The original work “How I Met Your Mother” is a long-running drama that ran for 9 seasons. Although its status in the history of American dramas is still far from that of a phenomenal work like “Friends”, it still has a place.
But similar to “Friends”, looking back a few years after the end of the show, the “outdated” PC culture is still quite obvious.
So this time with “How I Met Your Father,” the most obvious difference is correcting those issues. It’s not as white and straight as it is.
“How I Met Your Father” unfolds through the future Sophie (played by the familiar “Samantha” Kim Cattrall) telling his son the story of his encounter with his husband.
Unlike the original, since only Sophie is featured in the show, the audience cannot guess who the final “daddy” is based on the race of her children.
When Sophie was young, her emotional journey had not been smooth, but she still believed that she could find “true love”. By chance she met Jesse, a teacher, and his friend Sid.
Not long ago, Jesse failed to propose to his girlfriend, and the video of the failure was posted on the Internet and became a laughing stock on the Internet.
His sister Ellen had just moved to New York and hasn’t quite gotten out of her habit, learning to find her true love in the big city of New York.
Sid dropped out of medical school to run his own bar, and his girlfriend continued to study medicine, so the two stayed together.
Sophie’s roommate and best friend, Valentina, has a new boyfriend, Charlie.
Charlie is from the UK. He gave up his huge property to be with Valentina, but he has never really lived an ordinary life. He is very uncomfortable.
Jesse and Sid live in the same apartment that Ted, Marshall and Lily used to live in.
Overall, this is still a typical “a group of urban young people looking for true love” comedy. It’s probably the most common offshoot in American dramas, and it’s hard to imagine if the show would exist without a successful original.
But also because of this, although the play is not so white and not so straight, it still has a faint “outdated” feeling. It seems that this era no longer needs such a bland TV series with such a setting.
Speaking of which, the reason for the success of the original version is that the setting is really not the point at all, the key lies in the creation of several interesting characters.
In “How I Met Your Mother”, Ted, the protagonist, is arguably the most boring character.
Barney, Robin, Marshall and Lily, each is more interesting, especially Barney’s character, who is responsible for most of the whole show.
So now the success of “How I Met Your Father” depends on how the characters are.
It’s a pity that from the current episodes, it’s obviously not comparable to Barney, and the features are not clear enough.
Therefore, the emergence of this drama is probably a huge factor in “selling feelings”.
But think about it, the original version ended in 2014. The audience of that year are now middle-aged and have already passed the life stage of the characters in the play. Do you really want to watch another similar work?
American drama comedies, especially sitcoms, can actually be divided into three main categories: workplace comedies, family comedies, and this kind of comedy of “a group of young people looking for love”.
The third category actually overlaps with the first category. As the creator of “Friends” said, this kind of story is generally the story of young people who have not yet married. At this stage of life, “friends” are like family.
In this kind of comedy, the characters are basically around 30 years old, still young, but no longer young enough to fool around.
They are going through an important stage in their life, that is, they are gradually turning from carefree young people into social backbones with family responsibilities, and truly grow into “adults”.
Every young viewer who sees “Friends” and “How I Met Your Mother” probably thinks that living with their best friends and living like family is probably really fun?
In “Friends”, this group of friends includes a scholar like Ross, and there is also a silly white sweet with a low education level like Joey.
There are Rachel, a middle-class family who has been spoiled all the way, and Phoebe, a poor child who has to rely on street wisdom since childhood.
These are six young people with completely different personalities and backgrounds, but they have become good friends who love each other rather than family members.
But in reality, does this really happen?
In contrast, “How I Met Your Mother” and now “How I Met Your Father” are a little more realistic, at least on the surface, you can imagine people in similar social circles.
Just as most literary and artistic works beautify love, American dramas beautify “friendship” just as well.
In reality, if a person can have one or two people who can rely on them no matter what the situation, and who knows all their secrets, and who are not family members are better than family friends, I am afraid that they are very lucky.
To have 5 at once like in “Friends”? can not imagine.
Especially friends from completely different backgrounds and in different social circles under normal circumstances, how is this possible?
But in literary and artistic works, like love, audiences have unrealistic fantasies about friendship between adults.
Viewers watching “Grey’s Anatomy”, watching Meredith say Cristina is “her person”, can’t help but ask themselves, do I have such a friend?
Between Meredith and Cristina, there is no need to say more, the other party can understand and support unconditionally, which is almost no worse than any description of love.
But in reality, just as there is no unconditional support of love, there is no unconditional support of friendship. Especially in the face of family and love, there is no doubt that friendship must be behind, and it should be behind.
In TV dramas, it seems that the friendship between characters will not change no matter what they experience, but in reality, “good friends” at every stage of life are probably different.
For example, a roommate who has been talking to each other for four years in college may eventually become a friend of praise in the circle of friends. How many contacts do you still have with friends you have just met in the workplace?
Life is moving forward, and friendship will change.
Changes in work, becoming a parent after getting married, or even changing where you live, etc. After experiencing these life changes and changing the focus of your life, how many friendships can remain unaffected?
There is no eternal feast in the world, so the finale of most comedies is that the protagonists embark on a new journey in their lives, and it is time to say goodbye.
In “Friends”, everyone says goodbye to Monica’s apartment, goes their separate ways, and lives as adults with a family. “How I Met Your Mother” is similar.
Even in workplace comedies, this is mostly the case. For example, in “Parks and Recreation”, everyone has a new job and is no longer a colleague like a family in the office.
However, in reality, the change of friendship sometimes doesn’t even require a big change in life, it just fades away slowly. After all, friendship also needs to be maintained, not from the sky.
But on TV, friendship seems to be the kind of thing where you don’t have to do anything, it’s always there.
In the changes of the times, the pace of modern people’s life has become faster and the changes have become more and more frequent, making it even more difficult for people to have such deep friendships in TV dramas.
In a number of “young friend” comedies such as “Friends” and “How I Met Your Mother”, the protagonists not only have deep friendships, but also fall in love with each other, and there are several couples who eventually get married.
They go through life milestones together and have few meaningful relationships other than this group of friends.
In contrast, workplace comedies are actually more exaggerated, completely beautifying the friendship between colleagues, and completely blurring the difference between workplace relationships and personal personal relationships.
Be it “The Office”, “Parks and Recreation”, “Superstore”, or “Brooklyn Nine-Nine”, the play was originally just a colleague working in an office, but eventually it became the most important thing to each other interpersonal relationships.
They are not just friends, they are even like family.
What’s more interesting is that workplace dramas and comedies have the same goal to some extent. In the main drama, the protagonists socialize with their colleagues because their lives are only work, and the social circle naturally only has colleagues.
In all of these episodes, these characters have had a long period of time in their lives where they are the world with each other and have no meaningful relationship any more than this little circle.
Of course, the beautification of friendship in American dramas is not too bad, especially the shaping of friendship between female characters is a real progress.
For a long time, there have been various relationships between male characters in literary and artistic works, and friendship like brothers is a very important part.
But this kind of depiction between female characters is lacking, and it has finally been slowly improving over the years.
When “How I Met Your Mother” was launched, it was regarded as the “successor” of “Friends”.
But after so many years, it may be difficult to reproduce the classics with a similar formula alone. If “How I Met Your Father” can’t find its own breakthrough, it will probably be mediocre.
Related Post: “How I Met Your Father” has started streaming on Hulu.
