Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Wait for it....

I never watched How I Met Your Mother when it was on the air. I resisted when people told me it was totally my thing. Then, a few weeks back I fell in a Netflix hole, and binge-watched several seasons in a weekend - and now I'm hooked.

If only someone had told me how similar HIMYM is to Friends, I'd have been on board years ago!

I know millennials don't like the comparison. I understand - no one likes to hear a show that defines their twenties is similar to another show....that defined another generation's twenties. There's no way people that old could have ever been twenty and cool. Right?

But I can show some parallels. Don't believe me? Watch. It'll be legen...wait for it!...dary!

Since I am still watching older seasons, I did not watch Monday's series finale - but I did read the spoilers. One bit is mentioned below, so -

****SPOILER ALERT****

First we meet Ted Ross - uber-smart professor, often sharing facts he loves, but others consider boring and useless, who is constantly correcting others. Ross Ted is a hopeless romantic who dates, but never commits because his heart belongs to Rachel Robin, the beautiful new-comer who enters their lives in the pilot episode from a foreign land - Long Island Canada - and grabs his heart. The two would go back and forth between dating one another, even living together as roommates at one point, before eventually finding their way back to each other in the final episode.

At one point, Rachel Robin even dates one of Ross Ted's best friends, Joey Barney, the womanizing player who seems like he'll never settle down. That is until the day he realizes he's in love with Rachel Robin.

Then there's Chandler Marshall - the guy who wants to go along with his friends' schemes, even though he can't lie and eventually backs out. Mostly, he makes sarcastic comments. He's in love, and eventually marries and starts a family, with "group mom" Monica Lily, the responsible, dependable one who keeps the group together with her cooking and her schemes.

Of course, the two TV shows aren't exactly alike. A few "major" differences:

• Five friends instead of six
• They meet at a bar instead of a coffee shop
• The first group couple starts the series off that way, rather than connecting mid-series
• There is never any mention of rent control regarding Ted and Marshall's apartment, leaving it unclear how a struggling architect and an unemployed law student could afford a Manhattan apartment with that many rooms.

Most TV - especially sitcom TV - follows a formula. Why?

If it's not broke - don't fix it.

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