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I was watching a TV show, and this girl said:

I just wish that once, I'd bring a guy home that they actually liked.

Shouldn't it be like this? :

I just wish that once, I'd bring a guy home that they actually like.

Didn't she mean 'I wish they'd like my future boyfriends'?

I think this is OK:

I just wish that once, I brought a guy home that they actually liked.

But the way she said it sounds strange to me.

Færd
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  • Isn't it "Big Bang Theory"? I also thought it sounded weird when I first heard it. But there are a lot of grammatical mistakes in the show. I think liked should be changed to like/will like. –  Oct 16 '15 at 11:40
  • @Rathony No, it's correct as it stands. Wish takes a backshifted conjecture. – tchrist Oct 16 '15 at 11:59
  • @tchrist Please see the below answer. Grammatically speaking, there should be an object after liked for the sentence to work in a subjunctive mood. –  Oct 16 '15 at 12:06
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    @Rathony I cannot see why you think there has to be an object, nor why you think the sentence as written is somehow ungrammatical. – tchrist Oct 16 '15 at 12:12
  • In order for the object of like to be omitted, "that" should work as a relative pronoun. In order for that to be a conjunction which follows wish (I am assuming that you also think of that as a conjunction ), the object of liked should not be omitted as like is a transitive verb. –  Oct 16 '15 at 12:19
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    Or, better, Tense change: previous actions on something that's currently true. – Edwin Ashworth Oct 16 '15 at 12:24
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    @tchrist I know that wish takes a backshifted conjecture (hence the final example) , but not after would. – Færd Oct 16 '15 at 12:25
  • I remember a debate over a fairly demanding related question at school. It turned out that the accepted version of 'If a person should wish to succeed, he would have to work as hard as he ____.' needed can rather than could. Note the deliberate 'needed'. This was almost 50 years ago. – Edwin Ashworth Oct 16 '15 at 12:30
  • @EdwinAshworth You shared useful links, but I'm afraid they're not applicable here. Here I'm not talking about a timeless condition. In what I quoted, the girl wants her guy to be liked and accepted at that moment, as her boyfriend, not generally as a person. – Færd Oct 16 '15 at 13:15
  • @tchrist tom, shouldn't the "that" be replaced with "whom?" – michael_timofeev Oct 16 '15 at 16:46
  • I suppose logically, 'I wish that just once, I'd bring a guy home that/who they would actually like.' has the best correspondence. The two sentence (if one includes fragments) version is obviously correct: 'I wish that just once, I'd bring the right guy home. A guy they would actually like.' – Edwin Ashworth Oct 16 '15 at 23:03

2 Answers2

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The original sentence is correct.

You are correct in your assertion but the sentence also uses the past tense '-ed' to inform us that it has happened before.

i.e. she has brought back a guy home more than once and her parents did not like them and she wishes they they would for once.

TheLimeTrees
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    This isn't quite right. What’s happening is that backshifting is being used in liked because wish takes a hypothetical conjecture, so it has to be in the past tense. There is no definitive implication of repetition or previous occurrence. – tchrist Oct 16 '15 at 11:58
  • @tchrist sounds right to me. – michael_timofeev Oct 16 '15 at 16:28
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In a comedy show, sometimes grammatical principles are not strictly followed to make people laugh.

The sentence would be clearer if rephrased to:

If (once) I'd bring a guy home, I just wish that they actually liked him.

I just wish that once, I'd bring a guy home that they actually liked.

Here, that seems to be used as a "relative pronoun" as the object of the verb liked is missing. However, it is not difficult to understand that liked is backshifted in a I wish construction which uses a subjunctive mood.