How I Met Your Father

Starring: Hilary Duff (30 episodes), Christopher Lowell (30 episodes), Francia Raisa (30 episodes), Suraj Sharma (30 episodes), Tom Ainsley (30 episodes), Tien Tran (30 episodes), Kim Cattrall (30 episodes), Josh Peck (13 episodes), Ashley Reyes (13 episodes), Aby James (9 episodes), Leighton Meester (8 episodes), Stony Blyden (8 episodes), Michael Cimino (5 episodes), Daniel Augustin (5 episodes), Paget Brewster (4 episodes), Clark Gregg (3 episodes), John Corbett (3 episodes), Meaghan Rath (3 episodes), Neil Patrick Harris (2 episodes), Kyle MacLachlan (2 episodes), Mark Consuelos (2 episodes), Cobie Smulders (1 episode), Lance Bass (1 episode), Meghan Trainor (1 episode), Joey Fatone (1 episode), Rob Gronkowski (1 episode), Mason Gooding (1 episode)
Directed by: Pamela Fryman (19 episodes), Phill Lewis (3 episodes), Michael J. Shea (2 episodes)
Rating: TV-14
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
2022-2023

Seasons Seen:
Tim: 1 - 2

Summary: A woman (Kim Cattrall) tells her son a prolonged story about her friends growing up, ultimately to tell him how she met his father.

Review:
Tim: How I Met Your Mother is one of my all-time favorite comedy series. That series had ups-and-downs (the last season was mostly just down), but it introduced these incredible characters who grew to be like your own friends. It consistently made you laugh, made you think, tugged at your heartstrings on occasion. So, I was ecstatic when Hulu decided to do a spinoff series, How I Met Your Father. I've been around long enough to go into this series with tempered expectations. But, if this show could be half as good as the original, I'd be pleased. Unfortunately, it didn't get close to half as good. The writing throughout this series was atrocious. The characters weren't good. The series was never terrible, but it constantly underwhelmed me. I rejoiced when it was cancelled after two seasons.

What's frustrating is that this series did make some advances in areas that were easy to criticize about HIMYM. First off, I love the increased diversity of the cast here. It felt more more modern, more appropriate for the times. Secondly, it was nice casting Kim Cattrall in her role. It added a unique flavor actually hearing the grown-up Sophia telling her story at times. Cattrall doesn't have much to do, but her recurring presence was welcome. Unfortunately, it all goes wrong from there. The writing was just bad. I rarely ever laughed at this series. Most of the jokes were recycled or just plain unfunny. The characters were painfully constructed and never felt believable or authentic. The cast wasn't great. This is a series that had a blueprint laid out for it, but it could never capture 1/10th of the magic of the original. The other odd thing is that Pamela Fryman, who directed most of the episodes of HIMYM returns here- she directs most of these episodes, too. So, it's not Fryman who is at fault- it's the writing, the scripts, the characters.

Hilary Duff comes off looking the best here. I think she was a worthwhile character. Sophie had issues at times, but I generally felt she had depth as a character. I liked Duff in the role and I wanted to hear more of her story. The writing consistently failed Duff, consistently hamstrung her ability to connect. Duff fights through that with an energetic and kind performance. You like Sophie and as the series went on, you connected more and more with her. Josh Radnor was a big reason why the original series worked and this one found a strong lead in Duff. The problems really come with her friends.

Francia Raisa was actually decent as her best friend. I think the series took some time to figure this character out, but once she settled down, Raisa did some nice things in the role. There were effective moments throughout the two seasons where Duff and Raisa had these incredible moments together. Their female friendship was important to the story and whenever the two of them spent time together, good things would happen. Raisa drove me absolutely crazy at times with bad, over-the-top acting, but the quieter moments were important. Christopher Lowell was pretty awful. It felt like he was trying to channel Radnor, but his acting consistently made me angry. His performance is always too over-the-top and ridiculous. It's like Lowell was unsure of what a younger grown-up male was supposed to be like. The script does him no favors, as Jesse is insufferable at times. But, Lowell had a golden opportunity here to make this character matter and he continually fell on his face. His role felt so critical and he comes across as constantly underwhelming. Playing his best friend, Suraj Sharma was definitely a stronger part of the series. His demeanor, the energy he brought to the role felt authentic and interesting. Sharma is more restrained for much of his performance, so when he needs to be over-the-top, you could go with it. He grounds his character well and established himself as one of the best characters on the show. I think about turning on some other movie or series someday- if I saw Lowell pop up, I'd cringe. If Sharma was there, I'd lean in. His performance worked and he was one of the better parts of the series. Of course, he's relegated too much to the sidelines. We needed more Sharma and less Lowell. Tom Ainsley did some great work at times as Charlie. The writing constantly made me look terrible, but he had these nice breakthrough moments. I hated his character at times, but I felt for Ainsley- he tried so hard to be funny and make this work. Ainsley did have the funniest moment of the entire series (in my opinion), when he delivers a pitch-perfect delivery of a line about "shredding his taint". It's the one memorable moment in the whole series where I laughed out loud and played that over-and-over. Ainsley doesn't seem great in this series, but I recognized he was better than he seemed. That brings me to Tien Tran's awful performance. I couldn't stand Ellen for much of the series. The writing was terrible for her, no doubt. But Tran seemed like a clown- her delivery was never believable, it was always way too animated, too disconnected from reality. Her character needed to be better for this series to work. Tran's performance almost always failed. It's maybe a bit unfair (but appropriate) to compare this cast to the original. HIMYM had a perfect cast, most of whom have gone on to have successful careers. I cannot imagine the same will be true here. HIMYF's main cast will have some success, but most will disappear forever.

The various supporting cast was probably a bit better. I have no idea why Ashley Reyes' character was written the way she was. Reyes was interesting, so of course, she's only in 13 episodes and barely makes an impact on the series. She's show up and I would say, "Oh yeah, I forgot she was in this". Josh Peck adds a great supporting performance. The writing for his character was bad, but Peck insisted on being better than the words on the page. His performance accomplishes that and I always looked forward to seeing him. Leighton Meester had an awful character, but her performance makes an impact on the series. I loved seeing Paget Brewster and Clark Gregg here. They're only in the series for a handful of episodes, but they were among the best of the series. I did love seeing Neil Patrick Harris and Cobie Smulders reprise their roles, but admittedly, they are so limited. Still, I adored any connection this series had with the original. Michael Cimino added a humorous supporting performance and it was fun seeing John Corbett in a few episodes. While there's definitely some great supporting performances, they're all too limited to make a big difference.

I know I could go on, but this series was mostly unfunny and I struggled to get through each episode. I didn't like this group of friends, I never believed in their characters. The series makes almost no impact on us. I will admit that the back half of the second season did get better. There were a few good episodes and several higher-level decent ones. I don't know if it was a sign of the series hitting its stride- even with the uptick in quality, you still had clunker episodes in there, too. When the series was cancelled, I was glad. We only got 30 episodes here (as opposed to HIMYM's 208). There's no way to look at this attempt as anything other than a failure.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: N/A



If You Enjoyed This Series, We Recommend: How I Met Your Mother, Community, Scrubs, Ted Lasso