the davidsonienne •

I’ll refrain from making a corny joke about WALNUTS! (or some other politician) here.  My kind of nuts (get your mind out of the gutter) made an appearance Monday night, with the glorious return to television of every cool kid’s favorite 30-minute show, How I Met Your Mother.  The plot has basically no relevance to this post, but if you’re curious, go on and check out the brilliant TWoP recap.  So Ted and Stella are, like, kind of in love or something, and uh, I mean, like, I think they’ve been dating for a while?  So he cooks her dinner which is all cute!  Oh yea!  This episode is about how they got engaged?!  OMG.  So, like, they totally have eaten out a lot together, like, right?  (Even if the premise of this episode is that Ted doesn’t know as much as he should about Stella, i.e. her favorite color)  Oh cute, he totally has a secret ingredient in his grandma’s pesto recipe!  That is really precious.

BUT, in case you had a five minute blackout during the show, the recapper deftly informs us that “the secret ingredient in Ted’s delicious pesto sauce isn’t love, but peanuts, to which he — of course — doesn’t know his beloved is deathly allergic.”  Oh!  Do we maybe have a little suspension of belief going on in the show?

Uh, yeah.  Not that I mind suspension of belief.  In fact, that’s great.  Quite funny.  And I realize that when Stella keels over after taking one bite, which would never actually happen, that such a thing is used for a) dramatic effect b) speed and c) silliness.  But Ted would know already, since she would have asked about peanuts in restaurants where they were eating, and engaged couples have certainly eaten together before.

Deep breath.

Okay, sorry for ranting.  I got a little ahead of myself.  Here’s the point I want to make: when peanut allergies are portrayed in this way on national television, it does not help the cause of the sufferers.  I don’t even care that much about it in the context of this episode, but it did make me roll my eyes, and therefore proceed to whine about it on here — what do you think, audience, that we just keel over and die?  No, we have to suffer for about four to five hours (en route to and in the hospital), and then spend the next couple of days as weak apparitions of ourselves.  We don’t return, perky, to cuddle on the couch.  Surely Ted wouldn’t be so clueless, even if he doesn’t know Stella as well as he should, because peanut allergies take over the lives of their humans.  They come with their own consuming, all-encompassing mindset.  You can’t be off your game for more than a second.  I just get a little perturbed when people don’t take me seriously about the life or death part of my allergy, and, hey, Ted’s not helping my cause here.  But, whatever, maybe he is just that self-absorbed.