Robin Scherbatsky
| Robin Scherbatsky | |
|---|---|
| First appearance | "Pilot" |
| Created by | Carter Bays Craig Thomas |
| Portrayed by | Cobie Smulders |
| Information | |
| Aliases | Robin Sparkles |
| Gender | Female |
| Occupation | Former Canadian teen pop star News reporter Morning talk show host for Channel 12 Currently working as a Researcher for World Wide News |
| Family | Robin Charles Scherbatsky, Sr. (father) Katie Scherbatsky (sister) |
| Significant other(s) | Ted Mosby Barney Stinson Don Frank Kevin |
Robin Charles Scherbatsky, Jr. (born July 23, 1980) is a fictional character created by Carter Bays and Craig Thomas for the CBS television series How I Met Your Mother, portrayed by Canadian actress Cobie Smulders.
Contents |
[edit] Early life
Born July 23, 1980 to Robin Charles Scherbatsky, Sr. (Eric Braeden, Ray Wise), who was intent on having a son, Robin was raised as if she were a boy. This ended when she was fourteen and Robin, Sr. caught her kissing a boy from her hockey team and realized he had a daughter after all.
Robin then moved in with her mother; during that time she became a Canadian teen popstar and recorded a minor Canadian bubblegum pop hit called "Let's Go To The Mall" under the name "Robin Sparkles".[1] After an accompanying music video[2] and the ensuing year-long mall tour, she developed a serious aversion to shopping malls. Robin followed "Let's Go To the Mall" with the "artistic follow-up" "Sandcastles in the Sand". In this video, Robin as Robin Sparkles appears with Canadian actor Alan Thicke, her boyfriend (played by James Van Der Beek), as well as a special guest appearance by Tiffany. There was also a failed attempt at a variety show co-starring with Thicke. Sparkles also appeared on the Canadian educational children's show Space Teens with Thicke where two teen girls traveling through space in a curling stone–shaped spaceship "solve mysteries using math" featuring the song “Two Beavers Are Better Than One” further parodying Canadians (It was also implied that the aforementioned show had some 'sexual' hints, in particular a multiplication segment that challenged the girls to multiply 23 X 3 by using a "Joystick," but Robin says it was just a children's program).[3]
As an adult, Robin is embarrassed by her teenage stardom,[4] and though she admits resenting her father's methods of raising her,[5] Robin still enjoys cigars, frisbee, hockey, scotch, guns, and saying 'eh'.
[edit] Character history
Robin is a news anchor for a New York cable news channel, Metro News 1, and became a host of her own morning talk show that airs at 4:00 in the morning. She lived in the Park Slope area of Brooklyn[6][7] until her temporary unemployment (before the morning talk show) forced her to move in with her ex-boyfriend, and the show's main character, Ted, only briefly residing with Don, her colleague and then-boyfriend (she returned to Ted's apartment after the breakup, as Don moved to Chicago).[8] Like Smulders, she is originally from Vancouver, and has a younger teenage sister named Katie, who appears in "First Time in New York". Although she was a reporter for "fluff news pieces" at the end of news segments at the time of first meeting Ted, over the series she has worked her way up to be lead news anchor at Metro News 1, before taking a prominent anchoring position in Japan, only to return to New York and, with help from Barney Stinson, host her own talk show.
Robin has been portrayed as an independent, confident woman throughout the series. She has stated numerous times that she doesn't want to get married and have kids, in episodes like Purple Giraffe, Something Blue, Little Boys and Symphony of Illumination. She was reluctant at first to date Ted as he wanted to marry her and settle down, but got together with him anyway in the Season One finale.
She has performed several embarrassing dares on television in exchange for money from Barney, including saying the word "nipple", spanking herself, and honking her own breasts. In "Mary the Paralegal", Robin won an award for her report on Pickles the singing dog, and attended the Local Area Media Awards show (LAMA's) with the group. She brought Sandy Rivers, a fellow reporter, as a date in order to make Ted jealous.
It was originally thought that Robin was the only main character on the show who smokes cigarettes sober (as Marshall has admitted to smoking while drinking and Lily smoked on her wedding day), but in the episode "Last Cigarette Ever" it is revealed that everyone in the gang was addicted to smoking at some point in time and would eventually quit. Ted asks her about her smoking in "Moving Day", and Robin tells him no, but is then shown smoking in the hot tub in her apartment later in the episode. She has an in-depth knowledge of cigars and was shown enjoying one with Barney in "Zip, Zip, Zip" at his cigar bar, with a glass of Johnnie Walker Blue Label whisky, in Marshall's car in a flashback with Lily in the episode "Arrivederci, Fiero", in a flashback very late at night before Marshall was scheduled to take the bar exam in episode "Dowisetrepla", and with Barney in Ted's new car in "The Chain of Screaming".
Robin has often stated her attraction to men with battle-scars or wounds, especially injuries such as bruises and missing teeth that have come from fights or sports. In "The Fight" she shows a vast change in interest in Barney once she believes he has gotten into a fight.
Robin is also an avid gun enthusiast, shown in multiple episodes brandishing a Desert Eagle (despite the fact that civilian handgun permits are severely restricted in New York City), as well as having a subscription to Guns & Ammo magazine and having taken Marshall to the shooting range in order to get over Lily.
She has been known to use the word "Literally" far too often, as pointed out by Ted in "Spoiler Alert". She also has a tendency to use the phrase "but um" when interviewing a guest on her talk show which was turned into a drinking game by Ted's students in "Jenkins". According to Ted, she cannot tell a lie without giggling, but she has been shown numerous times throughout the series lying smoothly. She does, however, usually talk in a higher than normal voice (what Lily calls her "truth voice") when saying something that is actually true, but she wants her friends to think she is kidding them aboot.
It is also revealed in "The Goat" that by Ted's 31st birthday, Robin will be living in Ted's apartment. This happens in "Not a Father's Day" when Robin moves into Ted's apartment after coming back from Japan, and then again in "Doppelgangers", when Robin, then living with her then-current boyfriend Don, left him. Future Ted reveals that Robin traveled the world and lived in many different countries.
Robin was in a relationship with her co-host Don Frank in Season 5 after getting over her break-up with Barney. She moved in with him in the episode "Robots Versus Wrestlers", but broke up with him in the season finale as he moved away to take a job offer in Chicago, which was initially turned down by Robin to stay with Don.
Despite having been in relationships with both Ted Mosby and Barney Stinson, and having rekindled her friendship with Ted, it's strongly implied she never let Barney go. Despite spending part the most part of "Challenge Accepted" plotting with Barney a way to prevent Ted from pursuing a meaningless relationship with Zoey, and rekindling her relationship with him in the process, she also pressures Barney into approaching his current love interest, Nora. However, when Barney asks Nora for a cup of coffee, she realizes she is jealous.
In the season 7 premiere episode "The Best Man", Lily confronts her about her feelings for Barney, and advises her to tell him about her feelings. She is about to when Barney first pulls her for a dance, and later she is interrupted when Barney gets a call from Nora. Barney asks for help on how to speak to Nora on the phone, so Robin tells him what he should say, but what are really her feelings. In "The Stinson Missile Crisis", she assaults a woman setting out to destroy Barney's relationship with Nora. She is sent to court-mandated therapy, where Kevin (Kal Penn) is the therapist. They start dating shortly after. Their relationship is tested when Robin cheats on him with Barney, and she decides to break up with him. She changes her mind when Kevin tells her how much he cares for her, and they stay together.
The episode "Symphony of Illumination" depicts Robin as having a son and a daughter (much like Future Ted), telling them the story of how she told "their father" (Barney) that she was pregnant. Later in the episode, Robin finds that not only is she not pregnant, she is unable to have children. The children she was narrating to are revealed to have been imaginary and she was actually talking to herself. Despite the fact that she never planned on having children, she is devastated that she is unable to, and sobs heavily as Ted comforts her. She uses the excuse that the Canadian Olympic Committee deemed her to tall to be a "pole vaulter," which Ted sees through (although at this point he thinks her unhappiness is due to not being home for Christmas.) Future Ted comments that she "never became a pole vaulter," but she became a world famous journalist, and even, for a time, a bull-fighter.
An inconsistency in the show is the pronunciation of Robin's surname: throughout the first season she pronounces her name as sher-BAH-sky, while in all seasons afterwards both her characters and the others refer to her as sher-BOH-ski.
[edit] References
- ^ Robin Scherbatsky on Myspace. Retrieved on 2009-10-09.
- ^ CBS Innertube "Let's Go to the Mall" music video. Retrieved on 2009-10-09.
- ^ "How I Met Your Mother’s Cobie Smulders on the Return of Robin Sparkles". New York Magazine. http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/11/how_i_met_your_mothers_cobie_s.html.
- ^ "Slap Bet". How I Met Your Mother. CBS. 2006-11-20. No. 9, season 2.
- ^ "Happily Ever After". How I Met Your Mother. CBS. 2008-11-03. No. 6, season 4.
- ^ "Pilot". How I Met Your Mother. CBS. 2005-09-19. No. 1, season 1. Retrieved on 2010-05-10.
- ^ "Nothing Good Happens After 2 A.M.". How I Met Your Mother. CBS. 2006-04-10. No. 18, season 1. Retrieved on 2010-05-10.
- ^ "Doppelgangers". How I Met Your Mother. CBS. 2010-05-24. No. 118, season 5.
[edit] External links
|
|||||||||||
