CHARACTER ANALYSIS

Character Analysis

Character Analysis

Introduction

The two characters I have chosen are Barney Stinson from “How I met your mother” and Joey from “Friends”. The reasons I have chosen these two characters are because these two have somewhat similar personalities, as they both womanizers. They both carry the most energy and humorous appeals in their respective shows. Both of the characters love to socialize among their friends and care about their friends, as well. Both characters are adored by the public and have a massive fan following. There is a similarity in the concept of the show as well, since the stories of both shows are revolving around the lives of five friends. Also, in both the characters fell in love at some point with a friend in their group, as in “Friends”, Joey falls in love with his friend Rachel, and in “How I met your mother”, Barney falls in love with Robin. The character of both characters described in detail, through which one can analyze the similarities among the characters.

Barney Stinson

“In my body, where the shame gland should be, there is a second awesome gland. A True story.” -Barney Stinson.

Barnaby “Barney” Stinson is a character played by Neil Patrick Harris on How I Met Your Mother, a show focused on five friends living in New York City in their late 20's and early 30's. Though the show told from the perspective of Barney's friend, Ted Mosby, Barney remains a central element of Ted's storytelling and common source of some of the funnier and crazier antics that the characters go through. Born in 1976, Barney suffered early on from a troubled family. In past seasons, the identity of Barney's father was unknown - his mother, Loretta Stinson, convinced him when he was a child that his father was Bob Barker of The Price is Right fame (Weinman, p. 5-12). Barney was raised by his mother from an immature age after his father left; even while his father was around, Barney convinced he was his “Uncle Jerry” and models his own life in part around the escapades that his father told him. As Barney grew up, he met and began a relationship with Shannon, a girl he worked at a coffee shop. They chose not to have sex before marriage and planned on going to the Peace Corps together, but when the day came to leave for Nicaragua, she lied to Barney, saying that her father would not let her go. She pleaded for him to go without her, but when he returned to try and persuade her, he found she was involved with a businessman wearing a suit, a culture which Barney despised at the time. Crushed, Barney transforms himself into the very thing that destroyed him: a suit-wearing, smart-talking (Pierce, p. 1-10).

Once this transformation is complete, Barney's character begins to emerge as it appears in the current context of the show. Barney meets Ted several years before the show starts; he meets Marshall, Ted's best friend from college, and Lily, Marshall's ...