Robin Cares About Her Fiancé Getting Her Father's Permission To Marry Her?

At the start of last night's How I Met Your Mother, I was sure I was going to have to write a takedown of the hideous peach jacket you see Robin (Cobie Smulders) wearing in the still above. I realize you can't really tell, but it's longer in the front and has no lapels. (You can tell that it's peach, though, so I assume you see where I'm coming from.) But that was before it became clear that the episode was not going to be about the jacket -- how Robin came not only to buy and wear it but what the hell kind of store was selling that monstrosity in the year 2013 -- but about a plot even more inconceivably anachronistic: Robin's distress that before Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) proposed marriage to her in the previous episode, he failed to ask her father, Robin Sr. (Ray Wise), for his permission.

I complained about this (uh, and the jacket) last night on Twitter, to which a @tosyandcoch replied, "? Asking for hand still a very real thing. Usually formality, but still." I'm sure that's true. But purity balls, FLDS "Joy Books," and female genital mutilation are all "very real" things; that doesn't mean I'm okay with the idea that a TV sitcom would portray them approvingly.

In fact, worse than the show normalizing Robin's retrograde attitude toward marriage is that it actually tries to have it both ways. When Robin asks Barney whether he sought her father's permission before proposing, Barney doesn't think she's serious. "Hahaha, yeah, yeah, Robin. I bought you, with an ox and some spices from the east," he jokes. "He's going to put you in a cage, and send you on horseback to my remote desert camp...where you'll be bathed in perfumes and oils and delivered to my tent." It goes on from there, but you get the idea: not only does Barney find the idea of asking Robin Sr. for permission to marry Robin as absurd as I do, but his response to her question about it highlights the antiquated sexism of the practice.

And I guess we're supposed to think that Barney's agreeing to do it is evidence of his growth or whatever, but to me, Barney's backing down from his totally legitimate objections is disheartening in light of what we know about his love for Robin. Barney has been attracted to Robin's self-sufficiency since Season 1, when they shared a bros' night out -- smoking cigars, drinking scotch, playing Laser Tag -- for which she suited up. Later, after they dated and broke up, he told her how much he liked it that Robin has always been her "own daddy." Robin is one of TV's most feminist characters; though the show has previously established that her relationship with her father is complicated, it doesn't seem credible to me that, given everything else we know about her accomplishments, independence, and age, Robin would observe this very outdated convention. And for the show to nod at its chauvinist underpinnings, but ultimately treat it as though it were acceptable, is to propagate sexist dogma, meaning that -- for once -- the worst thing about the episode wasn't stupid Ted.