https://youtu.be/dKYGsFiI8fA?si=a1ZsuPft7pOqtdHf
How I Met Your Mother is a memorable sitcom reliant on various comedic moments – or bits – but within which the Slap Bet remains most vividly remembered and cherished by me. Tom Gunning’s essay on Pie and Chase commemorates the concept of slapstick as an essential part of screen comedy that has remained a constant for centuries.
The concept of the Slap Bet is first introduced in the show as a punitive stake for a bet between two of the main characters, but then the tally for prospective slaps from one character to another respectively increases and decreases at both expected and unexpected moments.
As a running gag on the show, the Slap Bet provides a “calculated rupture”, as Gunning explains, to temporally break from the horizontal domain of the story and bestow some comic relief (even the most dramatic episodes of the show).
One of Gunning’s concepts that I found most pertinent to this gag is the idea of “the chase” – or the idea of a linear trajectory of the narrative in general regarding both the story’s horizontal domain and the gag’s vertical domain. The Slap Bet, as it carries on from a variety of episodes, does not have a distinctive or repetitive pattern. As can be seen in the linked video, characters on the show toy with the trajectory line of the chase as if it were a jumping rope, either deciding to slap one another in successive bouts or letting their prey reside in fear over when the pie will slam the face (or the slap hit the cheek!). Additionally, in constantly switching the role of slapper from one character to another, or even adding extra add-ons like a slapping throne or naming thanksgiving Slapsgiving, the joke is extended to keep viewers entertained.
The “pie”, or the slap itself, enacts some pseudo-physical or emotive closure from the viewer, though the fact that this gag is stretched along 9 seasons pushes this leitmotif to become a recurring gag viewers yearn to watch develop.
Consequently, this gag plays with our preconceived understandings of pie and chase as a repetitive pattern of chase to pie and thus creates varying emotive responses from the viewer.