Ever since Friends ended back in May 2004, sitcoms
started to copy the format that Martha Kauffman and David Crane used
back in 1994--get in a group of actors, make them be friends on a tv
show, put them in a familiar location (coffee-shop, bar, diner, etc.)
and earn loads of money making people laugh.
Except, it's not really that simple. And that's why so many TV shows failed (miserably) after Friends. They were either trying too hard to become Friends, or just not trying hard enough.
Then in the fall of 2005 (yes, that long ago!), Carter Bays and Craig Thomas created How I Met Your Mother,
a show whose title explains what the past 9 years of our lives have
been about. Ted Mosby, in 2030, sits his two teenage kids on the couch
and starts telling him the story of he met their mother.
And then we flashback to present-time.
It's
been one hell-of-a-ride with this show. The ensemble cast is pretty
much the perfect group of friends to hang out with (or, in this case, to
look at) and the realism that this show tries to show is incredibly
amusing to watch. There are no sitcoms out there right now with such
"realistic" yet entertaining plotlines as this show.
Now we get to the good stuff, the stuff that really drew me in. The creativity.
No show out there is as creative as the ideas that come out of Carter
Bays and Craig Thomas (who, by the way, claim that this show is based on
actual events from their lives). HIMYM isn't afraid to take risks, to make us cry and laugh at the same time, to be so crazy yet real all in once place.
Recent
episodes like last season 8's "The Time Travelers" which aired on March
25th 2013 show that creativity and beautiful writing is what drives
this show the most.
This episode, which is called a "bottle episode"
because it basically takes place in one scene during the entire course
of the episode, took the show to a whole new level when it decided to
have two of its male characters talking with their future selves as they
ponder whether or not to go to a show where robots wrestle.
While
the entire episode was hilarious and top-notch with one-liners and
outstanding performances from the entire cast, the last 5 minutes pretty
much stole the show. Barney Stinson tells Ted that "this entire night"
isn't happening right now. It all happened five years ago, and right now
you (Ted) are sitting all alone at the bar while everyone else is busy
with other things (babies, weddings, etc.)
This alone sends a
chill down your spine. Then, Future Ted narrates and says that if he
could go back in time and change his actions, there's no way in hell he
would've gone to that Robots vs Wrestlers shows. Instead, he
would've gone to his future wife and tell her that he loves her, and
that he always will. Forever and beyond.
Instantly after the
episode ended, the Internet was buzzing with fans discussing what those
final moments mean. Is the Mother dead in 2030? Is Ted dead in 2030? Or is it just a ploy at making us think over our heads?
Whatever it was, and whatever comes at us now with the final season, I know that How I Met Your Mother
will not disappoint. And the fact that season 9 will span to a wedding
weekend just shows how far the writers are going to prove that they can
DO ANYTHING.
If you're not familiar with this show, catch up with
all 8 seasons now. And watch as we finally get to the end of the most
romantic story ever, told in reverse.
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