#ted has never been angry at nate — at anyone — who truly earned his anger

[leupagus]

I haven't read all the meta yet, BUT

One thing I find really interesting is the relationship Ted has — and has had for the duration of the show — to anger, namely his notion that it's always a bad thing that should be suppressed or at least ignored at all costs.

We've only seen him show anger a handful of times (off the top of my head I can think of the shouting he does at Jamie in season 1 when Jamie's being a shit; then — tellingly — his anger at Rebecca when she sends Jamie back to Man City, even though at the time he thought it was an innocent mistake rather than deliberate sabotage; and of course his very confrontational second session with Sharon in season 2) and he hasn't yet admitted to feeling angry about anything. Not at Michelle for divorcing him, not at Rebecca for hiring him under false pretenses, not at Trent for writing and publishing the article about his mental health, not even at Nate for betraying his trust in such a shockingly awful way by telling Trent about said mental health.

And in episode 3.1 we see Ted resist the temptation of anger, of "fighting," several different times — instead he sinks into depression, or makes jokes at his own expense, or quietly ignores it. In part it's because he genuinely is someone who wants to be positive, but I think there's also some deeply fucked-up notions he has about anger as both an emotion and a behavior — notions that I suspect he got from his father (haha, bad fathers continuing to be the theme of this show!).

I think anger frightens Ted, in a way: he sees anger as a loss of control in and of itself, which it certainly can be! But no more than any other emotion, I don't think; and given the way Ted has seen anger turn to violence (not just from his father's suicide, but from his past as an American football coach, a sport where anger is often used as a weapon rather than a tool) I think his reticence to show so much as mild annoyance has a lot of fascinating implications.

TL;DR — I think at some point Ted is going to actually figure out how to be angry, and it's gonna be amazing.