You know what’s fun? Waiting a few years to start watching a great TV show. Then you can cram several seasons worth of viewing into a week (or weekend). I do this all the time — it’s how I watched Charmed, Veronica Mars, the early years of The Simpsons and more. And I recently decided to do this with How I Met Your Mother.
The show had always been on my radar, and I had watched intermittently over the years, but when free time and availability in my Netflix queue opened up at the same time, I decided to take the plunge. And it was totally worth it.
The show is centered around single guy Ted’s (Josh Radnor) search for true love in New York. Along with his best friends Marshall and Lily (the always-hilarious Jason Segel and Buffy/Angel alum Alyson Hannigan, respectively), ex-flame Robin (Cobie Smulders) and his womanizing pal Barney (the legen-wait for it!-dary Neil Patrick Harris), architect Ted struggles through the trials and tribulations of looking for one’s soul mate in the big city. He’s ready to settle down and have kids; unfortunately, he can’t seem to meet a woman who wants the same thing. The show is actually told in reverse; set in 2030, Ted is telling his children the story of how he met their mother, so each episode is part of the story and essentially a flashback.
My husband described the show as Friends 2.0, which is actually pretty accurate: you have the married couple (Marshall and Lily to Friends’ Monica and Chandler), the on-again, off-again friends/couple (Ted and Robin to Friends’ Ross and Rachel) and the happily single man-slut (Barney to Friends’ Joey). HIMYM replaces Central Perk (the Friends coffee shop) with MacLaren’s Bar, and Ted even goes on to become a college professor, much like Ross.
Despite the similarities, HIMYM is definitely its own show, with excellent writing and perfectly crafted performances by all the actors (especially Segel and Harris). Neil Patrick Harris is single-handedly reintroducing the expressions “awesome!” and “legendary” into modern lexicon, and the show has certainly reinvigorated the high-five around my house.
Check out the Season 4 bloopers (but beware, some of the language is NSFW):