How I Met Your Mother: 10 Worst Things Lily Ever Did

Everyone knows Lily Aldrin as the glue that holds the gang together. Often, she is the voice of reason, the advice giver who tries to keep all her friends in place. Everything she does is out of love for the people she cares for her. You couldn’t imagine the How I Met Your Mother gang without Lily.

But at the same time… she’s also the worst, isn’t she? At least some of the time.

Aside from being needlessly aggressive, Lily is often very selfish, manipulative and usually only thinks for herself. Being a kindergarten teacher, she’d often apply her Kindergarten rules on to the adults around her and it came across as very patronising.

A lot of the time, she would insult her friends and seemingly get away it. Even worse, she was a terrible partner to Marshall often berating him for his life decisions whilst being massively hypocritical herself.

In fairness, Lily did a lot of good deeds for her friends which ultimately changed the course of their lives for the better. And all of the characters had their flaws, not just her. But that still doesn’t excuse some of the things she did over the years.

A new employee named Jenkins is hired at Marshall’s workplace. Marshall is particularly fond of Jenkins because of the wild and funny things they do, in and out of work. Ted picture his new work colleague as a goofy, fat man and is surprised to hear that Barney wants to sleep with Jenkins. The truth is revealed when his co-worker is actually an attractive, young woman.

At first, Marshall is desperate to keep his new colleague a secret from Lily, out of fear that she’ll be upset. But when she does find out of Jenkins’ gender, she is not disappointed or jealous. This actually makes Marshall annoyed that Lily shows no jealously so he starts flirting with Jenkins more and more until they, both inebriated, kiss each other.

Wanting to prove a point, Marshall forces Jenkins to come to the bar so that she can fully apologise to Lily, with orders from Mr Eriksen to not leave out any details. Although Lily seems calm, she proceeds to punch Jenkins in the face before pulverising her on the floor whilst Barney films it and Marshall instantly regrets ever trying to make Lily envious.

It’s meant to be played out for laughs but that was extremely nasty of Lily to brutally attack Jenkins when she was the only one acting maturely, willing to apologise and be completely open and honest about her kiss with Marshall. It leaves the whole episode on a sour note, especially as Amanda Peet's one off character was so enjoyable.