By Fiona Meagher and Hermione Silver, Year 9
Spoilers ahead for How I Met Your Mother and How I Met Your Father episodes 1 to 3!
If there’s one thing we’ve learned from TV, it’s that people love making sequels or spin-offs to popular shows and movies. Unfortunately, the final product often doesn’t live up to the original and is just overall quite disappointing. Pretty Little Liars, for example, had two spin-offs, Ravenswood (2013) and Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists (2019), both generally unsuccessful and canceled after only one season. There are, of course, exceptions. These include The Office US (2005), which was met with more attention and is considered more popular than its original, The Office UK (2001). Despite the questionable record of TV spin-offs, many were excited to hear about the new spin-off of the classic sitcom How I Met Your Mother, named How I Met Your Father.
How I Met Your Father centers around Sophie (Hilary Duff), who, in 2050, tells her son about how she met his father in 2022. She tells him stories about her younger self trying to find love in New York City during the age of social media, alongside her friends Valentina (Francia Raisa), Sid (Suraj Sharma), Jesse (Charlie Lowell), Hannah (Ashley Reyes), and Charlie (Tom Ainsley). The premise of How I Met Your Mother (HIMYM) was largely the same, only it was set almost 20 years earlier. The original went on to have nine seasons. Aside from the controversial ending where the “mother” the audience had been waiting on for eight seasons was killed in the last episode, the later seasons were generally well-received. However, looking back, the show didn’t age well. There was a lot of misogyny throughout the series and little diversity, not to mention the episode in season nine where the all-white main cast dressed up as Asian martial art masters. A spin-off would seem like a good opportunity for a producer to recreate a less problematic version of the beloved sitcom.
Producing a spin-off to an already famous show or movie is generally quite frowned upon as it can be seen as a ploy for money. Another challenge with writing spin-offs in general is that the shoes of the original are hard to fill; even if the newer version isn’t half bad, it will never live up to the original in the eyes of the fans. Nostalgia also plays a big part in this as HIMYM aired nearly 20 years ago. The first episodes of the spin-off were already very emotional and nostalgic, unlike those of the original, and whether this is a good or bad thing is up to interpretation. Although overall the new show was quite unfunny, there were a few chuckle-worthy moments that were similar to the absurd comedy of the original. On top of that, some changes were definitely welcomed, like the diversity of the cast, which is refreshing compared to the original. This show also did include some small-scale homages that make the audience feel nostalgic about the original. Little things like the short camera cuts and flashback sequences with present time narration overlaying it were staples of the earlier show. These are small details that made viewers reminisce about HIMYM.
Although it had some positives, this show, for the most part, was simply hard to watch. The dialogue was badly-written and unnatural, the jokes were either immature and reminiscent of children’s TV (falling over, absurd reactions) or they were overly sexual without being funny. The original was hardly lacking in adult content, but it was not as cringe-worthy as in the spin-off. Any bits that were remotely amusing or creative were overdone, it was as if the writers didn’t want them to blend into the sea of abysmal humour. The plot was empty, but somehow also too fast-paced. The characters were all over the place; they would be described a certain way in the exposition-heavy dialogue and then begin acting completely differently in the next scene. One example of this was Charlie, Sophie’s roommate’s posh English boyfriend who would act like a total idiot in one scene, and be the voice of reason in his dysfunctional relationship in the next. The show also seemed to forget that bars, beggars, clubs and subways do exist in England, as he has no clue what any of those things are. The show strictly follows the code, “tell, not show”. Like how the audience is told, not shown, that the main character compulsively fixes things because of her childhood. There are a lot of descriptions like this, casually thrown into the dialogue. The show gives itself no time to introduce or develop the characters, so they are just described in the dialogue, which leaves the audience with no attachment towards them. The only consistent character is Hannah, Jesse’s adoptive lesbian sister who moved to New York after her divorce, and she’s consistent because she basically does nothing in the show. Queer representation is a positive, but having her as the most irrelevant character rubs many viewers the wrong way.
The writers clearly took inspiration from the original, but it seems like it was always in the wrong way, or at the wrong moment. The laugh track, for example, is outdated and distracting. But somehow it’s also missing elements from the original right when they’re needed. At the beginning of HIMYM, all the main characters are close friends when they meet Robin, who jumpstarts the plot of the show. In HIMYF, the main gang is made up of two pairs of friends who’ve never met and one girl’s boyfriend. For the show to work, they need to know each other, like in the original, so somehow they all get to know each other in the first episode. By the second episode, Jesse, who has spent all of one afternoon getting to know Sophie, develops a crush and wants to go out with her. This is followed by a lot of talking about how they’re both “messes” and they resolve that it would never work out. To a fan of the original, this might sound slightly familiar: in the second episode of HIMYM, main characters Ted and Robin decide not to date because they want different things out of life. The only difference is, Ted and Robin meet in a romantic context. Jesse and Sophie meet in a platonic context and become friends. Viewers love friends to lovers, but it doesn’t happen after they’ve known each other for half a day!
Another issue with the spin-off is that using current slang or fads in a sitcom often means the show is outdated before it even airs. There is a character who works at the bar that Sid owns who is a sloppy attempt at a caricature of Gen Z. He doesn’t do any work, films TikToks at the bar, and teaches Sid even sloppier attempts at slang. Trends and slang come and go very quickly, and few will enjoy watching this in 2022, let alone five, ten, or twenty years from now. People still watch HIMYM, but that’s partly because it isn’t littered with 2000s trends.
Overall, for a spin-off to be good it needs to add something more to the original so that it’s not just an imitation. More often than not, HIMYF seemed like it was trying to be independent from the original, but was limited creatively by its ties to its predecessor. The general energy of the show simply isn’t like that of HIMYM and seems more like a show to laugh at rather than with (though it’s not even that fun to laugh at, it was a struggle to get through just three episodes). To be fair, these opinions were probably tainted by appreciation for the original and many probably would’ve enjoyed it better without having seen the first one. The sad truth is How I Met Your Father is most likely best enjoyed without comparison to the original, but it doesn’t really have an audience without fans of How I Met Your Mother, so it has no chance of escaping its shadow. This show, to many fans, is a good example of why some things are better off left as they are.
