Comedy TV Series
How I Met Your Mother
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Distributed By: 20th Century Fox
Reviewed by Justine Manzano
If you had asked me what I would do after Friends, I never had any idea.
Friends was the pinnacle of the sitcom series to me. The characters each
resembled members of my own circle of friends and everything down to the way the
characters spoke to each other and abused each other rang true in my life. It
was exactly what my group of friends were like and I feared that, when the show
ended, I would never find anything quite like it. I wasn’t wrong. The next
season yielded no comparable series and the season after that yielded only one
show that even came close. That series was How I Met Your Mother, and I very
nearly only watched it for Buffy alum Alyson Hannigan and to watch Neil Patrick
Harris play a womanizer. Now that the first season of the series has been
released on DVD, I’m glad I found that many more reasons to watch.
How I Met Your Mother, much like friends, follows 5 twenty-somethings in New York City who are trying to find love in the new millennium. The trick is, the story is being told by our main character, Ted, from years in the future (the voice of Full House alum Bob Saget, ala’ The Wonder Years), when he has already met and married the love of his life and had two children with her. Ted decides that he should tell his teenage boy and girl the story of how he met their mother.
The story begins when Ted’s (Josh Radnor) super couple
best friends, Marshall (Jason Segel, Freaks and Geeks, Undeclared) and Lily (Hannigan)
get engaged. Ted decides that this is a message to him that he must find the
love of his life. His other good friend, fast-talking womanizer Barney (Harris,
Doogie Howser, M.D., Starship Troopers) is of the opinion that what he really
needs is to get laid. By a simple introduction of “Have you met Ted,” by
Barney, Ted is introduced to the woman he believes to be the love of his life.
Robin (Cobie Smulders) and Ted hit it off immediately, but it doesn’t take long
for Ted’s voice of the future to reveal that what he has just told his children
is the story of how he met their Aunt Robin!
So clearly, meeting Robin leads us
somehow to meeting the love of Ted’s life! But we are stuck on a ride where we
don’t know how the story leads to the end, and it’s an inter
esting
tale. Ted, Robin, Lily and Marshall are all great people, despite their
mistakes, and you feel like you’ve known them all of your life. Barney is the
cartoonish friend that you tend to avoid, but have to invite when you really
want a party. All of the characters are loveable, and the series is incredibly
funny. Barney mostly comes up with the catch phrases of the series, but the
others do their fair share. Things like “cockamouse,” “Suit up!,” “Slap Bet,”
“Crazy Eyes,” and “Swarley” should go down in comedic history! If you aren’t
already laughing, you know you want to know what I’m talking about!
Now midway through it’s second season, How I Met Your Mother has just recently released it’s first season in a DVD boxed set. Extras contain episode commentaries by series creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas, director Pam Fryman and the series cast, all of which were hilarious and contained key little secrets, like the fact that it was believed that a certain guest actress’s name sounded more like a noise that you would make if you saw a beautiful girl. There is a Yearbook featurette that explains the beginning of the idea for this series. Also featured are a hilarious blooper reel and 2 music videos.
Whether you have seen the series before or this is your first time, you should definitely check out this DVD for the extras and just to watch the season again for even more laughs. I didn’t know what I was getting into when I started watching How I Met Your Mother. I thought it wasn’t going to be good…but it was great. It didn’t have the same sentimentality as Friends did to me, but the point is that it doesn’t have to. How I Met Your Mother is quirky and hilarious in inventive ways. This is definitely a fun show to keep an eye on.
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