Why was Cobie Smulders in The Avengers?

This is petty.  And I know it's petty.  But this whole blog is petty, so I'm going to run with it.

I hate Robin Scherbatsky.  I hate her so very, very much.  Because she is that unbelievably irritating kind of woman who has no feelings until you hurt them and then she has all kinds of feelings, which is inexplicable, crazy, and stupid.  I have hated every single Robin storyline since she and Ted broke up (the first time), and I hated a solid half of them even before that.  Her only redeeming feature is her Canadian pop career, and that was way too long ago to help.

And I have never seen Cobie Smulders in anything that is not How I Met Your Mother, which is sort of amazing because I watch most things, even the sort of dubious things in which she has appeared.  She now merely represents a show whose long yet precipitous decline I have watched religiously, in the vain and constantly-thwarted hope that it will stop being quite so soul-sucking.  This is perhaps unfair, but it remains that she managed to be incredibly distracting to me as she pointlessly and woodenly appeared for about four minutes this past Sunday in an otherwise mostly enjoyable flick.

It was a completely throwaway part.  All she did was accuse Nick Fury of being a manipulator, which, to someone in her position, should not have come as a surprise.  You can pick a throwaway actress.  Just make it someone that I don't hate.  (So, no, Mr. Whedon, Eliza Dushku is not an option.)  And don't put her in those stupid boots with the wedge.  They're not practical, and she's not a superhero or on Star Trek, so she doesn't get dispensation for reasons of silliness and convention.

(Fine, Scarlett Johansson was kind of annoying too, but she was inherited and the Black Widow's probably supposed to make you feel a little bit ooky, so I'll accept it.)