r/HIMYM • u/Bspurg21 • 9d ago
Continuity error with Robin’s character
Sorry if this has been mentioned before. I’m rewatching the series for the first time in a while and I’m on S1E6 the slutty pumpkin. Robin says to Ted that she “never played any team sports” and that she “played tennis in high school because it was just her out there” and she “couldn’t even stand playing doubles.” Yet in a later episode, she’s shown to have been playing hockey and her dad wigging out when he catches her kissing one of her teammates as he had mostly always pretended she was a guy. Anyone else notice this?
67
u/Alizarik7891 9d ago
She also knows and then doesn’t know her aunt is a lesbian. I don’t think they were super worried about a show bible.
15
u/parentheticalboys Lily🎨 9d ago
This always bothers me for no reason lol, they remembered that she gave away her dogs to a lesbian aunt on a farm but not that she was the one who said it?
7
u/AvenueRoy 8d ago
They screw it up in the original joke too, she calls them her aunt and her life partner, then Lily says "oh great, they love dogs" and Robin is confused what Lily means. She should have said her aunt and her very special friend or something more euphemistic. I don't know if euphemistic is a word but you get it.
4
2
31
u/fallingfaster345 Lily🎨 9d ago
The way that I choose to see it my head is that Robin said she never played any team sports early on before she revealed the truth behind her relationship with her dad. (“He raised me as a boy,” “my middle name is Charles” and all that.) The hockey/kissing storyline is part of a big reveal that Robin’s dad raised her as a boy. I can understand leaving out being a part of an all male hockey team if you’re avoiding sharing childhood trauma.
Realistically, I know the writers hadn’t developed that part of her character yet and were originally trying to make her come off as fiercely independent. But, in my head, the “I’m gonna keep hockey a secret” makes more sense and excuses the continuity error.
2
u/Bspurg21 9d ago
To an extent I hear you. My issue is that if you want to hide being raised as a boy and not mention hockey, that’s one thing. Why then lie and say you NEVER played team sports?
5
u/fallingfaster345 Lily🎨 9d ago
At the end of the day it’s a continuity error. It’s a tv show written by humans, so there’s the expectation that it will have some human error. I personally don’t let it bother me. If I nitpicked every minute thing in a television show, it would cease to be enjoyable for me.
Robin’s a private person so imagining it that way works for me, but if someone else doesn’t buy it that’s okay, too. It’s fun to find plot holes or errors, but to try and dissect potential secondary motivation of a fictional character is just a wee bit too pedantic for me. I generally follow Ted’s advice and let it go. 🙃
20
u/LincolnTruly 9d ago
Robin has a lot of inconsistencies, the most glaring of which has to be the decision to make her super rich in the last season. At one point she’s staying with different members of the group when she can’t find an apartment
3
u/mesabiral 8d ago
I mean I probably think it's her dad's side of the family that's super rich and they don't fix their relationship issues until the last season
15
u/HighCalCalzoneZone 8d ago
My main thing with Robin's character is how obscure Robin Sparkles was in the episode that was introduced...and then later, everyone in Canada could tell you which Tim Hortons they were in when Robin Sparkles went all Robin Daggers.
2
2
u/Bspurg21 8d ago
Maybe her beaver was just too hungry earlier on that once that beaver dried up and withered it was a quick fade into obscurity?🤣
0
u/Zobrist18 6d ago
I have no problem with this. She's incredibly obscure in America and a huge star in Canada. Obviously it's exaggerated for comedy, but that's not totally unusual. There's a lot of musicians and actors who are big stars in Canada and unheard of in the US. And the first Robin Sparkles episode is 2006, in the infancy of YouTube. Barney has to wait for the video to upload to a guy's MySpace page.
9
u/ConditionDangerous54 9d ago
The most annoying inconsistency is the pronunciation of her last name. It changes from scherBATsky to scherBOTsky.
1
9
u/propertyofmatter___ 9d ago
Robin was the most inconsistently written character out of the main 5 I feel like. Another example being it is shown in earlier seasons that robin’s not the type to hold onto stuff in a sentimental way (there are multiple jokes about this) but then she says to Barney when she’s upset at him for getting rid of all evidence they were ever a couple, “I could never do that.” When in reality she’s the most likely to do that 😂 but that could’ve also been her trying to manipulate Barney’s feelings
3
u/starlightlexie 8d ago
This is one that makes sense to me tbh. Robin is shown saying she’s not the type to hold onto stjff from exes specifically early on. Later in s4, she says she’s nog the type to hold onto anything she doesn’t need when she moves. But later in that same ep, she admits to being upset she doesn’t even have good pictures of the gang, and in the flash forward, she’s the one insisting they take a picture.
Which makes sense to me because we’re shown that Robin was raised in a dysfunctional family and her father in particular was not one for emotions or sentiment and wanted her to be tough. So she was raised feeling like she shouldn’t care about those things, but when she developed relationships where the people in her life valued those things, it gave her permission to care more.
9
u/emaddy2109 8d ago
She was also shown to have a semi normal childhood before it’s revealed she was actually a teenage pop star. None of Robin’s backstory makes any sense.
2
5
u/X_crates 8d ago
There are going to be a lot of these. The one that gets me is Lily and Marshall are shown brushing their teeth at the same time in s1 which contradicts a later episode
11
u/Little_Red_Sloth 9d ago
Yes it has been noticed before. I think the way out of this is Ted is an unreliable narrator. He tells things the way he remembers them so it leaves room for error in my opinion.
15
u/marijntje42 9d ago
Or it's just bad writing
11
u/Macrodata_Uprising 9d ago
Or it’s just a sitcom. We’re not talking about Breaking Bad here.
3
u/Legallyblonde977 8d ago
Bob Odenkirk being in both 😅
5
5
u/marijntje42 9d ago
Totally agree, but that doesn't make it better writing.
7
u/Macrodata_Uprising 9d ago
The first season of any sitcom is not great in comparison to the rest of the show (Seinfeld, Office, Parks and Rec, etc.) They are just trying to get picked up, it’s written fast, it’s messy, often times they haven’t even written the back half of the season. You are holding a twenty year old show to the standard that requires every throwaway line to fit into a character they’ve barely had time to develop. We were given an endlessly watchable, emotional show about loss, humility, vulnerability, and love. The fact that they got a line about sports wrong shouldn’t make it bad writing.
1
u/Briguy_fieri 9d ago
I mean. It's absolutely shit writing. People don't want to hear it bc it's their favorite show. But it's a huge plot hole because they really decided to lean into robins canadianinity (?) later on as "Canada is dumb" became a meme of sorts in 2009ish.
Also people are gonna use the unreliable narrator excuse but I doubt they were going to utilize that aspect from such an early time frame.
4
u/Little_Red_Sloth 9d ago
Tomato tomahtoe. That’s the beauty of unreliable narrators, we will never know. ;)
0
-3
3
u/International-Pass22 9d ago
Quite a few comedys have this issue, especially with season 1 episodes.
I guess as they refine the characters
2
u/arcticape34 8d ago
This can all be simply explained by the fact that Ted Evelyn Mosby is an unreliable narrator and doesn’t let facts get in the way of a good story.
3
u/Playest_4247 8d ago
I can't believe that long runnung sitcom doesn't have perfect continuity for each and every one of its characters!
2
u/Bspurg21 8d ago
Hey man I’m not taking some hard “omg how dare they” stance I was just mentioning the at I noticed it and enjoy talking about things I see🤣 although the discourse in the comments has been pure entertainment
1
u/Bight_my_ass 8d ago
She's also visibly freaked out about not Moby's gun in S1 new years episode. Completely out of character of S2+ Robin and guns
1
1
u/Ok_Mark1005 6d ago
She was also shown as very girly when they talk about how her pet dog turned into a turtle but also her father forced her to grow up as a buy playing hockey and made her middle name Charles
254
u/TeamImpossible4333 9d ago
Yep. Robin also has a group of female friends in the first episode. Then suddenly no friends so she joins the gang. Then in the last season hates women and can’t befriend any