I’m going to tell you about a sitcom, and I want you to guess what show I’m talking about: A handful of 20-somethings from a northeastern city congregate daily to catch up with each other and enjoy their favorite drink hole. Each of these characters has a niche and a distinct personality, from the big, oafy guy to the snarky yuppie. The show centers around the dark-haired, lovelorn sap who is a bit too sensitive for his own good. He pines after a gorgeous blonde.
This show primarily focuses on the romantic lives and varying philosophies about love among the characters, but also takes time for each of the characters to deal with their jobs and develop professionally. Much of the script is driven by sexual comedy that is both praised and criticized as edgy, but the show elevates itself from the guilty pleasure territory with real heart from actors and writers.
Did you figure out which show I was describing? As you probably guessed, there was a trick behind the guessing game. It turns out that I was describing a whole subset of shows, popularized by classics like Cheers and Friends.
There’s another one of these types of shows on the air right now — How I Met Your Mother. On the surface, it treads tired and derivative ground. How did such an obvious Friends clone ever catch on? How has it survived through four seasons, and how do its ratings keep increasing?
The odd thing about How I Met Your Mother is, despite a premise that verges on plagiarism, it is a very original and atypical sitcom.
To really get a handle of the ways How I Met Your Mother is distinct from its often formulaic genre and see why the show is legitimately worthwhile, one must take a step back and gain some perspective about some of the changes that television as a medium has seen during the past decade. What happened to television between 1994, the debut of Friends, and 2005, the debut of How I Met Your Mother, that breathed new life into the genre?
The Sopranos revolution of 1999 is what happened. With the premier of HBO’s TV gangsters, the bar for television quality was raised. The Sopranos was stunning both in its brilliance and consistency. Though the show was gritty and violent on a pricey premium cable channel, it had a widespread impact on the paradigm of television as a medium.
Network television and the comedy genre finally figured out how to harness this sophistication and storytelling depth in 2003 when sitcom Arrested Development kicked off. The show, which survived three seasons, took advantage of some incredible comedy devices. The show used a narrator to add a layer to the comedy, it toyed with a non-linear chronology and it used meta-humor to call out and make fun of some TV cliches. The most important characteristic of the show was a dense web of interlocking and self-referential jokes.
CBS picked up How I Met Your Mother, led by Jason Segel and Neil Patrick Harris, in 2005, and it is one of unfortunately few sitcoms to actually experiment with this comedy inspired by Arrested Development. The show unfolds as a blend of progressive, post-Sopranos storytelling, along with tried-and-true comedy atmosphere that includes a laugh track and snarky asides.
It is this blend between the immediately familiar sitcom feel and the novel television techniques that makes How I Met Your Mother unique and wonderful. Consider this season’s episode “Three Days of Snow.” Two characters find themselves in charge of their favorite bar for a night, and two others struggle to come to grips with the fact that cheesy rituals are fading from their romance.
It all seems like fare that could be on any sort of unspectacular comedy, until you actually see the episode. During the first 10 minutes alone, about 15 flashbacks, flash-forwards, paused scenes with clever narration and in-joke callbacks to previous episodes occur. Then, in the closing minutes of the episode, the writers pull out an extremely satisfying and hilarious twist that takes the continuous timeline of the show and turns it in on itself.
Another episode that takes advantage of clever storytelling is this season’s “The Front Porch.” Its plot progressed in real time, but weaved in a series of interlocking stories narrated by the characters.
Joke-wise, the show covers well-worn and mostly unoriginal ground. Think three-parts Friends to one-part Seinfeld. The writing is regularly hilarious, though, even if the show is not perfectly consistent episode-to-episode. Even considering the show’s flaws, the clever plot devices and the excellent acting have allowed How I Met Your Mother to emerge as one of the most satisfying and exciting comedies on television.
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