Work vs Relationships in the Media: How I Met Your Mother

I was zoning out in class as we were discussing media analysis this morning, and thought of a great variety of television shows that touched on the question of how one chooses between work and relationships. What is more important? In particular, several shows focus is on women and work. I was planning on putting it all in one post, but I realized it was getting terribly long, so I am going to focus in on one show at a time. Note that I am (so far) not adding in any analysis- I am merely collecting the stories. Also note that my TV watching experience, while extensive, is biased toward comedies, and tends to exclude workplace dramas.

How I Met Your Mother has two female and three male leads. Barney and Ted, both single men, have never had a situation on the show where their careers and their personal lives interfered with each other. Marshall, the married man, did have this kind of situation. He had gone to school for many years to become a lawyer, with the goal of using his career to help save the environment. This field of law wasn't very lucritive, but it was his passion. He is offered two jobs- one is his dream job for little or no money, and the other is as a highly paid corporate lawyer working for a company that damages the environment. His wife has accumilated an excessive amount of credit card debt, so he chooses the highly paid job.

Both female leads on How I Met Your Mother have faced simular circumstances. At the end of season one, Lily, a kindergarden teacher and aspiring artist, is offered an an opportunity to go to art school on the other side of the country over the same period of time as her wedding to someone she had been with for ten years. She ultimately decided to call off the wedding and go, and she and her fiance broke up. In the subsequent season, Lily returns after a terrible summer realizing she has made a mistake, and eventually she and her fiance get back together and are married.

Robin, the other female lead, has faced this question several times. She is a reporter; however, her career has not been terribly successful- while she usually has work, the programs she is on are not as high quality or well rated as she would like. Robin has had three serious relationships throughout the show. Robin and Ted broke up when her aspirations for travel and career did not match Ted's dream of suburban life- this is one of the examples of Robin's usual pattern over chosing career over relationships.. More recently, Robin and Don broke up when Robin was offered a great job in another city. In the choice between career and love, she chose love and turned the job down. The same job was then offered to her boyfriend, who chose career.

Hopefully once I have posted on the examples I have come up with, I will be able summarize some trends.

Next up: Friends