The Apartment

There is always a space in sitcoms that your main character's frequent that becomes banal space. In Rules of Engagement there is the diner, in The Big Bang Theory there is the comic book shop, and in Friends there is the coffee shop. Well, in How I Met Your Mother, the obvious banal space is MacClaren's Pub but I am going to look at yet another space that this group frequents: the apartment. 


According to Dickinson, "These spaces provide the visual and the material resources with which individuals can attempt to negotiate the fragmentation and destabilization that characterize their cultural context" (2002, 10). Looking at this location as a rhetorically banal space helps us understand how this space is creating an argument and understand what the argument is. To analyze this we will look at the space through three of the five senses (sight, sound, and touch in this case), take a look at the rules of engagement and the identity of the people in the space.

http://www.home-designing.com/2013/03/floor-plans-of-homes-from-famous-tv-shows

Visually is kind of cluttered and eclectically decorated. This gives off the vibe that the apartment is not a grownup's apartment. These people are just trying to find themselves and can't afford Pottery Barn sets. Most of the big furniture stays in the apartment no matter who lives in it. When Ted lives in the apartment, there is a big red couch, a piano, a pretty decent kitchen table, and a coffee table. When Lily and Marshall live there, all of these pieces remain, and when Ted moves back in the furniture is still there.This shows how much this group shares with each other and how necessary the living space is to these friends.There are lots of warm colors with pops of bright red and orange and along with the brick fireplace it emanates warmth and acceptance of the gang.  The apartment is 2 bedroom, 1 bath which is the perfect size for two roommates but not for grownups with a family. There is always enough room for whoever needs it and the gang never starts feeling cramped at all until "The Last Forever- Part 1" (S9E23) when Lily and Marshall are expecting their third child and finally determine it is time to admit that they have outgrown the apartment. 

Ted and Robin can hear the upstairs neighbors walking around in the apartment ("Last Time in New York" (S9E3)) and also the elderly neighbors having sex ("Bagpipes" (S5E6)). We can assume the apartment must be fairly bustling because it is on the Upper Westside and right above MacClaren's Pub. Hearing the neighbors just shows how connected they all are to the things around them. This is the time in their lives that they are in New York taking on the world and being a part of it all, so they are constantly experiencing it and hearing those sounds from the apartment mean that they are still a part of that time in their lives. 

Touch involves a little more assumption. We hear Ted constantly complaining about Robin and Victoria being neat freak's and his constant need to keep the apartment clean. This is Ted being particular and taking part in periodical cleaning in the apartment. This is a metaphor for how Ted wants his love life to be. Ted wants his love life to be as close to perfect as it could be just like how he keeps the apartment. 

http://how-i-met-your-mother.wikia.com/wiki/The_Apartment

The rules of engagement in the apartment are pretty straightforward: no knocking and be comfortable. When the gang is in the apartment there is no doubt that they are comfortable. They sit on every piece of furniture, they bring their own DVD's and they are always helping themselves to the food in the kitchen. No one knocks and no one expects them to because there are no secrets in the gang. This again speaks to the closeness of the gang. The apartment is the one place they can go to where no one else can go that allows them to be open and honest without the fear of anyone else joining in on the conversation and so they are the most relaxed and at home in this space.

The people in the space are obviously the five main characters of the show. We don't see many other people being brought into the space except for a few significant others here or there like: Scooby, Victoria, Zoey, and Kevin. When people live in the apartment and it is theirs (e.g. Ted's Apartment, Lily and Marshall's Apartment) the people that live in the apartment with them are the most important people to them at that moment. When Ted and Marshall live together, they are the inseparable two. They are best bro's and nothing can tear them apart. When Marshall and Lily move out and Ted has Robin move in with him, they become the best of friends. When Ted starts being confused about his feelings for Robin again and professes his love for her and Robin moves out, he starts becoming lost because he doesn't know what to do with the empty space in his apartment which is just a visual representation for the empty space in his life. When Lily and Marshall move back in with Marvin it is their family together that make up the most important people in their lives. 

The apartment as an identity shows that the gang is at home with each other and at home in the space. The apartment has housed almost all of them for a time or two and it is a really hard decision for them to part with it at any point. To them the apartment is more than just an apartment, it is the house for their friendship. The argument of this space is that this is their home; it is the place they all connect through their memories, their physical location, and the time they spend together. This space is an effective argument for this space and can be actually seen in the finale of the show when they are having a Halloween/going away party and Robin leaves the party early.

[Lily] "We're saying good-bye to the apartment. The whole gang has to be here. 
[Robin] The gang? Do you know who the gang is to me Lily? Here's what the gang is: the gang is a married couple who I never see anymore about to have their third kid; it's my ex-husband, hitting on slutty cops right in front of me; and it's the guy I probably should have ended up with with the beautiful mother of his child.
 [Lily] Oh...oh, oh, so... so what? This is all just over then? Our whole friendship is just over? 
[Robin] We'll always be friends. It's just never going to be how it was. It can't be. And that doesn't have to be a sad thing. Look, there's so much wonderful stuff happening in all of our lives right now. 

We've more than enough to be grateful for. But the five of us hanging out at MacClaren's, being young and stupid...it's just not one of those things. That period is over. Moving out of the apartment forever shows the changing of the group altogether, therefore proving this rhetorical argument effective.

References

 Dickinson, G. (2002). Joe's rhetoric: Finding authenticity at starbucks. Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 32(4), 5-27. doi:10.1080/02773940209391238 

Love is a Game

How I Met Your Mother is, very obviously, a show all about love. It is about Barney finding out what love is, Robin figuring out how to let herself love, Marshall and Lily's love story, and Ted finding "the one."But, though this show's theme is so intrinsic, it is not something that is super serious or overly stated. Throughout the entirety of the nine season series there are many times the characters use "the game" as a metaphor for love. In the metaphoric analysis of the series the tenor is love or dating and the vehicle is "the game."

According to Richards. "In the most important uses of metaphor, as a source of rhetorical invention, a term (or vehicle) from one domain of meaning acts upon a subject (or tenor) from another domain. Their co-presence routinely yields a meaning which is not attainable without the interaction, and in certain cases the tenor becomes so closely identified with its vehicle that it is imagined to be that very thing which it only resembles" (1965, 100-101). This essentially means that a word can stand in the place of another word in order to form a meaning that isn't attainable with just the use of one word.

http://theodysseyonline.com/marist/11-reasons-why-being-single-is-just-great/236232

Every time this metaphor is used it is not super specific. Sometimes it is hidden in the context of the rhetoric. We are going to look at this like we are searching for pieces of a game. One of the first things every game needs is a set of rules, this is easily found in the series. The first set of rules is the Bro Code. The Bro Code is a set of rules for how bros should treat each other and what they should do in certain situations. On top of the Bro Code there are also Barney's Rules. Throughout the series Barney will randomly spout one of his catchphrases "I only have one rule." And despite the fact he says he only has one, he has many of these rules. One of the most infamous of these rules is "New is always better."

Another thing that every game needs is instructions or ways to play the game. This is yet another part of the metaphor that we can thank Barney for. Barney has the playbook, which is literally the ways that he gets women to sleep with him, or different ways to play the game. Ted models some different ways of playing the game that always ultimately fail and usually require Barney to sweep in and save the day with one of his surefire ways of playing (ex. "Haaaaave you met Ted?").

In most games there is also a sign that the game is beginning. In football there is a coin flip, in baseball there is "let's play ball!", and in Monopoly there is the argument of who gets to play the thimble game-piece. In How I Met Your Mother there is "Challenge Accepted." Before Barney starts to try out any of his plays or hit on any girl at all he always exclaims, "challenge accepted!" even if no one else actually challenged him to anything in particular. 

http://www.neontommy.com/news/2013/11/how-i-met-your-mother-recap-platonish

The most blatant use of the metaphor in the show is within quotes from some of the characters. In "Little Boys" (S3E4) Marshall states that "If dating is the game, then marriage is winning the game." The game is also mentioned in "Platonish" (S9E9). Barney attempts to hit on the mother and she not only tells him no, she also psychoanalyzes him to the point that they have a heart to heart conversation outside on a bench and she gives him a speech about the game:

[Mother] "Do you want to keep playing or do you wanna win?" 
[Barney] "I wanna win. What am I doing? In less than 20 minutes, Robin and I could be..."
 [Mother] "Oh, no, no, no, no. It's gonna take a lot more than 20 minutes. This is gonna take everything you have got. It will take all your time, all your attention, all your resources. This is the big one, diaper man! You gotta do it right, can't be messing around and picking up girls in drug stores. You got work to do."

There may seem to be a lot of references to the game when Barney is involved but it is true of many of the other characters as well. Ted often says he is going to lose the game of love. Ted's love life is also epitomized by one game we see him play many times throughout the series, "The Claw" (Insert Toy Story aliens here). In "Purple Giraffe" (S1E2), Ted sees a kid trapped in a claw machine that Robin is reporting on because he was trying to get a purple giraffe and couldn't so he climbed into the machine to get it. Ted decides to go after Robin like that little kid goes after the giraffe. But, much like the little boy, fails to get her fair and square. In "Miracles" (S3E20), Ted proposes to Stella with an orange kangaroo because he tried to get a fake diamond ring out of the claw machine and failed. So though these do not show Ted failing at "the game" in general, it does show Ted failing at a game and it alludes to his failure in the romantic game.

http://how-i-met-your-mother.wikia.com/wiki/Purple_Giraffe

Games are a huge metaphor used throughout the entire series to create a meaning to finding love. Many people refer to love as a journey and a road with many twists and turns but, in How I Met Your Mother, it is very strategically referred to as a game. We get to see the gang have fun playing the game for fun, playing to win, and winning. In "Bad Crazy" (S8E16), Ted tells his future kids that "being single is fun" and that is why he kept playing the game. But, ultimately, Ted wins the game along with all his friends and they all get to start dedicating their time to more interesting games, like "Marshgammon."


References
I.A. Richards (1965) The philosophy of rhetoric. New York: Oxford University Press