NO BAD PARTS: Calling a Truce with Ted Mosby

A few weeks ago I had lunch with my former How I Met Your Mother castmate and forever friend, Alyson Hannigan. It was delightful. 

We hadn’t seen each other in awhile and had a ton to catch up on. Just before I got in my car for the unreasonably long drive from Santa Monica back to the east side we snapped a picture for Pam Fryman, our beloved director. It was a joyfully unguarded moment to mark a sweet reunion. 
 
Aly texted me the picture and when I got home I asked if she’d mind if I posted it on Instagram (“The fans always wanna make sure we’re ‘friends in real life,’” I joked.) She said of course. So I posted it and the craziest thing happened: It’s inching up towards one million likes and I got around (as of this counting) 90,000 more Instagram followers. 
 
Now I assure you I don’t obsessively monitor how every single thing I post on social media "performs." But the response to the picture was so rapturous and joyful that I was forced to take note. It wasn’t so much the numbers. People just seemed so damn happy to see us together again. Almost relieved. And it shifted something in me.

People who’ve been following me for awhile know that I have a somewhat complicated relationship with Ted Mosby and How I Met Your Mother. My nine years on that show undeniably changed my life and showered me in blessings. It freed me up to follow passions like songwriting and filmmaking and only take acting work that felt meaningful and fun. 
 
So I'm reluctant to admit that there were (and are) things that are difficult about having been on the show for so long. When I’ve attempted to talk about this publicly, I’ve been charged with ingratitude or accused of spoiling a thing people love dearly. I understand how it might look, my sometimes fumbling attempts to both honor this beloved show while also seeking to emerge out from under its shadow. 
 
The best analogy for the bind I’ve found myself in is this: You went to high school. You liked high school. You had friends. You had nicknames. You got to be goofy and young and get your heart broken and grow up. It had its ups and downs but was a generally positive, undeniably formative experience. And then it was done. You graduated, moved on with your life. You stepped into other, perhaps even more exciting chapters: college maybe, relocating to a big city, your first job. Life moved on, as it tends to do. But everywhere you go all anyone wants to talk about… is high school. The memories, the inside jokes, the time – or times – you humiliated yourself. And if you gently suggest that you’d like to talk about something other than high school, that you’d prefer not to be called a nickname you got at fifteen, people get mad at you. They call you ungrateful, accuse you of crapping on their memories. Again, you feel the need to stress “I’m not knocking high school. High school was great. I would just like to move the conversation forward. Because that was the past and I’m living a different life now.” But an army of very passionate people refuse to update their conception of you. High school you is the only "you" that interests them, to the point where they deny and denigrate present day you. Or relate everything you now say and do back to memories from high school. Or say it’s sad to watch you age because you no longer look the way you looked in high school. 
 
As you can imagine, this was at points maddening: being reduced, labeled, put in a box, shrink-wrapped and preserved at this one – albeit wonderful and formative – stage of life. I experienced what I now think of as a kind of psychic claustrophobia, a box I couldn't seem to get out of despite my attempts to provide evidence to the contrary, that I had changed, I had grown. But this wasn't just my high school in Columbus, Ohio. This was global, as I confronted these issues on a massive, network television-sized scale.

No matter how much gratitude I feel for How I Met Your Mother, it ended in 2014. What I’m doing and working on now will always feel more interesting and vital than something I worked on years ago, if only due to the fact that it’s happening right now. And when some people seem to resent the fact that you work on other things or aren’t interested in talking about HIMYM all the time, it can feel pretty disheartening. When people say “I will never see you as anything other than Ted Mosby” I suspect what they mean is "The show and your character meant so much to me and made an indelible impression" but what I hear is “You will never work as an actor again.” 
 
I could write volumes on this and I’m going to need to reign it in because the larger point I’m trying to make is this: I think my frustration with this shadow side of Ted and the show has prevented me from really taking in or remembering with any consistency how much the show has meant to people, how much joy it reliably delivered, how much light it infused into some really dark and heavy chapters in people’s lives. 
 
There’s a small moment in A Heart That Works, Rob Delaney’s heartbreaking memoir about the death of his infant son, that finds him and his wife waiting for news from a team of doctors. They watch How I Met Your Mother to turn off their minds and laugh. I hear stories like this all the time and they touch me deeply. To have been a part of something that can be medicine for the soul in hard times… I mean it doesn’t get any better than that.

I think running from Ted has caused me some pain. He became a kind of ghost or shadow that I couldn’t escape. And I would bristle every time someone refused to call me by my real name, every time a sincere or innocuous post of mine was met with a “Classic Schmosby” or some other reference to the show.

But then: that picture with Aly. The delight at seeing us together again. It wasn’t just us, two old friends reuniting. Hundreds of thousands of people felt like they were reuniting with old friends. 

Parasocial relationships, you must admit, are weird. The viewer or fan has a deeply intense, meaningful, personal relationship with the artist while the artist has no idea who the person is. The whole thing is deeply unequally weighted. But to deny the fan their joy, to swat it away or negate it, feels cruel and lacking in compassion. We’ve all had the experience of a poem, a film, a book, or a song meeting us at just the right moment. In a way that feels divinely orchestrated and delivered to rescue us from hopelessness, despair, or heartbreak. As a storyteller I long to create and be a part of things that do this very thing. And for nine years I got to do just that. 
 
It was time to call a truce, to turn around and face Ted Mosby. And instead of screaming at him or reciting a list of grievances, I could pull him in for a hug. 
 
Psychologist Richard Schwartz developed an approach to psychotherapy he calls “Internal Family Systems” which he outlined in his book “No Bad Parts.” According to Schwartz, he began to observe similarities in the way people described their inner lives: “What I heard repeatedly were descriptions of what they often called their "parts"—the conflicted subpersonalities that resided within them.” He started to think of the mind as a family and these ‘parts’ as family members. How these family members interacted with each other became the basis of IFS.
 
I appreciate Schwartz’s model. I find it helpful to identify and name these parts of myself rather than clinging to some illusion that the ‘self’ is some kind of stable static thing. Like you and everyone else, I have a massive cast of characters in me, some that are more forward-facing and others that lurk in the shadows. Some of them get to come out and dance in roles I play (a morphine-addicted Civil War surgeon, an insecure narcissistic movie star-Nazi hunter, a caring public school teacher, a frustrated suburban father and husband, etc.) I consider it one of the true gifts of what I do for a living, that all these parts of me – even the ones I might be ashamed of – are usable.  
 
I always say Ted was a part I played, in that he was a ‘part’ of me. But he’s certainly not the whole of me. Still, I had to unveil him to a really large audience for almost a decade. This dashing, charming, funny, loyal, lost, goofy, embarrassing, courageous, resilient part of me that got to model male vulnerability and the archetypal search for love for a generation. What a weird and singular honor. I would like to wear him with more pride. And in some paradoxical way I think it will help me shed him more.  
 
I would so much rather celebrate this ‘part’ along with the laughter and tears the show provoked along with those who loved and continue to love it rather than feeling like it’s some kind of albatross around my neck. That feels psychologically healthier, to stop being at war with this thing and live in the love and gratitude. We’ll see how well I do. It’s a new day! 

I'm on two TV shows that are out right now that I'm all kinds of proud of, if you want to check them out: Fleishman Is In Trouble on Hulu and the second season of Hunters on Amazon Prime.

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As always, if you're enjoying these please spread the word (people can sign up here) And if you're new to these check out past Museletters. JR