By Christopher James
Hilary Duff headlines Hulu's new show, "How I Met Your Father," a spin-off of the CBS hit.Do you have a favorite sweater? It’s something that always makes you feel good, keeps you warm, shrinks in the wash but you still try to wear it because you love it? We all have these comfort items that we love even past expiration dates. In terms of TV, this perfectly describes CBS’ How I Met Your Mother, a charming comedy that we all stuck with longer than we should’ve in anticipation for a reveal that soured much that came before it. Thus, Hulu’s new series How I Met Your Father has a lot to live up to. How can it re-engage a fan base burned by the finale while still replicating the fun breeziness of the original...
In fact, what made the original so watchable was its reliance on in-jokes, as the audience became the sixth person in this tight-knit group of New York friends. Does this new entry capture the spirit of the original?
It’s safe to assume that we don’t have another nine season wonder on our hands. Sure, it isn’t a reheated version where the archetypes from the original are gender flipped for a more modern audience.
All great love stories start with a Tinder date and an Uber, right?
How I Met Your Father features new characters and new stories, they just take place within the same framework and universe as the original. Unfortunately, its bones are as creaky and rusty as the jokes that pepper each episode. The high point of most shows would be a boozy Kim Cattrall, our narrator, trying to work the future version of zoom. Unfortunately, it is mostly downhill from there.
It all starts with a Tinder date. Well that’s not true. It starts with a framing device where a wine-swilling Kim Cattrall decides to tell her son the story of How I Met Your Father (“this time with the sex parts”). Back to the present. Sophie (Hilary Duff in 2022, Kim Cattrall in 2050) is on the way to a Tinder date she is excited about with Ian (Daniel Augustin). Despite countless bad Tinder dates, Sophie holds onto hope that Ian will be the one. They text every day, they share inside jokes, everything is shaping up right for her. Of course we learn all this information through a conversation she has with her Uber driver, a sad sack named Jesse (Chris Lowell) who is also driving his best friend, Sid (Suraj Sharma, from Life of Pi), to propose to his girlfriend.
If we aren’t going to get the “adult Lizzie Mcguire” series, then we’ll have to settle for How I Met Your Father in terms of a Hilary Duff showcase. Younger proved she has the chops to lead a TV show, though How I Met Your Father hasn’t quite tapped into that potential. It comes closest in a later episode that finds Sophie caught between the type of 30 year old she wants to be. Is she the refined, put together 30 year old or the one that still loves a good trashy party? We’re meeting her at a crossroads that she could convincingly go down.
Sophie's world jumps off the page more than the other friend group, thanks to fun performances from Francia Raisa as Valentina and Tom Ainsley as Charlie.
It’s hard to see how the rest of the ensemble will form. Certain characters pop more than others, but the group dynamics that kept How I Met Your Mother afloat aren’t present yet here. The perk of the original show was that Robin (Cobie Smulders) was the one outsider being welcomed into a tight group of four. The central group in How I Met Your Father feels a bit large, especially since there are two factions learning how to mix. Charlie (Tom Ainsley) nails the fish-out-of-water humor as a British UK millionaire who gave it all up for Sophie’s flighty roommate, Valentina (Francia Raisa).
It’s hard to evaluate How I Met Your Father not on two curves. Comparing it to the original is unfair and, well, unoriginal. There’s enough distance for it to feel nostalgic, but separate. The second curve is harder to escape. What role do traditional multicam sitcoms play in our current media landscape? The one-liners and laugh tracks of How I Met Your Father aren’t nostalgic, they’re clunky. Groaners outnumber laughs by a wide margin, even though the plucky cast does what it can to salvage everything. Creators Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger managed to make Love Victor a sweet, thornier follow up to the heartwarming, yet saccharine, film Love Simon. However, How I Met Your Father doesn’t feel of the same moment as that show. It wants to be about navigating that moment between 29 and 30, but it feels like it’s decades away from that milestone. C
How I Met Your Father premieres with two episodes on Hulu on Tuesday, January 18th. New episodes will air weekly on Tuesdays.
