How I Met Your Father (Hulu) - Episodes 1-2
By Adam Pulley
First off… let me say thanks to Jeremy for letting me flex some of these unused creative writing muscles. Hopefully my first crack at this does his site proud and he’ll invite me back.
Now, Kids… I’m about to tell you a story. It’s the story of how a streaming service tried to use a show from a long time ago to boost its subscription base.
Okay, so that’s a tale we’ve heard before, and, frankly, it’s getting a little old.
Fuller House. Community. Arrested Development. Designated Survivor. The die-hard fans of those shows know how that ends. They have left us all screaming the question “Is there nothing new to be created?” (Enter Ted Lasso and Only Murders in the Building).
So, as we heard the swirling rumors of a How I Met Your Mother… Reboot? Sequel? Whatever it was going to be… as a fan from the beginning I was cautiously excited. I let my excitement off the leash when I started seeing the creators of HIMYM, Carter Bays and Craig Thomas, were promoting the show and, I believe, are even in the writers’ room. Then when Hillary Duff was announced as the new “Ted Mosby,” it became very real. It also dawned on me how high the bar would be.
HIMYM introduced us to Josh Radnor and star Cobie Smulders, boosted the young career of Jason Segel, and brought in seasoned pros Neil Patrick Harris and Alyson Hannigan. In 2005, it was really the first show to try, and succeed, to emerge from the shadow of Friends, which had ended its 10-year run just the year before. The show became, and I can’t believe it took me five full paragraphs to get to this, legen… wait for it… dary!
There is also some hope in a new version of the show. For everything I love about it, there are moments of the show, particularly the Barney antics, that are pretty cringey. I don’t really have much hope that How I Met Your Father will be less sexual; it will probably be more so, but I imagine that the sexual exploits of our six new lovelorn thirty-somethings will at least be less of the lying-and-plotting-to-get-women-into-bed variety.
So, without further ado… Here’s where I stand on How I Met Your Father after the first two episodes.
That’s right, I didn’t want to jump into this focusing on just the pilot. Watch the greatest shows in history and the pilot is always pretty much like a 16-year-old’s first kiss: awkward, bumpy, nervous, awkward, stiff, uncoordinated, and… did I mention awkward? Of course, there are exceptions (ahem, West Wing), but HIMYF is not one of them. So, I wanted to get through the first episodes released by Hulu before getting to my initial thoughts. Review of the third episode will be sent in the next day or so.
What I’ve Liked:
They went reboot instead of sequel – I won’t spend much time on this, but when this show was discussed in the past, there was always a hint around the main character being Barney’s or Robin’s or Ted’s sister, with at least that sibling character playing a semi-regular role. I’m glad they went with more of a full reboot, with all new characters and hints towards the original. Which leads me to…
The nostalgia – We saw swords on the wall at the apartment of the “old couple” (Marshal and Lily!!). Along with a pineapple. This was where I had a silly grin on my face and the room started to get a little dusty. In this age of multiple timelines and universes, this writer chooses to take the easy timeline and assume that the use of the HIMYM apartment and reference to Marshall and Lily means that the door is slightly cracked towards the possibility of seeing some of the O.G. cast appear in some context. Hmm…
The non-elimination of potential fathers – The best, and ultimately heartbreaking, twist in the pilot of the original series was at the end when, after a whole episode of introducing us to the women of Ted’s dreams, Robin, we learn that that was the night Ted met his kids’ aunt Robin, therefore eliminating her as the titular mother. HIMYF ends with a “That was the night I met your father.” That means all of our lead male characters, as well as any of the background extras or characters-to-be-named-and-retconned-into-the-storyline are all in the running. While I look back fondly on the original’s twist, I am glad we hopefully avoid the way that storyline played out in HIMYM, with Robin not being the mother, but still the ultimate end of the story for Ted.
There are no doppelgangers – I don’t mean the doppelgangers storyline from HIMYM. I’d love it if that is how our original cast drops some cameos (How awesome would it be to see brief interactions with Mustache Marshall or Stripper Lily?). I was worried that it would be blatantly obvious which character would be the Lily, the Barney, the Marshall, the Robin, the Ted. Clearly Sophie is the Ted, but she isn’t just like Ted. I don’t see any of these actors trying to transfer the root of those original characters into their current characters. There’s one exception to this, see below.
The theme song – I was ready to tear whatever hack version of the classic bah-bah-bah-bah theme song this show tried to pull off. I will easily put “Hey Beautiful” from The Solids on my top-five theme songs list (You want a hot take? I’ll give you a hot take: The Office theme is not on that list). When I’m wrong though, I say I’m wrong. The remix from Lennon Stella does a great job of adding a feminine voice to the song, still keeping the groove, but making it her own as well. Well done.
The Not-So-Great:
The laugh track survived!! – One of the big knocks against HIMYM was the overuse of the laugh track. Unlike Friends and other classic sitcoms, the show was not filmed in front of a live audience, so the laughs you hear that are meant to ease your discomfort and allow you to LOL were added in editing. Even I have to admit that it was overused at times. HIMYF, particularly in the pilot, hit that laugh button a little too liberally. It jumps out at you and really pulls you out of the experience. Luckily that critique got through to the editors after the pilot and they have calmed down a tad.
Quick side bar: to be honest, I think in 2022 we as an audience are beyond the laugh track. Let’s just do away with the archaic device altogether. The Office, Ted Lasso, Modern Family, Parks and Recreation… none of them use the laugh track and, guess what, we all were able to figure out when to laugh all on our own. To me it shows that the writers or directors or editors don’t trust their own comedy and lean on it when they are scared. Art takes risk. Anyway…
Sophie and Jesse/Hillary Duff and Christopher Lowell – Our teed-up lead couple are not creating fireworks so far. I have to own up to this. My childhood crush on Lizzie Maguire had me thinking that Hillary Duff would be carrying this cast. That has not been the case. As I said about all pilot episodes, they are awkward. I gave a pass after episode one, but the punchline delivery and comedic expressions have not been her strong suit. It got slightly better through the second and third episodes as the cast settled into a rough groove. Duff also seems to be much more comfortable in the deeper moments. Opposite her is Jesse, played by Christopher Lowell. There are brief moments with Jesse where I can almost see a Chandler Bing-esque self-loathing humor come through. That would be a great use of this character. Lowell just needs to bring the level from an 11 to like a steady 6 or 7 and then work on cranking it up during the solos.
The addition of the sixth primary – The more primary characters added to a show, the harder it is to ensure good chemistry between the actors. Friends and Modern Family are in the very exclusive club of shows that had large primary casts and were able to pair off any two characters and not struggle. Shows like The Office or Parks and Rec are brilliant in how they have around four primary characters and a large cast of secondary characters to choose from as needed for the story. I hope I’m wrong, and, again, if I am I’ll say it later, but I don’t see a high probability of this group of six having that level of chemistry. I would have limited the group to four (Sophie, Jesse, Valentina, Sid) and eventually added the others as occasional guest stars until the smaller cast was really rolling and then maybe bring them in as regulars. Let us not forget some of the great side characters that became regulars: Rachel Bilson’s Summer Roberts on The O.C., Chris Pratt’s Andy Dwyer on Parks and Recreation, Danielle Fishel’s Topanga Lawrence on Boy Meets World. It’s okay to see what happens and not commit to every character as a regular. Just saying.
Goodbye Ian? – Here’s the exception to my doppelganger thoughts from above. Ian was kind of set up to be our new Robin, checking every box for Sophie but not available to be in a real relationship. We see Ian come up again in episode two, and I assume he will re-appear again. Could he be a Robin-Victoria combo?
Also, on the note of people briefly appearing but likely coming back, we’re going to get more of an appearance from Leighton Meester’s Meredith, right? The stone-cold musician who stomps on Jesse’s heart during his proposal, making him a YouTube viral sensation? I find it hard to believe they cast Meester in that part without future plans.
The Bottom Line:
I hope the show survives its initial 10-episode buy-in from Hulu. There is certainly potential and there was improvement from the first episode to the second. I’m guessing that’s why Hulu released them both at the same time. The show can’t run on nostalgia alone, it will need to find its own voice and rhythm. Too many sitcoms with potential are not given that chance because of impatient networks/studios.
This show isn’t going to compete with Ted Lasso at the Emmy’s. It isn’t going to leave me waiting for the next episode to drop like Only Murders in the Building. I’d be shocked if it has a nine-year run like its predecessor. But the world is certainly at a point where we need some more good comedy on TV.
Maybe HIMYF had to punt on that first drive. But it got the ball back in episode two. Let’s see if it can at least get in field goal range in episode three.