I'm going on this date, and I'm going
to let this gentleman give me the business.
Why are you telling me this?
Because I know it bothers you.
This is How I Met Your Dad.
Not to be confused with the 2022 television
series How I Met Your Father.
Nearly a decade before Hulu launched Hilary Duff's spinoff,
Fox had tried breathing life into a completely different
spinoff that never made it past the pilot episode.
The failure wasn't only due to How I Met Your Mother's poorly
received finale, but rather due to the fact
that How I Met Your Dad falls for the same trap
that so many sitcom spinoffs fall for time and time again.
Same thing, same time, same--
What are either of you-- what's happening inside of the room?
In 2014, the only sitcoms that were really
hitting their stride were Modern Family and the remarkably
consistent New Girl.
Shows like Parks and Rec and How I Met Your Mother
were preparing for their respective series finales.
During these moments, networks have big shoes and even
bigger advertising coffers to fill,
which brings us to a moment in the entertainment
industry known as pilot season.
When it comes to greenlighting a sitcom,
television studios can be relatively risk averse.
The simpler it is to explain your concept,
the easier it is for studio executives
to understand where it might fit into their content rotation.
How I Met Your Mother was one of the most successful sitcoms
on CBS's rotation.
Creating a spin off series likely
seemed like a simple pathway to maintain a similar revenue
stream.
Hey, remember all that money we made
with How I Met Your Mother?
Let's do the same thing again.
The sweet, sweet $5.00.
You're finally mine.
How I Met Your Dad should have been a slam dunk.
The writing team of Craig Thomas and Carter Bays
were returning from How I Met Your Mother,
and they also brought on SNL alum Emily Spievey
to help pen the script.
The show features an attractive, charismatic cast and touches
on some progressive themes.
Writer and indie film darling Greta Gerwig
was cast to play the show's central protagonist, Sally,
with Meg Ryan providing the vocal talent or her older
future self.
I've dusted off this typewriter to tell you the story of How
I Met Your Dad.
Workaholics' Anders Holm plays her ex-husband Gavin,
and the show would have introduced us
to an at-the-time unknown Drew Tarver and Andrew Santino.
On paper, this feels like that right show, right time recipe
that networks searched tirelessly for with little
to no avail.
However, just because something looks good
doesn't mean it's going to taste good.
You're going to love it.
Take a sip.
A chardonnay?
Todd, you're a professional chef.
The pilot episode of How I Met Your Dad
is messy, to say the least.
It feels completely rushed and comes
off as if someone filmed an unedited rough draft
of a screenplay rather than a fully conceptualized television
show.
While there are definitely a few charming moments peppered
in throughout the episode's 22 minute runtime,
the jokes feel largely flat, and the emotional core of the story
is almost nonexistent.
The first five minutes of the show
are like someone trying incredibly hard to get someone
to like them despite their glaring red flags
present the moment they walk into a room.
If we compare this completely over-the-top scene
to the first time we see MacLaren's Pub in
How I Met Your Mother, we can see a stark contrast
in how these locations are set up.
MacLaren's is introduced to us during a humorous and heartfelt
conversation between Barney Stinson and Ted Mosby.
Ted, I'm going to teach you how to live.
Barney, we met at the urinal.
Oh, right.
This conversation sets up these characters in a grounded way,
and the scene relies on the emotions and relationships
to drive the comedy.
The opening scene of How I Met Your Dad
doesn't achieve any of this.
It fails to tell us who these characters are to each other,
why we should care about these characters,
and most importantly, it fails to create characters that
feel like real human beings.
There is nothing endearing about disrupting a bar
with a bullhorn for no reason other
than having found a bullhorn.
On top of that, what 20 something can afford
to buy a bar that has reached maximum occupancy
a round of shots?
The writers spend almost zero time
introducing us to this new cast or telling us
why we should care and instead jump straight
into these zany antics that haven't been earned in any way,
shape, or form.
Take for instance this ringtone bit at the top of the show.
This is my-- this is my favorite song.
It's set to ring tone called xylophone.
This is clearly inserted as one of the catchphrase bits that
became so popular with How I Met Your Mother.
Audience, say it with me.
Legendary!
These bits and catchphrases almost always
serve to deepen the pre-existing character traits present in who
we are observing on screen.
The issue How I Met Your Dad runs into
is that it seems to use these tropes to define
their characters without doing any
of the necessary developmental labor
to actually make them feel real.
Greta Gerwig's character didn't resonate with test audiences.
In an interview with Stephen Colbert,
she revealed that during one test screening,
the audience was given a knob to turn to the right
when they liked something and the left when
they didn't like something.
Apparently, they turned the knob to the left
every time I came on.
[AUDIENCE AWWING]
Oh no.
Rather than set up the series with Sally
dealing with the insurmountable hardship that
is ending a marriage to get us to care for and connect
with her, the pilot essentially centers
around her going out and finding a random guy to sleep with.
That's not what most human beings would actually do.
So as this episode continues down this unrelatable rabbit
hole, we actively become further separated from our protagonist.
It's hard to connect with a character
when they are constantly making objectively terrible decisions.
We're supposed to sleep together tonight.
Oh God.
What do you mean oh God?
At the end of the day, it seems like these veteran writers
who created an absolute sitcom juggernaut phoned
in this pilot.
As time goes on, the writers get further and further away
from taking that necessary first step, which
is building a lasting foundation for the show
to structure itself around.
The best example of how it feels to watch the pilot of How
I Met Your Dad comes at the end of the episode, where
this new crew of characters all barge into Sally's apartment
shouting different reasons for Sally to care about something.
Marriage is beautiful.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
You're not going to die alone.
Sharing your life.
You don't have to share towels.
It's a cacophony of catchphrases and schtick,
telling us to care about something when we aren't
even sure what it is yet.
This is exactly what it feels like the showrunners would
be doing in our living rooms if this show made it to air.
On top of all that, the pilot ends
by telling us exactly who the dad on How I Met Your Dad is.
This effectively eliminates the primary writing convention
and mystery that made How I Met Your Mother
successful in the first place.
CBS also took issue with the pilot,
perhaps for the same reasons we've outlined today.
However, they saw potential in the IP
and wanted to retool the concept.
Bays and Thomas would only reshoot if they
got a series order commitment.
When that never happened, the project fizzled.
Tweets from 2013 show that the creators wanted this spinoff
to stand completely separate from the original run.
This is not the case for the new Hulu endeavor,
with cameos, Easter eggs, and locations crossing over.
Was this familiar ingredient what finally got the show out
of production limbo?
That's a pretty weird challenge.
If there's one thing you should know about me,
it's that I love a weird challenge.
Characters don't need shtick.
They need depth.
They need to feel relatable, to feel real.
For those things to happen, they need
to behave in ways that normal human beings behave.
You can't have jokes without substance.
You can't create comedy without relatability.
If we can't connect ourselves to a character
on an emotional level, we can never go along for the ride
later on.
And that's it for this one, folks.
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