How I Met Your Mother ran from late 2005 to 2013, and it goes without saying that the world has changed quite a lot since Ted Mosby finished telling his kids the story of how fate made him cross paths with their mom. Since then, not only has society moved at a blazingly fast pace, but the sitcom landscape has also evolved to leave behind many of the tropes that were present during that time in television.
While glorified comedic works such as Friends and Seinfeld still hold enough cultural significance so that their signings are huge wins for HBO Max and Netflix, respectively, the truth is that most successful sitcoms nowadays are rather different. Those contrasts go far beyond the ever-present laugh tracks of old, but in the age of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Schitt’s Creek, and Ted Lasso, what does How I Met Your Father really bring to the table that makes it worth watching?
Sophie Gets Set Up
The setup for HIMYF takes after the original, with the caveat that future Sophie (Kim Catrall) is the one sitting on the couch talking to her (seemingly) only son instead of the late Bob Saget’s disembodied voice telling the story to his children. This could arguably be seen as an improvement, as the two teenagers rarely added much in the form of entertainment to HIMYM, whereas 2050’s Sophie could offer a better glimpse at how the character has grown since her romantic mishaps circa 2022.
Although these kinds of rules might be shaky, the pilot episode (co-written by HIMYM creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas) makes it clear that is the night Sophie meets her son’s dad. This statement then cuts to flashes of the show’s now truly diverse cast, which might explain why Catrall’s on-screen son remains hidden in the event that she and the father in question raised a multiracial child, thus turning it into a Schrodinger’s Cat type of premise.
Speaking of which, the main gang ditches the unlikely notion that a group of six people in New York could somehow be made up of purely white individuals, and having characters like Valentina, Sid, Ellen, and Charlie opens up the doors for storylines that the original HIMYM could never mess with. In that regard, HIMYF possibly gets rid of the remnants of tone-deafness its predecessor (and Friends too) displays when viewed in hindsight after #MeToo became a thing, especially because its protagonist is a woman.
All in all, HIMYF has the necessary ingredients to be as good as HIMYM, and yet that very recipe makes terribly hard for writers to hit the same heights as the original. After just five episodes, HIMYF sits tamely in-between being a fun nostalgic callback and a flailing sitcom that can’t match its modern competition, hence its mixed to negative reviews, so why is that?
The Bad And The Ugly
At least for now, HIMYF appears to treat the legacy of Ted Mosby and friends as mere easter eggs in this 2022 New York City, however, the jokes and plots explored so far sometimes make the city feel like a whole different universe place due to the level of absurdity each one is willing to explore.
For example, while it’s somewhat funny to see the show adapting Sophie’s dating experiences to apps like Tinder, and Jesse working as a part-time Uber driver, HIMYM was relatable for fans because of the way each character gained life experience points after being put into some pretty over-the-top situations. The catalyzer for these was often Barney Stinson, the gang’s lovable and misogynistic buffoon, whose closest counterpart Charlie comes nowhere near matching because his dim-witted nature often makes him look more like an accessory in each episode’s development, perhaps a consequence of adding a sixth member to the gang.
HIMYM was great because the entire series was committed to absurdity with a few notes of seriousness, whether it was in the scope of the cast’s grand romantic gestures or the many real websites that continue to play off the show’s jokes (yes, lorenzovonmatterhorn.com and www.goliathbank.com are still live). That particular comedic tone is direly needed for any multi-camera sitcom with laugh tracks still aiming to make it in 2022, because the last apex predator of that breed died when The Big Bang Theory said its goodbyes, and yet HIMYF's first five episodes feel incredibly pedestrian and lacking any "wow" factor.
Sitcoms like HIMYM become “legendary” due to a few select episodes, simply because of those times when the writing and punchlines were so perfect they could make up for a couple of dull showings (e.g. Rick and Morty). HIMYF gets 10 attempts in its first season to make that happen, but its first five appearances are far from capable of making a lasting impression because, putting aside a similar-looking acronym, there’s nothing that makes it really special or preferable over the rest of Hulu's excellent comedies.
How I Met Your Father is worth watching because it rides on the success of one of the greatest sitcoms ever, and anyone looking for a nostalgic trip will find hints of that in it. Be warned, the taste of those Member Berries starts to wear off fast, and once it’s gone what’s left is a hollow shell of canned laughs.