How I Met Your Mother - Lily, The Perfect Family Woman

in marriage being right is less important than being supportive remember happy wife equals happy life is lily aldrin the perfect wife and mother how i met your mother has two men women in its cast and they have an opposite relationship to domesticity where robin wants a career and hates attachment lily is the ideal domestic woman who loves her husband kids and cooking delicious meals i make this great frisee and endive salad with a coriander lime vinaigrette of all the characters on how i met your mother lily appears to be the least individually driven she doesn't have a quest for romance like ted or a series of conquests like barney or a long-term professional focus like marshall and robin in part that's because lily is in many ways supposed to be an ideal relationship woman do you want to go have completely protected sex right now i do do you want to finish your bacon first you are the perfect woman based on how i met your mother co-creator craig thomas's wife rebecca lily is in a mostly happy stable long-term relationship with marshall who she started dating in college and has been with for pretty much her entire adult life and the couple's primary role in the series is to embody to ted who's so desperate to find love what true long-term romance looks like in reality it's lunchtime and i love you i reciprocate in principle but is lily actually happy outside of her marriage are marvin and i and any other future children we may have just some consolation prize lily prioritizing her domestic life doesn't mean she doesn't have personal or professional dreams yet these are sidelined in the series in what's a realistic reflection of the sacrifices many women who prioritize starting a family have had to make ultimately though lily is most focused on a different kind of control and power lily is a diabolical puppet master subtly manipulating every situation to get exactly what she wants you got a good one hang on to her here's our take on what how i met your mother says about domestically oriented women through lily this is the tape on your favorite movie shows and pop culture before we go on don't forget to subscribe and let us know what you're watching your support means so much to us lily is set up in contrast to robin so the show basically gives us two diverging paths for women of its time you could be career oriented and commitment averse i don't know where i'm gonna be in five years and i don't wanna know or so committed to your relationship that your career might have to be an afterthought robin is a cool girl or guy's personality in a hot female body in the sense that she loves smoking cigars and shooting while many of lily's most salient character traits are caricatures of a different type of cool girl the domestic goddess who excels at and loves making her husband happy she does the bulk of the domestic work around the household including seeming to love the kind of stereotypical cooking that a wife is supposed to do lily's a damn good cook beef pot pie mac and cheese homemade buttermilk biscuits well no wonder marshall dies at 68. she's a fiercely committed mother to the point where she can't let even a qualified nanny take care of her child i can't give marvin to a stranger and friendship is also just as important as family to lily even when she and marshall are new parents she realizes that maintaining a healthy family also entails being involved in her friends lives we asked mickey to watch marvin so we could come down and talk we all want to know everything that's going on with you guys really you're our best friends though ted and marshall have a more traditional friendship lily takes great pains to maintain her separate relationship with ted even when they get into a fight over the way her brief breakup with marshall affected ted and lily is insistent on how important her friendship with robin is even fiercely protective of her girlfriend if i see your face around robin again you will be crying about a lot more than your precious new york rogers ring i will cut you there's sometimes a tension that results from their different choices i want to talk about babies it's like it's all you ever talk about lily and i'm sick of it but in other moments they complement each other well and they overcome their differences because they're still much more similar in the way they like to hang out joke and have fun it's a reminder that even women who haven't made the same life choices can befriend soul mates and so much of friendship is about committing to it and resolving to keep it alive while robin was largely raised as a boy lily's nurturing domestic qualities often go hand in hand with traditional femininity and lily relishes talking about things like babies and her vice of excessive retail therapy is a stereotypically feminine one i buy designer clothes and accessories that i can't afford still lily is in many respects more traditionally masculine than marshall she loves lots of stereotypically gross male activities giving marshall permission to indulge in things he might otherwise have to hide or control around another woman i have a rule never marry anyone you've had a farting contest with oh great so now you're saying lily and i shouldn't even get married she's extremely protective of her husband to the point of being literally willing to fight for him when another woman tries to make a pass at him kiss my husband my husband nobody kisses my future baby daddy but me marshall by contrast is gentle to a fault something this series tells us in the very first episode hit me please this guy can barely even spank me in bed for fun he's all like oh honey did that hurt lily is very much the dominant one in their relationship so perhaps all of these qualities mixed together in the show's domestic woman character might make us rethink what traditionally feminine really is and though lily and marshall are strictly monogamous and generally very happy in their relationship we often get the sense that lily has a freer and more open view of love and sexuality than we might first expect i want to travel and live overseas as an artist maybe have a lesbian relationship marshall and lilly's sex life is a more public and explicit part of the show than that of most characters because they're acting within the traditional bounds of a long-term heterosexual relationship with the intention of starting a nuclear family but even within that relationship lily is more adventurous lily and marshall have sex in their kitchen in the pilot they often talk about how much sex they have crazy monkey sex crazy monkey sex and lily in particular prioritizes sex even when they're on the verge of having a serious fight i know how important italy was to you shut up and do me while she would never act on it outside of her marriage lily is sometimes implied to be bisexual she's a goddess her skin glows her legs go for miles and that ass i would wear that thing for a hat the possibility that lily is interested in this kind of non-traditional behavior but wouldn't actually do it due to her commitment to marshall defines her ideal qualities in the show's context this episode is sponsored by better health online therapy in these chaotic times we're living in sometimes you just need someone to talk or vent to that's where better help comes in betterhelp offers video phone and even live chat sessions with your therapist so you don't have to see anyone on camera if you don't want to it's much more affordable than in-person therapy and you can be matched with a therapist in under 48 hours what i love about betterhelp is that it's a standing date to talk to my therapist about whatever's on my mind that week whether it's stress anxiety relationship issues or self-esteem no matter what happens i can count on unpacking it with my therapist and leaving our session feeling better equipped to handle what i'm going through betterhelp wants you to have the best experience possible so they make sure to match you with a qualified licensed therapist who meets your needs and if you don't think your therapist is a perfect match you can easily try someone else at any time it's a great option if you're looking for affordable help give it a try and see why over 2 million people have used better help online therapy the take listeners get 10 off their first month at betterhelp.com my take that's b e t t e r h p my take [Music] but being so deeply embedded in the home costs lily a huge underlying theme in how i met your mother is compromise the characters repeatedly come to the conclusion that being an adult means giving up on their youthful ideals so what about becoming an environmental lawyer what about saving the world that was a great dream but we have a mortgage and we're trying to have kids we're grown-ups now lily in a certain way lily is the most resistant to this moral compromise or the most in denial about it this is why she shops like someone with a huge income but can't bring herself to tell marshall about her secret debt i have 15 credit cards and they're all maxed out it's also why after marshall starts working for goliath national bank she still deludes herself that it's just a temporary choice so you'll probably quit gmb in a couple of years right affirmatively and become an environmental lawyer yep doodles she's rattled when marshall tells her he's making the conscious choice to give up his idealistic goals in order to support the life they want for their family though she comes to accept it i know that you would have been okay if we were poor and i was trying to save the world will you still be okay if i make a lot of money and i spend all of it spoiling you and our kids but arguably like many women who become mothers lily is the one who has to compromise most on the individual level she makes the least money of anyone in the group and gives up the most professionally this is arguably the show being fairly realistic about the trade-offs that faced women in the time and still do now on the other end of the spectrum robin after making some professional compromises for her personal life in the series and not necessarily finding that satisfying comes to the final conclusion that if she wants to truly obtain her dream of being an internationally renowned journalist she has to be willing to forego a traditional marriage and family i know i'm always traveling we both hate it when i'm gone we both hate it when i drag you with me neither of us is happy is this just not working anymore most of the how i met your mother gang have ambitious professional dreams lily too in theory says she wants to be an artist but doesn't really follow through in taking concrete steps toward it i swore that teaching would be a way to support my painting career but i never paint anymore and the gang kind of views this as a pipe dream or a hobby that kind of money only goes for real paintings we need money right now and i'm not sure that selling your paintings is how we're gonna get it and lily's clearest goals aren't career-oriented but domestic to have a family with marshall and enjoy the time she spends with her community even her professional life as a kindergarten teacher is shaped by lily's nurturing instinct it's part of why she's a good teacher and why she enjoys teaching but over the course of the series while how i met your mother explores the dreams and struggles of ted robin and marshall lily's hopes remain on the back burner there's a lot of things i've always wanted and i haven't done any of them and there are signs that pop up of a frustration plaguing her where the other characters especially barney have a seemingly endless supply of money and the ability to do whatever they want lily's less lucrative work goes hand in hand with her history of money problems and extravagant spending habit and the compulsive shopping points to an unaddressed lack of fulfillment she's not facing when the couple turned to selling lily's clothes to combat their financial issues with their money whole apartment she takes it as a personal attack even though her spending habit is the cause of their credit problems guy forces his wife to dress in a garbage bag for the next three years dot-com and once they discover that the floor of marshall and lily's new apartment is crooked she ties the question of whether they can fix the floor to the fate of her designer clothes and therefore directly to her professional and creative dreams this is great my dream of becoming an artist is dead and now i'm watching my wardrobe disappear piece by piece we're told that marshall is the reacher and lily is the settler in this union the settler lily is the best thing that the reacher marshall is ever going to get and when they briefly break up in the second season it's because lily is wondering if she needs time to pursue independent goals and find herself on her own without marshall during this period she tries to seek her own passion a dream comparable to robin marshall and ted's professional goals all i've ever done is teach kindergarten i want to get out there and change the world i want to find my passion but lily's attempt to become an artist goes nowhere she ends up having a stint as a waitress then works at ted's architecture firm as an office assistant where she uses her previous skill set to impose on ted's boss when i was teaching kindergarten whenever a kid was mean i would take away one of his toys the kid would be upset at first but then he'd learn to stop being me lily stole my boss's baseball sign three times by pete rose and she decides that kindergarten teaching and in particular enforcing appropriate rules of behavior is her passion i think i figured out what i want to be when i grow up casey that's not how we treat people still marshall and lily's time apart hangs over both of them it's the only time in lilly's life when she's made decisions related to her own needs and desires rather than those of her family and while she comes back to new york saying she couldn't be without marshall it's also largely because her professional ambitions were stymied leaving an open question about what her life might have looked like if this weren't the case what if you had found success in san francisco how do i know that you even would have come back to me even if she's not as financially successful as the others arguably being a kindergarten teacher gives a lot more back to the world than the others professions yet while it seems like lily has chosen to be a teacher and rarely brings it up afterward this series drops hints over time that lily is unhappy at her job i didn't work this hard to be stuck in some crappy dead-end teaching job no offense lily i got peed on three times today no arguments here or at least that its daily difficulties wear her down in my kindergarten class i have had plenty of troublesome students like johnny marley me and that little stuffed horsey raised all kinds of hell when she and marshall are trying for kids she has to rule out many names due to what seems like a lot of students who have scarred her johnny hey where's the goldfish not johnny or gil jeremy jeremy no and once marvin is born lily has a more specific focus for her teaching skills for a while parenting then becomes her primary form of professional fulfillment that finally changes when lily is faced with an offer to do art consulting for the captain many years later she admits that she's been putting her family and friends above her professional dreams for years and simply never got around to pursuing what she wanted for herself she was right i am just a kindergarten teacher and yes i have a degree in art history and i was meant to do something with it but i didn't eventually she and marshall have a serious fight when he gets offered a judgeship in new york and accepts putting his own career above lily's first chance of having a full-time job in the art world lily's career has always seemed secondary to the gang and at first not even marshall seems to think it's worth it for her to pursue her dreams but i could be a judge we can't give that up for what is clearly just a hobby though lily is willing to put her family first and stay in new york we're staying in new york i know yes it just makes sense marshall decides to delay his own dreams and spends a year in italy with lily their children and their parents keeping the family together all this seems to express that and how i met your mother's view the fact is women can't have it all at least not all at once but there can be a give and take where couples make sacrifices at different points to make sure both individuals are fulfilled in the end after she's through the brunt of her pregnancies lily does get a career revival when she's ready for it just as after she's mated as a journalist robin does get a version of family meanwhile even if lily doesn't achieve many of her personal dreams until much later in the series all along she does exert her own form of power over the rest of the gang really you're a psychopath a little bit [Music] we may think of the domestic woman as passive and compliant but lily's domestic perfection involves her being assertive if not aggressive the reason she's able to create the kind of family and close-knit community she and marshall want is because she's willing to control everyone around her this is exemplified by her long-standing habit of meddling behind the scenes to end ted's relationships i broke you and karen up including pushing ted and robin to talk about their long-term goals so they'll realize they don't want the same things and separate as rude and even shocking as this behavior might be lily doesn't really regret it you have the luxury of not knowing what i know that those breakups while tragic probably saved you from a crappy and very expensive first marriage confronted with her behavior lily cites the front porch test an imagined version of her future with aged versions of marshall and ted when i picture the future i picture us all together so whenever you've been dating somebody for a while i do the front porch test how is this person gonna fit in with our group over the years lily's actions are often cruel but she takes them in order to secure the family and future she wants for herself when barney and robin start hooking up lily locks them in a room together ostensibly to get them to talk about their feelings but also because lily is invested in the idea of being couple friends with them lily let us out of here i'd be glad to just as soon as you and barney have the talk though barney is the how i met your mother character most associated with the idea of rules lily often institutes her own rules ones that she takes more seriously and goes out of her way to enforce on her friends in order to protect her ideal life when robin joins the gang lily tries to set boundaries around how she interacts with ted and barney i really want this girl to stay a part of our lives so the only way you're allowed to hook up with her is if you marry her she also creates rules for how ted should interact with his married friend zoe in the interest of avoiding potential drama resulting from ted sleeping with a married woman rule number one don't go anywhere that has candles and of course though it's less crucial to their longer-term emotional lives lily has long-standing responsibilities as the person who administers the rules of marshall and barney's slap bet are you really gonna do that that's so immature you can be slapped at commissioner oh i love it what are my powers lily is someone who craves control and even the intense secrecy she manages to maintain around her shopping addiction points to a hidden neuroticism that she masks with her usually laid back vibe so why does lily act this way lily's perfection her commitment to her marriage her children and her friends makes sense given what we learn about her own family background lily's interest in being more of a traditional woman is a reaction to her mother whose politics went against lily's interest in cooking and domesticity all i wanted was an easy bake oven all i got was a stupid lego set because my feminist mom didn't want me conforming to traditional gender roles and because her father mickey was largely absent lily resolves to be the most present parent possible those abandonment issues show up consistently in her approach to parenting which becomes absolutely central to lily's identity later in the series to the point where it occasionally makes it harder for her and marshall to be present in other areas is it harder than we thought to be away from marvin yes but are we gonna have fun or are we gonna wallow in the corner like idiots [Music] in the same way that marshall justifies his repeated professional compromises in order to provide for the people closest to him lily's intense even manipulative behavior stems from her sincere belief that she needs to act this way to create an ideal life for her marshall their children and her extended chosen family for all that lily tries to be cool about lots of the chaos in her life she ultimately wants to live out her childhood dreams and have a happy whole family by whatever means necessary of course i want a perfect wedding i'm supposed to feel like a princess today but she's open-minded enough to see that sometimes achieving this dream entails letting go of a little control too lily even allows mickey back in her life despite how much he's let her down largely because he proves willing to show up for her own child and be more involved in marvin's life than he was in lilly's i promise you i'm here now for marvin if you want you're hired although how i met your mother is theoretically about a group of individual people trying to make a life together in the big city lily remains committed to the ideal of the traditional family and her friends eventually become part of that structure whether they want to or not through her skill at cooking and creating a particularly domestic romantic atmosphere lily helps set up ted and robin's reunion at the end of the series robin scherbatsky will you be my backup wife and while barney remains a serial manipulator of women after his divorce from robin he eventually commits to being a parent and becomes uncle barney for ted marshall and lily's children how i met your mother is the story of ted meeting his future wife and the story of how he decided to pursue robin after his wife died but it's also the story of how lily aldrin built the family she wanted to see around herself think about how much we all mean to each other if you're new here be sure to subscribe and hit the bell to be notified about all of our new videos [Music] you

Channel: The Take

Views: 203,243

Keywords: how i met your mother, lily aldrin, alyson hannigan, neil patrick harris, barney stinson, cristin milloti, tracy mcconnell, cobie smulders, robin scherbatsky, jason segel, marshall eriksen, josh radnor, ted mosby, domestic goddess, family woman, the take, trope

Id: ia7lcbGCsdk

Length: 21min 36sec (1296 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 12 2022