How I Met Your Mother
How I Met Your Mother (often abbreviated as HIMYM) is an American sitcom, created by Craig Thomas and Carter Bays for CBS. The series, which aired from September 19, 2005, to March 31, 2014, follows the main character, Ted Mosby, and his group of friends in New York City's Manhattan. As a framing device, Ted, in 2030, recounts to his son, Luke, and daughter, Penny, the events from September 2005 to May 2013 that led him to meet their mother. How I Met Your Mother was a joint production by Bays & Thomas Productions and 20th Century Fox Television, and syndicated by 20th Television (now Disney-ABC Domestic Television).
How I Met Your Mother
- Pamela Fryman
- Rob Greenberg
- Michael Shea
- Neil Patrick Harris
"Hey, Beautiful" by The Solids
United States
English
9
208 (list of episodes)
- Carter Bays
- Craig Thomas
- Rob Greenberg
- Pamela Fryman
- Eileen Heisler
- DeAnn Heline
- Phil Lord
- Greg Malins
- Christopher Miller
- Chris Harris
- Stephen Lloyd
- Kourtney Kang
- Jamie Rhonheimer
- Chuck Tatham
- Randy Cordray
- Suzy Mamann Greenberg
- Chris Harris
- Jamie Rhonheimer
- Kourtney Kang
- Brenda Hsueh
- Theresa Mulligan Rosenthal
- Stewart Halpern-Fingerhut
- Rob Greenberg
- Tami Sagher
Steven V. Silver (pilot)
Christian La Fountaine
Sue Federman
22 minutes
September 19, 2005 –
March 31, 2014
The series was loosely inspired by Thomas and Bays' friendship when they both lived in New York.[1] The vast majority of the episodes (196 out of 208) were directed by Pamela Fryman. The other directors were Rob Greenberg (7 episodes), Michael Shea (4 episodes), and Neil Patrick Harris (1 episode).
Known for its unique structure, humor, and incorporation of dramatic elements, How I Met Your Mother was popular throughout its run. It received positive reviews initially, but reception became more mixed as the seasons went on.[2][3][4] The show was nominated for 91 awards and received 21. In 2010, Alyson Hannigan won the People's Choice Award for Favorite TV Comedy Actress. In 2012, seven years after its premiere, the series won the People's Choice Award for Favorite Network TV Comedy, and Neil Patrick Harris won the award for Favorite TV Comedy Actor twice.
Premise[edit]
The series follows the adventures of Ted Mosby (played by Josh Radnor) and his love life as a single man. His stories are narrated by Bob Saget as Ted Mosby 25 years later as he tells them to his adolescent children - Luke and Penny.
The story goes into a flashback and starts in 2005 with 27-year-old Ted Mosby living in New York City and working as an architect. The narrative deals primarily with his best friends. These include the long-lasting couple Marshall Eriksen (Jason Segel), a law student and Lily Aldrin (Alyson Hannigan), a kindergarten teacher, who have been dating for almost nine years when Marshall proposes, as well as womanizing playboy Barney Stinson (Neil Patrick Harris), and Canadian news reporter Robin Scherbatsky (Cobie Smulders). All of the characters' lives are entwined. The series explores many storylines, including a "will they or won't they" relationship between Robin and each of the two single male friends, Marshall and Lily's relationship, and the ups and downs of the characters' careers.
The show's frame story depicts Ted (voice of Bob Saget, uncredited) verbally retelling the story to his son Luke (David Henrie) and daughter Penny (Lyndsy Fonseca) as they sit on the couch in the year 2030. This future-set frame is officially the show's "present day", and How I Met Your Mother exploits this framing device in numerous ways: to depict and re-depict events from multiple points of view; to set up jokes using quick and sometimes multiple flashbacks nested within the oral retelling; to substitute visual, verbal, or aural euphemisms for activities Ted does not want to talk about with his children (sexual practices, use of illicit substances, vulgar language, etc.).
While the traditional love story structure begins when the romantic leads first encounter each other, How I Met Your Mother does not introduce Ted's wife (Cristin Milioti) until the eighth-season finale and only announces her full name, Tracy McConnell, during the series finale. Her first name, Tracy, is mentioned in the first season, at the end of episode nine.
Production[edit]
How I Met Your Mother was inspired by Carter Bays and Craig Thomas' idea to "write about our friends and the stupid stuff we did in New York", where they previously worked as writers for Late Show with David Letterman, among others.[1] The two drew from their friendship in creating the characters. Ted is based loosely on Bays, and Marshall and Lily are based loosely on Thomas and his wife.[5][6] Thomas' wife Rebecca was initially reluctant to have a character based on her but agreed if they could get Alyson Hannigan to play her. Hannigan was looking to do more comedy work and was available.[5] Josh Radnor and Jason Segel, who were cast as Ted and Marshall, respectively, were not well known, although Segel had been a cast member on the short-lived Freaks and Geeks and a recurring guest star on Judd Apatow's follow-up show, Undeclared. The role of Barney was initially envisioned as a "John Belushi-type character"[7] before Neil Patrick Harris won the role after being invited to an audition by the show's casting director Megan Branman.[8] Jim Parsons was almost cast for the role before it ultimately went to Neil Patrick Harris. When speaking about the role Parrisons said "Look, it all worked out fine ... Neil's better for the part, lets be honest," Pamela Fryman invited Bob Saget to be the voiceover narrator, Future Ted, explaining to him that the show would be like The Wonder Years but "kind of into the future".[9] Saget either went to the television studio and recorded the narration while watching the episode, or did so separately and rerecorded with the episode if necessary.[10] He normally did not attend table readings but did so for the last episode.[11]
In multiple interviews Bays and Thomas have stated that "a pretty famous actress"[12] turned down the role of Robin, who they revealed in February 2014 was Jennifer Love Hewitt.[13] They then cast the unknown Cobie Smulders; Bays and Thomas later said, "Thank God we did for a million reasons... when Ted's seeing her for the first time, America's seeing her for the first time—the intrigue of that propelled the show going forward and kept the show alive".[12] Although Ted is initially smitten by Robin in the pilot, it is quickly established at the end of the episode that she is not the mother, which Thomas said was done so they would not repeat the "will they or won't they" Ross and Rachel storyline from Friends.[6]
According to an Entertainment Weekly article, the writers adopted facets of each main actor's personality and incorporated them into their characters. This includes Neil Patrick Harris' skills with magic, Jason Segel's passion for songwriting, Alyson Hannigan's absent-mindedness while pregnant, and Josh Radnor's intellectualism.[14]
MacLaren's, an Irish bar in the middle of New York City, in which a lot of the show is set, is loosely based on four favorite bars of Bays, Thomas, and others' from the Late Show staff. Others include: McGee's, a Midtown tavern near the Ed Sullivan Theater where the Late Show is taped; McHale's, a legendary Hell's Kitchen bar which closed in 2006; Chumley's, a since-closed historic Greenwich Village pub; and Fez, another closed bar on the Upper West Side.[15] McGee's had a mural that Bays and Thomas both liked and wanted to incorporate into the show.[16] The name for the bar is from Carter Bays' assistant, Carl MacLaren; the bartender in the show is also named Carl.[17]
Episodes were generally shot over a three-day period in the Los Angeles-based Soundstage Studio 22[18] and featured upwards of 50 scenes with quick transitions and flashbacks. However, the "Pilot" episode was filmed at CBS Radford.[19] The laugh track was later created by recording an audience being shown the final edited episode. Thomas claimed that shooting before a live audience would have been impossible because of the structure of the show and the numerous flashforwards in each episode and because doing so "would blur the line between 'audience' and 'hostage situation'".[20] Later seasons started filming in front of an audience on occasion, when smaller sets were used.
The theme song is a portion of "Hey Beautiful" by The Solids, of which Bays and Thomas are members. Episodes from season 1 generally started with the opening credits. A cold opening has been used since season 2. Viewers then occasionally see Ted's children on a couch and hear him talking to them, telling the story of how he met their mother. Alternatively, scenes from previous episodes or shots of New York City with Ted narrating over the top are shown. Thomas has stated that Future Ted is an unreliable narrator, since he is trying to tell a story that happened over 20 years earlier;[21] this has been a plot point in several episodes including "The Goat", "Oh Honey", "How I Met Everyone Else", and "The Mermaid Theory". Nevertheless, Thomas has also emphasized maintaining a coherent and consistent universe and trying to avoid continuity errors, a problem he noticed in other shows.[22]
A scene relating to the identity of the mother, involving Ted's future children, was filmed in 2006 for the show's eventual series finale.[23] This was done because the teenage actors portraying them would be adults by the time the final season was shot.[21]
During the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike, How I Met Your Mother shut down production; when the strike ended, the show returned on March 17, 2008, with nine new episodes.[24] The network announced a change in the timeslot to 8:30 pm ET/7:30 pm CT, flip-flopping from the summer schedule with The Big Bang Theory.[25] CBS renewed the show for a fourth season on May 14, 2008,[26] which premiered on September 22, 2008.[27]
In September 2008, Lifetime Television announced it had purchased the cable rerun rights to How I Met Your Mother at a rate of about $725,000 per episode.[28] The four-year syndication contract stipulated that the studio deliver at least 110 half-hour episodes by 2010 and allowed for up to eight seasons of the show. At the end of the fourth season only 88 episodes had been produced, and a further 22 episodes were required, ensuring that there would be a fifth season.[29] There also was a complication with the writing of the show because of actress Alyson Hannigan's absence due to her pregnancy; in response, the writers had to create episodes that did not include one of the five main characters.[30] On May 19, 2009, the fifth-season renewal was announced.[31] May 20, 2009, CBS announced that How I Met Your Mother would again be aired at 8 pm, leading into the new comedy Accidentally on Purpose. On January 12, 2010, the show aired its 100th episode, and CBS announced that the series would return for a sixth season.[32]
Upon learning that the series would be syndicated, Thomas said, "We're thrilled that it will live on in other forms," and they were proud of the show and it was great to see the strong demand.[33]
Reruns of the series began airing on local U.S. broadcast television stations and on Chicago-based cable superstation WGN America on September 14, 2010. Featured in these airings are vanity cards previously unseen in the CBS and Lifetime airings due to marginalized credit sequences used by the two networks. Shown in between the closing credits and the production company credits, these vanity cards show portions of "The Bro Code", a list of rules frequently referenced by Harris' character, Barney Stinson, on how men should interact with each other, with an emphasis on activities involving pursuing members of the opposite sex. The opening theme song for the syndicated reruns is also slightly edited, running shorter and not using all the pictures seen in the opening montage that runs on DVD and the original CBS broadcasts. The episodes are also slightly shorter, to allow for more commercials during a timeslot in syndication.
One of the series' traditions involved giving guest roles to actors from various Joss Whedon productions, many of whom co-starred with Hannigan on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Bays attributed this to their being "huge fans" and to those casts representing "a big talent pool".[34]
On March 4, 2011, CBS announced that the show had been renewed for two more seasons,[35] with the seventh season premiering with back-to-back episodes on September 19, 2011.[36]
On July 27, 2011, the FX channel announced it had picked up the series for syndication. On September 5, 2011, FX began airing the series.[37]
Cast members had said the show would not run longer than eight seasons,[38] but a ninth season was secured in December 2012 amid tense negotiations with the studios and the actors—especially Segel, who had wanted to move on to other ventures after the eighth season.[39][40] During these negotiations, Bays and Thomas originally approached the eighth season as if it were the show's last, but had a "Plan B" in case the show were renewed.[41] After producers secured a ninth season, they implemented plans to secretly cast the titular future mother, with Cristin Milioti eventually winning the role, having bested at least two other contenders.[12] Milioti first appeared in the last scene in the season eight finale "Something New" and was a regular cast member in the show's final season.[42] This was the first time the show had expanded its core roster.[42][43]
In January 2013, How I Met Your Mother was renewed for a ninth season.[44] Carter Bays told Entertainment Weekly that season 9 would "feature some of the most non-linear episodes we've ever done".[45]
The season 9 premiere episode aired on September 23, 2013, and the one-hour series finale aired on March 31, 2014.[46]
Syndication[edit]
How I Met Your Mother aired on Nick at Nite from September 8, 2014, to June 26, 2015, and TV Land from June 29, 2015, to 2018. It also aired on FX from September 5, 2011, to 2019, and Lifetime from 2009 to 2018.
Critical reception[edit]
The first season was met with generally favorable reviews from critics, although some compared the series unfavorably to Friends. On Metacritic, a review aggregation site that collected 25 reviews for the series, it scored a 69 out of 100.[48] Michael Abernethy of PopMatters gave the season a negative review, writing that "The comedy that does occur in How I Met Your Mother isn't enough to compensate for its inconsistencies."[49] Tom Shales of The Washington Post gave the season a lukewarm review, saying it's "a little better than most other sitcoms, past and present -- especially those featuring wacky urban friends in their twenties experiencing the bittersweet mysteries of life."[50] Melanie Macfarlane of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer gave the season a positive review, saying the show "may not break any comedic ground, but it's the sort of comfortable, reliable hitter CBS needs on Monday nights."[51]
The second season received critical acclaim. Staci Krause of IGN gave the season a positive review,[52] calling it "great".[53]
The third season was met with mostly positive reviews.[54] Michelle Zoromski of IGN gave the season a positive review, saying that "the season was fun and clever, a good, consistent flow from the first two seasons".[55]
The fourth season received critical acclaim. Michelle Zoromski of IGN gave Season 4 an overall rating of 8.5 out of 10, stating that "This fourth season seemed to settle down the chase for the titular mother. While Ted was busy dating Stella, the gang settled into many stand alone episodes which were every bit as entertaining as episodes devoted to Ted's love life". Zoromski went on to say: "A stellar Robin-Marshall episode, titled 'Little Minnesota', makes it clear that these two do not get enough screen time together. With Robin homesick and unemployed (and at risk of being deported), this pairing brought out the best Robin Sparkles reference of the season, when Marshall leads a rousing karaoke version of 'Let's Go to the Mall!'"[56]
The fifth season received mixed reviews. Cindy McLennan of Television Without Pity gave the season a mixed review, and at the end of the season wrote: "I'm okay with any given season not being primarily focused on mother-meeting, but this season, the characters seemed to regress -- particularly Barney and Ted. Usually, when a season ends, I have to deal with a week or two weeks' worth of letdown. Right now, all I'm feeling is relief."[57]
The sixth season received generally positive reviews.[58] Justin Fowler of Later Reviews gave the season a positive review, saying that the season was "a pretty good season of television" and better than the "poor" fifth season. He also said that "Seventeen out of the 24 episodes are what I would consider good".[59]
The seventh season received mixed reviews. Alan Sepinwall gave the season a mixed review and criticized the flash-forwards throughout the season, saying that "the show is just much, much stronger when its stories dwell on matters of the present or the past, and where the writers don't have to act like magicians trying to keep the audience from figuring out how the trick works. And the finale affirmed that belief for me. The parts that had little or nothing to do with things to come were quite good; the parts that were all about the future made me roll my eyes and ask, for the umpteenth time, 'Really? This is where you're going with this?'"[60]
The eighth season received mixed reviews and is often considered the worst season of the series. Rotten Tomatoes reported that 54% of critics gave the show a positive review. The consensus reads: "How I Met Your Mother wears out its welcome this season, with an anticlimactic reveal and rote, less-than-fruitful humor."[61]
The ninth season received mixed-to-positive reviews from critics, though fans found it worse than prior seasons.[62] Rotten Tomatoes reported that 80% of critics gave the show a positive review, with an average rating of 7.3 out of 10.[63] Gareth Mitchell at "House of Geekery" responded negatively, mostly criticizing the structure of the season, stating that they are "struggling to come up with stories that last out the 22 minutes".[64]
The finale of the show received a largely negative reaction from critics and fans. Some complained that the last few seasons (particularly the final season before the finale which took place over one weekend) had built towards an end game that was discarded within the hour-long episode, while others defended it as true to both the initial concept of the show and to life itself.[65] In the years succeeding its airing, it continued to be singled out as one of the worst television series finales,[66][67][68] e.g., topping USA Today's list of "Worst Series Finales of All Time".[69]
Seasons 1 through 9 were available to stream on Netflix in Austria, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Latin America, Lebanon, Turkey, Spain, Sweden, the Philippines, Romania, Russia, and the UK; season 9 was released on September 26, 2014. But they were ultimately pulled and relocated to Disney+.[153][154] Seasons 1-9 were removed from Netflix in the United States as of November 13, 2017 and are now available on Hulu.[155] As of March 2020, Seasons 1 through 9 are available on Amazon Prime Video in Brazil.[156] Seasons 1 through 9 are available to stream on Hotstar in India.[157] As of December 31, 2020, seasons 1-9 are removed from Netflix in The Netherlands. Seasons 1 to 9 were Previously available on Netflix, Stan and Star on Disney+ in Australia. But Disney has pulled the show from both Stan and Netflix making Disney+ the only streaming service in Australia to watch the show. All nine seasons are available to stream on Hulu and Amazon Prime Video in the US. Repeats in Australia are often shown on 7flix and on 7plus and are shown on Fox Comedy.