Ted reminds her of her dream and forces her to
take the researcher job at the news network.
In this
episode, the human purpose is to follow your dreams and not to give up when
things look too difficult. I would also argue that this episode shows the human
purpose a support mechanism for those around you as shown through Ted pushing
Robin to follow her dream of being an anchor at a big name news network. In pushing
Robin, Ted also is seeing Robin in a different way than Robin is seeing
herself. Robin “accepts the reality of the world in which (she) was presented (“The
Truman Show”).” To Robin, she saw the job at the news network as difficult and
thought she was fit for easier work that took very little skill. To Ted, Robin
had more of a gift than she thought she had. Through Ted’s action of supporting
those around him to be the best that they can be, he starts to show what the
Kingdom of God is supposed to be.
Discussion Questions:
1. What does dreaming do for us?
2. What is our responsibility in a community when people are not living up to their potential?
Good comments, Alex. We'll be talking more in class about how both the empire and the Kingdom appeal to our imaginations, either imprisoning them for the demands of the empire or opening them up to the possibilities of shalom. I think that idea would have some interesting application to an episode like this. It would also be interesting to look at what kinds of products are advertised during or around this show, depending on what medium you used to watch it. What do the ads assume about the audience of this show?
ReplyDelete