As I sat down to write my How I Met Your Father review, I thought about the old saying, “If you have nothing nice to say…” Well, the actors are all good at their jobs. There, I’ve said something nice.
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How I Met Your Mother ran for nine seasons, and now Hulu is kicking off a whole new series about telling the story of a father. To be clear this is not a reboot, and by the end of episode 1 it’s very clear that this series exists in the same universe as the original series.
Where the original series had us watching the kids listen to an off-screen father tell the story of how their dad met their mom, this series has the mother front and center in the year 2050 being played by Kim Cattrall. Following a bit too much wine, she calls her son and starts to tell him the story beginning in 2022. (And get ready to hear the year about a thousand more times.)
Sophie (Hillary Duff) has been on 87 Tinder dates so far in the past year, and she’s making her way to her 88th when she meets an Uber drive and his friend that will change her life. Where the original series was focused primarily on friends Ted had in his life for years, only Val (Francia Raisa) has been around Sophie for any length of time. But by the end of first episode we’re supposed to believe all of these people have formed so sort of life-long bond.
How I Met Your Father continues the trend of the original series of using a laugh track, but it feels even louder here and more grating. It just doesn’t feel right in this day and age and heavily distracts from what is happening on the screen.
And perhaps the laugh track could be forgiven if the jokes in the series were actually funny. Over the course of four episodes, I had exactly one laugh. Nothing else even came close to even being amusing. And at times it feels as though the writers know this and attempt to cover it up with swearing and partial nudity.
From this sampling, the series just feels out of place, out of time, and out of ideas.
How I Met Your Father will debut on Hulu on Jan. 18.
DISCLAIMER: Hulu provided The Nerdy with four episodes of How I Met Your Father for the purposes of this review. We watched all four episodes before beginning this review.
