How I Met Your Mother legitimizes Canada’s existence, again!
Long-running American sitcom How I Met Your Mother continued to capitalize on occasional allusions to Canadian culture—occurrences called “the opposite of name-dropping” by Neil Patrick Harris’ character—in this week’s episode, entitled “The Slutty Pumpkin Returns.” Making mention of both Kelowna-based indie rockers Yukon Blonde and, naturally, Timbits, the show exhibited a just-deeper-than-surface-level understanding of our national cultural matrix. While such jokes work well in the States because of the absurd, quaint names of our musical groups and fried dough desserts, their real power comes from the smug sense of superiority we get to feel relative to those millions of American viewers who don’t know about our totally cool Canadian stuff. Previously, How I Met Your Mother has set a scene inside of a Tim Horton’s and, perhaps more malevolently, exposed its American viewers to the veracity of our nationwide fear of the dark. (One of the show’s executive producers, Chuck Tatham, is originally from Ontario.) But the reference to a cool Canadian rock band (assuming it’s not a contradiction in terms) is one of the rare cases where Americans paint Canadian culture with something other than broad-strokes. Also: Timbits!
The CBC ranked Yukon Blonde among “10 Canadian Bands Destined To Break by 2010.” How I Met Your Mother has won 9 Emmys, which we assume is something like an American Gemini award. Here’s the video (and thanks to Christine McAvoy for the tip):
