Back in 2005, a little comedy arrived on CBS that I completely ignored called How I Met Your Mother. Why, you ask? I have no answer for that. Perhaps it was because it was on Monday night and paired with Charlie Sheen's questionable hit Two and a Half Men, a show I do not care for. I chose to stay with 24 and Prison Break on Monday's.
Now it is 2008 and they are in the midst of a strike-shortened third season and I can say that I have not seen a single episode. However fate was about to step in and forever color my opinion of the series, in a good way.
It was just the other night, I was sitting in my room, my writing assignments done for the day and I was looking for something to do — or watch as the case turned out to be. Sitting next to the television was a stack of "to be watched" DVDs. Part of that stack was the second season of How I Met Your Mother. So, with no other bright ideas, I grabbed the first disk, slipped it into the player and was transported into a wonderful world of sitcomery (yes, sitcomery).
I was expecting some run of the mill, network-driven sitcom. What I found was something that is surprisingly clever, witty, and just flat out enjoyable. Seriously, it was so much better than I had expected it to be. Now, I don't want to overstate it — it is not the greatest sitcom I have ever seen, but it is well above your normal network fare.
Being my first experience with the series, I had to get caught up on the central conceit. That conceit is that the series is being told in flashback from the perspective of Ted Mosby (Josh Radnor) telling his kids how he met their mother, who has yet to be introduced. None other than Bob Saget does the voiceover. Okay, moving along.
The series focuses on five friends in their twenties, living in New York, and dealing with their jobs and each other. Ted is dating Robin (Cobie Smulders), who is not the mother of the future, Marshall (Jason Segel) is dating Lilly (Alyson Hannigan), and then there is the womanizing Barney (Neil Patrick Harris). Together they are quite the ensemble.
Article comments
1 - bmckee@shaw.ca
"How I Met Your Mother" is the true American version of "Coupling" and deserves any and all the success and publicity it can get.
2 - Phillip Winn
Chris, go back and watch season one. And the first 11 (I think) episodes of season three, then wait in agony with the rest of us for the rest of season three!