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Ted Mosby

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Ted Mosby
How I Met Your Mother character
File:Ted Mosby's hairstyle is awesome
First appearance"Pilot"
Created byCarter Bays
Craig Thomas
Portrayed byJosh Radnor
Bob Saget (voice of future Ted)
In-universe information
AliasDoctor X, Galactic President Superstar McAwesomeville
NicknameTeddy Bear, Teddy Boy, T-Mos, Teddy Westside, T-Dog, Schmosby, Architect of Destruction, Professor Brosby, Senor Tedifier
GenderMale
OccupationArchitect (season 1-4 and season 6-present)
Professor of Architecture (season 5-present)
FamilyVirginia Mosby (mother)
Alfred Mosby (father)
Heather Mosby (sister)
Clint (stepfather)
SpouseUnknown
ChildrenLeia (daughter, born in 2015, played by Lyndsy Fonseca)
Luke (son, played by David Henrie)
RelativesJimmy Mosby (cousin)
Stacy (cousin)
Charity (cousin once removed, via Stacy)
Unnamed cousins once removed

Theodore Evelyn "Ted" Mosby is a fictional character in the U.S. television sitcom How I Met Your Mother, a hopeless romantic portrayed by Josh Radnor. Ted serves as the show's narrator from the future, voiced by Bob Saget, as he tells his children the long version of how he met their mother.

Character history

Ted, the central character of the show, was born April 25, 1978, is from Shaker Heights, Ohio (like show creator Carter Bays), a graduate of Wesleyan University (like Bays and show co-creator Craig Thomas),[1] and an architect. After his best friend Marshall Eriksen gets engaged in the pilot episode, Ted decides to try and find his soulmate. This quest informs the general direction of the show, and Ted's relationship with the other main characters Marshall Eriksen, Lily Aldrin, Robin Scherbatsky, and Barney Stinson.

He is prone to socially questionable romantic gestures; in the pilot episode, for example, he steals a blue French horn (nicknamed "The Smurf Penis") that was a topic of conversation in his first date with Robin. In a similar vein, in "Slutty Pumpkin", he dresses up as a "hanging chad" every year for Halloween, in the hopes of meeting the "Slutty Pumpkin," a woman dressed as a jack-o'-lantern (complete with strategically placed holes) whom he once met at a Halloween party.

For a time in the first season, he dates a baker named Victoria, whom he meets at a friend's wedding. She accepts a culinary fellowship in Germany, prompting a long-distance relationship, which does not last, due in large part to his persistent feelings for Robin. Ted upsets Robin by implying that Victoria broke up with him when she didn't; Ted and Robin make out before both women realize they've been deceived. Ted and Robin ultimately reconcile as friends, and, in "Come On", Ted makes one last attempt to win her over, hiring a chamber orchestra with blue instruments to play in her apartment while he makes his appeal. She finally falls for him some time later when Ted apparently summons a storm with a complicated rain dance. They date throughout the second season, breaking up in "Something Blue" upon realizing that they want different things from life.

Ted comes from Shaker Heights, Ohio (in real life, Josh Radnor grew up in the Columbus, Ohio area). He was seen cheering for the Cleveland Indians when they were playing the New York Yankees at a baseball game in the episode "Where Were We?" and also alluded to once being trapped under a fake rock at a mall in Ohio when he was nine in the episode "Slap Bet." He also wears a Cleveland Indians t-shirt in the episode "Sandcastles In The Sand". He and Marshall were randomly assigned as freshman year roommates at Wesleyan, and became best friends on a long, ill-fated road trip. This story was told in "Arrivederci, Fiero".

For a while Ted claimed to be "vomit-free since '93", meaning he had not vomited for any reason since 1993. However, in the episode "Game Night", he reveals that this is not true, and that he vomited on Robin's door mat. He knows French and sign language (presumably American Sign Language), and has a strong tendency to correct everything that people around him say.

It is revealed in "No Tomorrow" that at a St. Patrick's Day party he and Barney attended, his future wife was also present, although he (fortunately) did not meet her that night. Once he returns to the room of the party the morning after, he picks up a yellow umbrella which can be seen blowing in the wind in the season promo. Also, he becomes the second main character to actually own a car (a blue Toyota Camry Hybrid) after getting a raise at his job in "The Chain of Screaming." By the end of the episode, Ted decides to get rid of the car to help Marshall with his money problems.

In "The Goat," Ted tells Barney that he no longer wants to be friends after Barney breaks the "bro code" by sleeping with Robin. The two eventually reconcile in the Season Three finale "Miracles", after both were in accidents (Ted in a taxi crash, Barney being run over by a bus on the way to visit Ted in the hospital). At the end of season 3, it is also revealed that by Ted's 31st birthday, Robin will be living in the apartment.

At the beginning of the third season, an inebriated Ted gets a tattoo on his lower back (his "tramp stamp"). He goes to see Dr. Stella Zinman in order to have it removed, and goes on a date with the doctor in "The Platinum Rule." In "Ten Sessions," he falls for Stella, and after the tattoo is removed, Ted takes her on a two-minute date. They begin dating, and at the end of "Miracles" Ted proposes to her. She says yes at the beginning of the fourth season. In "Shelter Island", Ted invites Stella's ex-boyfriend, Tony, to his wedding; Stella and Tony rekindle their relationship, and Stella leaves a devastated Ted at the altar.

Ted's life continues to see a negative turn during the fourth season. After being left at the altar, Ted has trouble getting back into the dating world, and his job becomes a source of trouble as well. After being hired to design a project for Goliath National Bank, he is fired after weeks of unsuccessful work. He attempts to remedy this by starting his own firm, Mosbius Designs, but it is largely unsuccessful. In the season four finale "The Leap", Ted ultimately accepts a job as an architecture professor offered to him by Tony as a peace offering, though Tony's movie The Wedding Bride, released in the next season, pits a caricature of Ted as its villain against a romanticized version of Tony and Stella.

He reaches his lowest point as far as his personal life was concerned by Season 7 and confides in Robin that he is beginning to believe that there is no "The One" for him. This reaches a breaking point when he tells Robin he still loves her after she breaks up with her boyfriend Kevin. However, Robin does not reciprocate his feelings and moves out. Eventually Ted gives the apartment back to Marshall and Lily and moves into the apartment Barney's girlfriend Quinn used to live in. In the episode "Trilogy Time" it is revealed that by 2015, Ted's daughter will already be born.

After a few months, Ted decides to patch things up with Robin, and she helps him realize that none of the women he perused previously, including her, were right for him, with the exception of Victoria, whom she encourages to call. When Ted calls Victoria, she shows up in a wedding dress and says she is ready to run away with him. Initially, he tells her that he would take her back to her wedding, but after realizing how much he likes her he changes his mind and they ride off in the sunset.

Future Ted

Future Ted, voiced by Bob Saget, narrates every episode to his children in 2030, framed as the story of how he met their mother. As of season 8 episode 1, we know that Robin, Lily, Stella, Cindy, Zoey and Victoria are not the children's mother, and the real mother has yet to be revealed.

The first episode of season 3, "Wait for It", reveals that Ted's kids already know the "short version" of the story of how Ted met their mother, and that it was an incident involving her yellow umbrella. Some clues given are that Ted's future wife is a college student studying economics, as she was in the classroom on Ted's first day as a professor, where he initially went to the wrong room and started teaching Architecture 101 to what, actually, was Economics 305. It was also mentioned that she was at the same nightclub as Ted and Barney on St. Patrick's Day, 2008. In the first season episode "Belly Full of Turkey", Future Ted jokes to his kids that a stripper he meets named Tracey is the mother. Future Ted told his kids that he met their mother "on the day of the wedding" which is later revealed to be the day of Barney and Robin's wedding, in which Ted is the Best Man. In the season premiere of the 8th season, Ted is reading a book while waiting at the "Farhampton" train station after Barney and Robin's wedding when "the mother" (indicated by future Ted's voiceover and the appearance of the signature yellow umbrella) is shown arriving at the same station via taxi cab, though whether or not they meet at that time is unconfirmed as the episode fades to credits with the two unaware of each other. Ted and his wife are shown in a future flashback standing outside a movie theater advertising "The Wedding Bride III" during the episode "No Pressure".

References

  1. ^ http://www.wesleyan.edu/about/alumni.html
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