January 28, 2025 • 51 mins
Hi and welcome to Belated Binge - the podcast that doesn’t take itself or the show too seriously. I'm Zac, here to let you relive your favorite series that I nearly missed out on!
Like How I Met Your Father - which is maybe your favorite??? - It's at least a sequel to How I Met Your Mother, which might be your real favorite so you watched this hoping it would live up to the original series.
In this mini-binge episode we'll talk about the show, the characters, discuss whether it does hold up to HIMYM and if it was worth the binge.
I'll also give out a bunch of made up silly Bingie awards along the way!
For bonus episodes and more cool stuff, check out Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/BelatedBinge *Free trial available.
I'd love for you to join the discussion, which you can do on Patreon, or by joining the FREE Facebook Group for listeners of the show: https://www.facebook.com/groups/688037702835574/
Find Belated Binge on social media:
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/belatedbinge
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/belatedbinge
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/belatedbinge
- TikTok: www.tiktok.com/@belatedbinge
- YouTube: https://youtube.com/@belatedbinge
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
The Belated Binge podcast Hi andwelcome to Belated Binge, the
podcast that doesn't take itselfor the show too seriously.
My name is Zach. Ben, I'm your host, here to let
you relive your favorite series that I nearly missed out on,
like How I Met Your Father, which I wasn't as late as I
normally am too. And to be honest, it felt kind
(00:25):
of appropriate still for the podcast because I hadn't watched
its predecessor until it was like 10 years after the finale.
However, this show was cancelledlike a year and a half ago, so
we're still late, but we're not crazy late.
I also might be using the term your favorite Series A little
(00:47):
bit loosely on this one. But before we dig into it, shout
out to the bonus Binge Squad on Patreon.
And I think I might have just said Bonish Binge Squad, which
feels like the way that I shouldsay that from now on.
And I think I'm going to do thatnow.
If you're unfamiliar, back in the year of our Lord 2022, Hulu
(01:10):
launched a streaming series called How I Met Your Father.
And if your first thought after hearing that sentence is, hey
Zach, didn't you just say that you just finished How I Met Your
Mother for the first time? The answer is yes, Yes, I did.
And you can listen to that episode again if you missed it
or you need a refresher. But then after watching How I
(01:30):
Met Your Mother, I guess I just wanted some more from this
particular universe. And I had heard that How I Met
Your Father existed, and so I decided to give it a go.
And that show takes place basically in the time that it
was made. But to keep in line with its
predecessor, the way they set itup was that the main character
(01:52):
Sophie, in the future, like 2050, is on a call with her son
who's away at college, telling him the story of, you guessed
it, how she met his father. Then the events of the twenty
20s version of Sophie serve as the main show, and they
(02:12):
basically do a replay of some ofthe hits from How I Met Your
Mother, along with that particular narrative style,
right? Sophie is the Ted who's telling
and reliving the story of how she's a hopeless romantic
navigating being single in New York City.
She has her group of friends, they do silly stuff, they hang
(02:32):
out at the same bar every night.And of course, there's also a
friend group of, you know, hookups across the friend group.
I could, I guess you could say drama of relationships in and
outside of the friend group and all that familiar yadda yadda
(02:53):
that we got used to in How I MetYour Mother.
There's the engaged and then married couple Sid and Hannah
who are navigating a long distance relationship.
There's the silly, naive friend Charlie, who's a trust fund baby
who ran away from his family's money to be with Sophie's best
friend Val. That's her name in New York.
But of course that doesn't go asplanned.
(03:15):
Big shocker, there's the wacky lesbian Ellen who's the adopted
sister who came to New York Cityto reconnect with her long lost
brother Jesse, who is the main will they won't they on again
off again type of love interest for Sophie.
And I think you're probably starting to sense the familiar
(03:37):
feel that they were trying to gofor when they made this show.
Are they a direct 1 to one of How I Met your mother
characters? No, but again, some of the hits
are there. Val and Charlie fall apart
because Charlie doesn't want to have kids and Val does.
Very Ted and Robin, Sid and Hannah are the cutesy perfect
(03:58):
couple for the most part, a la Marshall and Lily.
Yet they also have to deal with the long distance of it all.
And where will they live? Because her dreams of being a
surgeon in LA and his of owning a bar in New York.
Again. Are we?
Are we sounding semi familiar with their trope if you will?
Charlie is kind of a funky blendof Marshall and Barney, where
(04:22):
he's super naive and silly, surprisingly sensitive, and kind
of the things that make Marshalllovable, all the while being
super hot and capable of sleeping with just about any
woman in New York. I love Barney, but not gross
like Barney. If anyone actually is the
(04:44):
Barney, the closest equivalent Iguess would be Val, who is kind
of the single hot girl who's afraid of commitment and runs
through several dudes on the show and has some problematic
traits while doing so, but unlike Barney isn't completely
over the top about it and has that like love for Charlie going
(05:05):
throughout the series to keep her more grounded.
You know, the thing that Barney didn't develop until much much
later in the series is ever present for Val in this one.
Kind of like a seeming little bit of a course correction on
that type of character for the climate that it was made in.
(05:26):
I guess Ellen isn't really the Robin of the group, but is the
new one that isn't there for a love interest and sort of
becomes friends with everyone anyways.
And of course Sophie and Jesse do the will.
They won't. They dance of Ted and Robin
literally the whole time, even down to the part where when they
(05:46):
first do get together the first time, Jesse says I love you too
fast. The twist here is that he says
it in his sleep after they actually sleep together for the
first time. So while it's again, not a one
to one rehash of everything How I Met Your Mother, they
definitely tried to draw from the original show in a lot of
(06:08):
ways and not just the characters.
Like they used an updated version of the old intro song,
they used that photo montage style of intro to go along with
it. And that was actually tied into
the show this time pretty well really, because Sophie is a
photographer in the show, they're all the same.
(06:32):
They're all in the same part of New York City during the same
time of their lives with a basically same size friend group
going through a lot of the same type of life events.
They even give us like callbacksand cameos throughout.
Honestly, whether they were earned or warranted or not, 2
(06:54):
callbacks in particular, I thinkwe're really, really good.
The first one is that Sid and Jesse are roommates a la Ted and
Marshall, and it's established immediately that they have the
OG apartment from How I Met YourMother.
There's a sly mention of this really cool old couple that they
(07:14):
got it from without actually saying their names, and we as
the audience get to think, Oh mygosh, that's Marshall and Lily.
They even left the swords on thewall and like called them out as
like this really cool feature. Like, hey, they even left their
swords behind. Like again, it's a that's a
really great call back that theydid.
(07:37):
The other cool call back that they had was McLaren's.
It's not the bar that the friendgroup actually hangs out in,
which I guess maybe would have been too much, but maybe it
wouldn't have been. But there is an episode where
Sophie goes downstairs from the guy's apartment and mentions it
(07:59):
and of course has a line something like, you know, I
wonder why we never hung out down here or whatever, you know?
But it's a it's a cool way to pay pay homage or homage or
however you actually say that word to the OG show without
beating us over the head with it.
Unfortunately, that particular callback comes as part of one of
(08:23):
the unearned and forced in cameos that absolutely do beat
us over the head with it, and itdidn't have to pee that way.
But alas, here's how it basically goes down.
Sophie first runs into Carl the bartender from How I Met Your
(08:45):
Mother, which would have honestly been a fantastic cameo,
and then about 5 seconds later Robin, the real cameo, makes her
appearance. And this is where it starts to
get super forced. Sophie is apparently a super fan
of Robin's. Robin still gets all extra cocky
(09:05):
when someone has ever actually heard of her, and for some
reason she asks Sophie about herboy troubles, which just so
happens to be the morning after Jesse said I love you in his
sleep. So of course Robin is there to
be able to give sage advice about why she shouldn't run away
(09:26):
from a guy for just saying I love you too fast like she did.
And I think it's worth noting when you peel back some of the
layers that I in the peeling back of those layers
unfortunately actually took me out of the show a little bit
thinking about it. But this would have taken place
(09:48):
during the How I Met Your Mothercannon when Ted and Robin were
not together. I believe the show Cannon would
have had this scene taking placein like 2020, which is 4 years
before Ted's wife passes away. Now, I don't know that we know,
or at least I don't know if she was sick yet at this point or if
(10:14):
things were just all hunky Dory for Ted and Tracy while Robin is
living her single life. You know, and and that's kind of
the the moment in time, the snapshot of the character that
Sophie is interacting with now in that episode.
(10:35):
And so you kind of have to do that mental math and like craft
that in your head to understand that at this moment for her,
she's doing this advice giving and telling this story based off
of Ted being like the one that got away type vibes, not the I
(11:00):
ended up with the guy type vibes.
It's not a bad scene, it just feels kind of out of place and
forced in how the two actually come together.
And I don't know, I think it could have been better executed,
but I think that they were really trying hard to tie to to
(11:25):
play off of the nostalgia of theoriginal show and really pull in
the audience that loved How I Met Your Mother and really give
this sequel of a shot. And while that one in particular
felt forced in, the one that wasreally, really forced was
(11:48):
Barney. And they even set this one up in
an early episode as a teaser. And then later the story tell
plays out and basically it goes something like this.
Sophie is dating an older guy and on a weekend at his second
home that he can apparently afford because he's a chef, she
(12:08):
thinks that she's having sex with her long lost dad that
she's never met. She jumps out a window and as
she's fleeing the scene, she rear ends an SUV.
And the man that steps out of said SUV is Barney Stinson.
He is apparently in a stage of, I don't even know what to call
(12:31):
this womanizer, addiction therapy, I guess, where if he
says something sleazy, he gets shocked.
Like a dog wearing a bark collar.
I guess it was sort of funny, but it wasn't that funny.
(12:51):
It really wasn't funny like it all.
However, like Robin, he acts as a vehicle to get Sophie to tell
him her story, gives her sage advice.
This time it's about how she should go and find her real dad
and that kicks off her going to try to find her real dad again.
(13:16):
Another thing that is very much akin to the character of Barney
from the original show where he has, you know, unique
experience. Like in both cases, really in
both cases, it should have been really cool to see the old
characters. And I guess in a certain way it
actually was. But it didn't feel like a very
(13:38):
natural interaction or happenstance.
And they were both used in literally the same way.
Tell me your story so that I just happened to have completely
perfectly aligned and relatable perspective from a story arc in
(13:59):
the original show, and I can give you super great advice
because I've been there before. All the while us as the audience
are supposed to feel all nostalgic about seeing those
characters that we miss and reminisce on those storylines
from the first show and then didjust.
It kind of falls flat to be honest.
(14:19):
In my opinion it falls flat. There were also some other
random callbacks and cameos likeand some of them honestly were
really funny, like Sandy Rivers.If you remember Sandy Rivers
from How I Met Your Mother, he kept being shown on TV in
progressively demoted positions.And in his report on the news or
(14:47):
the weather or whatever he was doing in that moment, he was
referencing his many, many, manypiling up sexual allegation
lawsuits from his various TV jobs.
Like that was that was the type of callback and the type of
like, yeah, you did have to watch How I Met Your Mother to
(15:09):
truly get that one. But if you did, that was pretty
funny. They also brought back the
captain and Becky, you know, from boats boats boats who
played a like tangential role oran adjacent role in getting
Sophie a chance to see her like original date Ian again at some
(15:31):
point in time. They went into GNB, the bank for
one episode and randomly ran into a couple of In Sync members
there. But that was the bank that
Marshall and Barney worked for. So, you know, there was there
was familiarity within the show that was done kind of that was
(15:52):
done more subtly or even more creatively and humorous.
And then there was other stuff that was like, you know, getting
a paddle to the face and here let me drill a couple holes in
it so that it picks up plenty ofspeed.
So I guess like that leads me tothe question that I must pose
(16:13):
myself and answer myself is whatabout the show as a whole on its
own, was it any good? Well, it was cancelled after two
seasons. So I will start by saying it
didn't get the chance to really find out if it could be super
good or not. But it was cancelled after two
(16:33):
seasons that did have progressive improvement.
And I believe if I, if I am correct and remembering this
properly, part of the the catalyst for the show being
cancelled was a writer strike that influenced it.
(16:55):
So it wasn't, I don't know that it was necessarily 100% just
like this show is not good. We cancelled it.
I think there were other circumstances going into it as
well, but was it a perfect show?Absolutely not.
Season 1 was a bit of a clunky mess.
It had some good parts in it, but it didn't feel very
(17:17):
relatable in my opinion, and I didn't feel like it was super
believable. And by that I mean it didn't
always really feel like the characters actually knew or
liked each other. And yet they were supposed to be
(17:39):
there in, I don't think they were necessarily supposed to
feel like they've been together forever because they sort of
came together in the pilot. But then in other moments, very
quickly it was like, Oh no, now they literally just do
everything together and they're the best friends and they've
known each other forever. And it's like, wait, which?
(18:01):
Which one is it? You know what I mean?
I asked myself as I record Into the Wall.
The outside of that, the writingwas a bit bland in Season 1.
I didn't think the jokes were very punchy.
I also didn't feel like the acting was as strong in Season
1. It took me a little bit of time
(18:24):
to engage with the show because in the beginning, I felt like
there was very much a your turn,my turn in the way that lines
were actually being delivered. And it often didn't feel like
these characters were having a natural conversation.
And that's something that I never felt in the original show.
(18:48):
And anytime you're doing a sequel, spinoff, remake,
whatever, like you're always going to have that comparison in
your mind. And we'll talk more about some
of those comparisons as we go here.
But like it was a high bar to reach.
And so the fact that there wasn't that chemistry wasn't
inherently tangible or noticeable in the beginning.
(19:15):
And the setup of some of the relationships were kind of non
existent, especially the main will they won't they characters
of Jesse and Sophie. They meet because he's her Uber
driver taking her to meet her date that she met on Tinder.
And for some reason, he and Sid,who's in the passenger seat, are
(19:37):
just asking her all about this texting relationship he has.
She has with this guy that she'sreally into, you know, like all
Uber rides do. That's exactly how Uber's go all
the time. And when she gets out of the
car, Sid just looks at Jesse andis like, Oh my gosh, you're
super into that girl, aren't you?
(19:59):
And later after the episode doesthe whole like, accidental phone
swap thing and the date doesn't work out for Sophie because he's
leaving the country on a cliffhanger.
I guess Sophie and Val are like,hey, let's go hang out with
those dudes from your Uber ride.They were cool.
(20:20):
And now, like I mentioned, that's kind of the way that they
come together and they're this just whole ass friend group for
the rest of the show and are just supposed to be immediately
like intimately close. I guess I, I don't know, it was,
it felt a little clunky, let's just say that.
(20:43):
But season 2 actually started towork out some of the kinks and
it did feel like they were hitting a bit of a groove
towards the middle of the seasonand through the like,
particularly up until like a certain point, characters really
did start to feel like they actually knew each other.
They started to feel like they actually cared about each other.
(21:04):
They'd actually been through some stuff together.
So that was making sense as to why they were always together.
The writing started to get more intricate as well.
You know, at least in a sense that they were setting up some
teasers and some stories and it was starting to feel a little
bit more like the original show did to kind of keep the the
(21:27):
stories as they were being told,compelling.
But it seems like they must havelearned that they were at risk
of getting cancelled because they just kind of scrapped some
of the tease storylines. One that jumps into my mind is a
future Valentine's Day date thatSophie was supposed to have with
the guy Ian, the original Tinderguy.
(21:48):
They then shoehorned in some ways to fast track the Sophie
Jesse getting together thing through this like love song that
he wrote on the back of a receipt and her getting super
jealous about a New Girl he starts dating.
And they gave them this this bigkiss scene at the end of the
season that could constitute as a natural ending of the whole
(22:11):
story if they needed it to. They even tossed in a picture of
Val and Charlie together with their child to basically give
them the like hey, they ended uptogether in the end too and he
apparently changed his mind. He wanted kids now because hey,
look, they have one, and they that's sort of their way of
(22:33):
tying a bow on everything. But they did at least leave the
door open to a Season 3 by not actually saying that Jesse was
the father and causing a big riff in Sid and Hannah's
marriage with her apparently cheating on him in LA.
So if there was a season 3, theyhad an emotional cliffhanger to
(22:55):
build from that was actually very, very similar.
This whole thing, if you really break it down, really felt like
the end of the season where Ted and Robin finally actually get
together that first time and he comes home and Lily had left
Marshall. This was very similar in that
Jesse and Sophie have this big kiss scene and they're like
(23:17):
getting together and they're whatever, starting there,
happily ever after or whatever. But like they're going to walk
back into the bar and Sid and Hannah are I don't know, are
they heading for divorce? Are they, you know what, what is
going to come of this fiasco that's happening?
(23:38):
And it I get it like from a writing perspective, if you
think you might be cancelled andyou need a backup plan.
I know if you if you watch any of the content that's come out
about How I Met your mother thatwas actually researched and not
some guy that just watched it 20years later or whatever.
But the some of them talk about how the writers had put in like
(24:06):
backup plans for the mother kindof in in multiple seasons where
it's like, OK, if we don't make it past this, we have a way to
tie the story up if we need to. Even though like they're still
driving towards the end that they ultimately gave us.
It felt very much like that, like this could wrap up the show
(24:27):
if they cancel us, but we have something to build off of and we
don't end the story in case we actually get to continue writing
this. So it was I, I understood, I got
it. At the same time, it felt a
little rushed, as if they reallydid have an inkling like, Oh
(24:50):
yeah, we're we're done here or we're very likely done here.
And we need to give, we need to give her an ending that like
with Jesse, that suggests he is the father, even if we can't say
that out loud. So yeah, that's kind of where
they end things and we'll, I guess never know where it could
(25:10):
have gone from there. So the next question that I
posed to myself is, does it holdup to How I Met Your Mother?
No, no, it certainly does not. While I found myself
disappointed at the abrupt ending and not having a next
season to watch, at no point didI think I was in the same like
stratosphere of quality of a show as How I Met Your Mother,
(25:34):
which I don't actually knock it for.
How I Met Your Mother is a really great show in my opinion
and honestly had a fantastic cast to carry it.
Even when the story took a weirdturn or felt like it was falling
flat. Or even if you hated the finale
of the show, like you still wouldn't argue that that cast
(25:57):
didn't do a phenomenal job with the material that they had.
How I Met Your Father had some recognizable guest stars in it
and having Hilary Duff from who you know, this generation that
is likely watching the show would recognize from Lizzie
McGuire for sure play Sophie is obviously a name that somebody
(26:22):
would know and someone that theywould recognize.
They had Josh from Drake and Josh who was a recurring guest.
The actress whose name I just apologize about not being able
to properly pronounce, but she played Emily Prentice on
Criminal Minds. She was Sophie's mom.
Padgett Brewster. Is that actually how you say it?
(26:43):
I guess Padgett Brewster. I anyways.
Padgett Brewster, I believe, played Emily Prentice on
Criminal Minds and was phenomenal in that particular
role for when I when I watched that show, at least the parts of
it that I have seen. Sophie's long lost dad was
played by Clark Gregg, who was Agent Coulson in a bunch of the
(27:06):
Marvel stuff, and everyone else in the main cast, at least to
me, was new. Maybe they'll go on to have
great, amazing careers, but How I Met Your Mother, when you try
to compare like they struck gold.
Jason Segel, who played Marshallwas a movie star, Neil Patrick
Harris, who played Barney massive.
(27:29):
Allison Hannigan, who played Lily, iconic for my generation.
You know, Cobie Smulders who played Robin was in Marvel as
well. It was really just Josh Radner
who played Ted that didn't have a massive catalogue of success
that was bigger than How I Met Your Mother was.
(27:50):
You know, again, I don't know that the jury is out on on the
cast of How I Met Your Father. Maybe they will do, you know,
some amazing things as their careers go.
But that original cast was absolutely phenomenal and how
talented they were to elevate whatever material they were
(28:13):
given, and trying to live up to that was going to be incredibly
difficult, if not just completely impossible, even if
the writing was actually as goodas How I Met Your Mother was.
And of course it wasn't. I saw a YouTube video made that
broke down a really interesting concept about the writing
(28:35):
differences between the two shows and it was on the Never
Nothing channel if you want to watch it.
I think I mentioned it in my last episode when I talked about
How I Met Your Mother, but it was it was really well done.
The new How I Met Your Father like show was not using the same
(28:55):
people and was not written in the same way.
So like, I'm not going to steal the Never Nothing channels work,
but it basically broke down someof the clever writing styles and
storytelling techniques that were used on the original How I
Met Your Mother show that How I Met Your Father just didn't use
and was written in a much more just linear straightforward.
(29:18):
This happened, then this happened, then this happened way
of delivering the story. And since they didn't use
interesting ways to tell said story, you need the story to be
really, really interesting to keep people engaged.
And most of the time it wasn't that interesting of a story
being told, at least not when using How I Met Your Mother as a
(29:43):
bar of success. Again, we're talking about did
it live up to How I Met Your Mother, which is one of the most
successful sitcoms in history. So now that we've gotten the
gist and gotten that out of the way, let's give away some silly
made-up awards. Some good, some not so good.
I like to call them Bingis. We're going to start with the
(30:05):
I'm no Marshall Erickson, but I still make a hell of a comedic
sidekick award for best main character.
And to me, Charlie is the best. He is pure comedic relief.
He doesn't have a lot of clunkers.
You know who the character is, why he's there, and he delivers
on his role. You know, it's worth asking why
(30:26):
the character does not go back home where he is super rich when
Val breaks up with him. But it's great that he doesn't
because he's the most consistentcharacter at bringing value to
the show. Everyone else has kind of ups
and downs and annoyances along the way, and I can't remember a
single time that Charlie was on screen that I thought I just
(30:48):
wish he wasn't here. I'm not sure I could say that
for any other character on this show.
And that's not to say that the other characters suck, it's just
that it's hard for a character on a show to almost never annoy
me. Charlie is gold, and not just
the golden spoon that he sells to pay for a nice place, but
(31:09):
then immediately gets mugged of the cash that he just got.
The next word we're going to do is the will they won't they make
this guy make sense award for the worst main character.
Of course I could go with one ofthe, you know, bad random
characters along the way, but that would be a cop out.
(31:29):
That is why I put the rules in place for myself to choose main
characters to talk about and tear down essentially.
Sorry, but the worst main character I think is probably
Jesse. To me, he's supposed to be the
everyman. He's the love interest.
(31:51):
He's the one we're supposed to emotionally connect with, yet
he's a musician that barely makes music, a teacher that
barely teaches, a roommate that barely pays rent, the romantic
that says I love you in his sleep on the first night but is
also anti Valentine's Day and skeptical about love.
(32:15):
He's honestly just not that endearing of a character.
He's not all flaws he's got, he's got some heart he's got.
You know the whole like coping with going viral on the Internet
for a failed marriage proposal is actually like really good.
And then having him get steamrolled by his ex-girlfriend
(32:35):
when they get back together makes you start to actually feel
for the character and get emotionally invested in him.
But also having that happen literally like 10 minutes after
his oops I said I love you plot with Sophie just makes him look
like a shitty potential partner for Sophie.
Like it only took her walking down stairs and your
(32:56):
ex-girlfriend is already at yourdoor making out with you.
Like it. I don't know it it's that sort
of inconsistency with the character throughout the show
that just makes him sort of meh for me.
Everyone else has flaws and theyleave things to be desired, but
(33:19):
they feel like you at least get who they are and you get who
they are in the group and in theshow and they at least feel like
they make sense as a character, whether you like who that
character is or not. Jesse doesn't make a ton of
sense to me. He doesn't feel like the same
(33:40):
character, not just throughout the show, but sometimes even
episode to episode or scene to scene.
He sort of changes personality traits to fit the drama of the
episode as the writing needs himto.
And to me, that takes away from the connection of who the
character is and why we should actually want him to end up
(34:00):
being the father at the end of this show.
That's just my two cents. The next award that we're going
to do is the Poppy That means Daddy Right award for best joke.
When Sophie thinks she might be sleeping with her dad, that one
hits pretty hard. So to set the scene, set the
(34:25):
stage for how this goes. She's been dating this older
guy. I mentioned this episode earlier
in the recap, but you did fleshing out a little bit.
She's been dating this older guy, which is a completely
rushed and like weird relationship for her to get
into. But it became funny because of
how it ended. Sophie goes to stay with him at
(34:46):
his 2nd house. As I mentioned before, he's a
chef, so apparently he can afford 2 houses in New York, I
guess. And at some point during this
romantic getaway, he says that he went to Lollapalooza the same
year that Sophie's mom has always told her that she was
(35:07):
conceived at Lollapalooza. Yeah, did I mention that at any
point in time, Sophie was conceived at Lollapalooza and
doesn't know who her dad is? At this point in the show, she
obviously gets hung up on the idea that he could be her dad
and there are some kind of well placed quirky jokes in there
(35:30):
where they have similarities that she never noticed before.
But now she is like, they both like start laughing and they
both snort in the same way. And he's like same snort.
What are the odds? And she's like very low, very
low. And she's losing it.
She thinks this dude is definitely I.
(35:50):
I got my snort from my dad. I've been sleeping with my dad.
And then he goes and finds an old picture from that
Lollapalooza concert, and Sophie's mom is cuddled up under
his arm and Sophie completely freaks out and leaves, jumps out
the window. And this is where she rear ends
(36:12):
Barney, as I mentioned before. And while she does find out that
he wasn't her father, he and hermom did apparently get to every
base but home. And they share one final, very,
very cringy attempt at a kiss atthe end of the episode before
they both agree that they just can't stay together after he's
(36:34):
been with, well, mother and daughter.
In a show where you set up the mother of your main character as
a promiscuous sex addict and someone who conceived a child at
a concert and told her about it,this joke is written really,
(36:55):
really well and lands even better than that.
There aren't many times that I feel like I'm watching a show on
the level of How I Met Your Mother, but this, within context
of the show, definitely felt like one of them.
The next word we're going to do is the wait.
I'm supposed to like you, right?Award for worst running joke.
(37:21):
And this one for me is the ongoing joke that Sophie is like
a perpetual liar. That one kind of sucks.
We're supposed to be invested inthis woman finding her soulmate
or whatever the that's kind of the premise, right?
That means we should be rooting for her, we should like her, we
(37:42):
should care, and she's just not the best character to root for.
It's one thing to give her flaws.
Her predecessor, Ted Mosby, had flaws, but he was a good dude
most of the time. And most of his flaws were
related to his pursuit of love and being hung up on Robin.
(38:04):
Or he did something in a specific relationship that was
like not great. Or he was like, I don't know, a
little like self absorbed in terms of finding love.
And he was, you know, is that kind of stuff that were his
flaws. The flaws that they gave Sophie
were like, she's super selfish and takes advantage of her
(38:27):
friends, and she will manipulatepeople or just flat out lie to
get what she wants. And these are the kind of flaws
that are kind of hard to look past as an audience member
that's trying to invest in you. I'm not rooting for her to find
her person. What am I doing watching a show
(38:48):
called How I Met Your Father if I'm not rooting for you finding
the father? I might be alone in that, but it
also might be that I'm not alone.
And that played a role in the show's cancellation.
The next word award we're going to do is the If 3 is a crowd,
(39:10):
what is 4 award for best story plot?
And for this, I'm kind of going with a little like a moment of
the show. And it's Sophie's breakup with
Drew. It's completely unwarranted, but
the sequence is actually really funny.
(39:31):
When they commit to doing it, she kisses Jesse, goes over to
break up with Drew. The next day, she unexpectedly
meets his parents and gets stuckwith his mom, who she blurts out
that she's there to dump her son.
And then they get in an argumentabout who's actually going to be
allowed to give him bad news that day because his parents are
(39:53):
there to tell him that his father's going to prison.
And there's. They play like rock, paper,
scissors for who gets to deliverbad news and ultimately.
Sophie still breaks it off and then later at the bar there's
this crazy three-way merge scenethat happens where Drew is
(40:16):
wasted and coming to confront her.
Jesse is coming to confront her as well.
Because this also comes after the premature I love you and the
getting back with his ex-girlfriend.
And in this moment, that guy Ianis back and she's talking to him
at the bar. And so like, they're all three
(40:38):
converging on her at once. And the joke, like the jokes in
this are pretty punchy. It's pretty cringy, but like in
the way that it's supposed to be.
And it was, it was a highlight for for that season.
(40:58):
The next award that we're going to do is the I will never get
This Time Back in My Life award for worst story plot.
And this is the weird thing where Val's parents are always
trying to set her up on dates and end up mad that she doesn't
date or like marry a 20 year oldor whatever.
That whole subplot is weird. And on top of that how Sophie is
(41:21):
so sexually attracted to them while also saying she's looked
into them adopting her despite being a 30 year old woman.
I don't. Why would you be adopted by your
friend's parents if you're also going to obsess over how hot
they are and make reference thatsuggests maybe even wanting to
sleep with them? Then they would be your parents
(41:42):
and that's even weirder. I don't understand it, I I it
doesn't make any sense to me. I don't know.
Thou's parents as a whole are maybe the worst part of this
show. In terms of storylines that are
supposed to have some substance.They don't matter that much, but
every time they do it's weirdly uncomfortable and not in a cute
funny way that the show is trying to make it.
(42:07):
Honestly all parents in the showare weird.
Like all of the older people in this show are written to be very
very sexual, which is a choice Iguess.
And Val's parents are definitelyno different.
You know, while they can't keep their hands off of each other
like there's some horny teenagers, they add in the layer
(42:28):
that they're also obsessed with their daughter getting married
to a man that can take care of her, and they're genuinely upset
when she doesn't do it, even when it would be a horrible
decision for her. It's a bad subplot.
It never gets a resolution. I guess maybe you can infer that
since she eventually has a kid with Charlie that they would
(42:51):
have probably been happy and then proud of her at some point.
So maybe that would have been that makeup moment that we don't
see, we never get there, and it wouldn't actually make up for
what makes them bad. It would just be finally she did
the thing that they wanted, so now they actually love their
(43:12):
daughter. So either way you slice it, they
just they suck. The next award we're going to do
is the Put Me in Coach, I'm Ready to Play award for best
side character, and this one feels a little bit like a cop
out to me, but I'm going to do it anyways.
And I'm going with Ellen. Technically she's in the main
(43:32):
cast so she shouldn't be eligible for this award, but
they treat her within the group as an extra and they often cut
her off and brush her off and forget she's there.
And she doesn't get a ton to do.Ironically, until season 2 when
the show actually starts gettinggood.
(43:53):
And there aren't that many side characters to choose from in
this show. The parents, as I mentioned, all
suck. Sophie's dad is OK but he's only
there for a second. Drew is going to get his moment
a little bit later. The ex-girlfriend for Jesse
sucks. The Ian love interest sucks.
Almost all of the love interestssuck actually.
(44:17):
And that's basically all this show is.
And that's why I also don't think that it holds up to How I
Met Your Mother. Those characters experienced
life together. These characters experienced
dates together. And I don't think it's a
coincidence that the show got better when they started giving
Ellen more to do. She's a character that has
(44:40):
comedy and heart. She's interesting.
I don't like how they made her obsessive about her girlfriend
going to Jersey so that they could break up.
But she's ultimately a really strong character that spends
most of the show on the sidelines, even though we could
see her face a lot. So it's the best I got.
(45:03):
The next word we're going to do is these jokes should be
literally written for me but whyam I not laughing?
Award for worst side character. And since I've already shit all
over Val's parents, I'm going toshit on Sophie's mom.
She really only gets 1 moment tobe a real human and have some
(45:26):
substance. And it's the line where she
tells Sophie that she likes her bikini modeling poster so much
because it was at the very beginning of her pregnancy, so
it reminds her of Sophie in every other way.
She's useless for more than justa dirty joke.
She's a great actress and she honestly delivers on what she's
(45:49):
asked to do. The inappropriate humor is
actually good. I enjoy it.
I just wish she had more to her.I like characters that have
dimension and again, aside from the one line that feels
completely out of place based oneverything else that we learned
(46:10):
about her, she's 1 dimensional and falls really flat because of
it. The next award we're going to do
is the if you just want to tasteand not the whole thing award
for best episode. And I think it was disengagement
party in season 2. And it's the one where Charlie
and Ellen are fighting and nobody knows why.
(46:34):
And then they finally say that it's because in the middle of
the night, Charlie had walked upbehind her to make a move,
thinking that she was the New Girl that he had been dating and
had spending the night that night.
And this leads to a story from Jesse about how he almost jumped
in the shower with Sid at one point in time during them being
(46:57):
roommates. And the experience was mutual
because while Jesse was almost jumping in the shower, Sid
thought that he was Hannah and he was preparing for her in,
well, sex mode essentially. And his solution is that what
(47:18):
they did is all the cheesy, you must do these things in New York
City that they found in a big, thick tourist book.
And he has this line about, like, make so many new memories.
It just like pushes the bad one down to basically the point you
forget about it. And in Charlie and Ellen's haste
(47:39):
to do that and accomplish that, Charlie completely neglects the
New Girl that he was with, and she just leaves.
At the very end, Jesse and Sid actually remember the incident.
And then they take the book and they rush out to make more new
memories to forget again. It's not even the main plot of
the episode, but it's just really good.
(48:02):
It's the most memorably comedic story contained in a single
episode that I can remember fromthe show.
And so that would be the episodethat I would watch if I were
you. The Vinyl award that we are
going to do is the he's kind of got done dirty.
Has any award for best Not the father?
(48:27):
As much as I find him bland, theanswer is Drew.
He's a decent dude, he's actually funny, and he doesn't
do anything that warrants being dumped by Sophie in the 1st
place. He just happens to be the guy
she's with when she When the show decides that they're going
(48:48):
to push the first will they won't they with Jesse into the
show and now she's, you know, got a break up with him because
that's their through plot for the whole premise of this show,
right. And sure, the one thing like the
way that they set this up is that he tells her that he thinks
that she should get a real job because, you know, she's 30.
(49:14):
It's actually good advice. Get a real job while you
continue to support your like, pursue your passion and try to
turn that into your real job. I don't know, like building a
real career while hosting a podcast.
Maybe This one hit home for me just a little bit.
(49:37):
He has his cringe, like when he makes Jesse say something
awkward to earn his job back or whatever.
And he has his moments where hiscomedic chops really do shine
through, like when he got a spray tan and his overly white
teeth. He absolutely rocks that scene.
(49:58):
Is he the best character in the world?
No. Is he the best potential father
that she interacted with on the show?
Yeah. Yeah.
Probably was. All right.
So that leads us to the final question, and that is, was this
worth the binge? You can if you want.
(50:23):
If you enjoyed How I Met Your Mother, you're at least going to
enjoy the callbacks in this one.It's got some clunkers of
episodes that you got to power through, but it's generally an
enjoyable watch. I know I complained about it.
It's not perfect, you know, but it's really unfortunate that the
(50:44):
show got cancelled just as it was getting its footing.
You know? I don't think you'd actually be
all that disappointed if you watched it, but you're not
missing out on something. Legend.
Wait for it, Dairy. I had to do it one last time,
just in case. I don't find any other reason to
(51:06):
make an episode about this universe.
So there you go. Anyways, Yeah, I you can watch
it. You'll probably enjoy parts,
you'll probably not enjoy parts,and it's only two seasons, so
it's not that big of a commitment.
Anyways, If you enjoyed How I Met Your Mother, you might as
well give it a shot and just seeif there's anything in it that
(51:29):
that stands out. Yep.
So that's all I got for you on How I Met Your Father.
Thanks for being here. Follow at Belated Binge on
social media and make sure that you are following or subscribed
on the podcast player that you're using right now or on
YouTube so that you don't miss any of my future episodes.
(51:49):
And now go watch How I Met Your Father if you want.
The Belated Binge podcast Hi andwelcome to Belated Binge, the
podcast that doesn't take itselfor the show too seriously.
My name is Zach. Ben, I'm your host, here to let
you relive your favorite series that I nearly missed out on,
like How I Met Your Father, which I wasn't as late as I
normally am too. And to be honest, it felt kind
(00:25):
of appropriate still for the podcast because I hadn't watched
its predecessor until it was like 10 years after the finale.
However, this show was cancelledlike a year and a half ago, so
we're still late, but we're not crazy late.
I also might be using the term your favorite Series A little
(00:47):
bit loosely on this one. But before we dig into it, shout
out to the bonus Binge Squad on Patreon.
And I think I might have just said Bonish Binge Squad, which
feels like the way that I shouldsay that from now on.
And I think I'm going to do thatnow.
If you're unfamiliar, back in the year of our Lord 2022, Hulu
(01:10):
launched a streaming series called How I Met Your Father.
And if your first thought after hearing that sentence is, hey
Zach, didn't you just say that you just finished How I Met Your
Mother for the first time? The answer is yes, Yes, I did.
And you can listen to that episode again if you missed it
or you need a refresher. But then after watching How I
(01:30):
Met Your Mother, I guess I just wanted some more from this
particular universe. And I had heard that How I Met
Your Father existed, and so I decided to give it a go.
And that show takes place basically in the time that it
was made. But to keep in line with its
predecessor, the way they set itup was that the main character
(01:52):
Sophie, in the future, like 2050, is on a call with her son
who's away at college, telling him the story of, you guessed
it, how she met his father. Then the events of the twenty
20s version of Sophie serve as the main show, and they
(02:12):
basically do a replay of some ofthe hits from How I Met Your
Mother, along with that particular narrative style,
right? Sophie is the Ted who's telling
and reliving the story of how she's a hopeless romantic
navigating being single in New York City.
She has her group of friends, they do silly stuff, they hang
(02:32):
out at the same bar every night.And of course, there's also a
friend group of, you know, hookups across the friend group.
I could, I guess you could say drama of relationships in and
outside of the friend group and all that familiar yadda yadda
(02:53):
that we got used to in How I MetYour Mother.
There's the engaged and then married couple Sid and Hannah
who are navigating a long distance relationship.
There's the silly, naive friend Charlie, who's a trust fund baby
who ran away from his family's money to be with Sophie's best
friend Val. That's her name in New York.
But of course that doesn't go asplanned.
(03:15):
Big shocker, there's the wacky lesbian Ellen who's the adopted
sister who came to New York Cityto reconnect with her long lost
brother Jesse, who is the main will they won't they on again
off again type of love interest for Sophie.
And I think you're probably starting to sense the familiar
(03:37):
feel that they were trying to gofor when they made this show.
Are they a direct 1 to one of How I Met your mother
characters? No, but again, some of the hits
are there. Val and Charlie fall apart
because Charlie doesn't want to have kids and Val does.
Very Ted and Robin, Sid and Hannah are the cutesy perfect
(03:58):
couple for the most part, a la Marshall and Lily.
Yet they also have to deal with the long distance of it all.
And where will they live? Because her dreams of being a
surgeon in LA and his of owning a bar in New York.
Again. Are we?
Are we sounding semi familiar with their trope if you will?
Charlie is kind of a funky blendof Marshall and Barney, where
(04:22):
he's super naive and silly, surprisingly sensitive, and kind
of the things that make Marshalllovable, all the while being
super hot and capable of sleeping with just about any
woman in New York. I love Barney, but not gross
like Barney. If anyone actually is the
(04:44):
Barney, the closest equivalent Iguess would be Val, who is kind
of the single hot girl who's afraid of commitment and runs
through several dudes on the show and has some problematic
traits while doing so, but unlike Barney isn't completely
over the top about it and has that like love for Charlie going
(05:05):
throughout the series to keep her more grounded.
You know, the thing that Barney didn't develop until much much
later in the series is ever present for Val in this one.
Kind of like a seeming little bit of a course correction on
that type of character for the climate that it was made in.
(05:26):
I guess Ellen isn't really the Robin of the group, but is the
new one that isn't there for a love interest and sort of
becomes friends with everyone anyways.
And of course Sophie and Jesse do the will.
They won't. They dance of Ted and Robin
literally the whole time, even down to the part where when they
(05:46):
first do get together the first time, Jesse says I love you too
fast. The twist here is that he says
it in his sleep after they actually sleep together for the
first time. So while it's again, not a one
to one rehash of everything How I Met Your Mother, they
definitely tried to draw from the original show in a lot of
(06:08):
ways and not just the characters.
Like they used an updated version of the old intro song,
they used that photo montage style of intro to go along with
it. And that was actually tied into
the show this time pretty well really, because Sophie is a
photographer in the show, they're all the same.
(06:32):
They're all in the same part of New York City during the same
time of their lives with a basically same size friend group
going through a lot of the same type of life events.
They even give us like callbacksand cameos throughout.
Honestly, whether they were earned or warranted or not, 2
(06:54):
callbacks in particular, I thinkwe're really, really good.
The first one is that Sid and Jesse are roommates a la Ted and
Marshall, and it's established immediately that they have the
OG apartment from How I Met YourMother.
There's a sly mention of this really cool old couple that they
(07:14):
got it from without actually saying their names, and we as
the audience get to think, Oh mygosh, that's Marshall and Lily.
They even left the swords on thewall and like called them out as
like this really cool feature. Like, hey, they even left their
swords behind. Like again, it's a that's a
really great call back that theydid.
(07:37):
The other cool call back that they had was McLaren's.
It's not the bar that the friendgroup actually hangs out in,
which I guess maybe would have been too much, but maybe it
wouldn't have been. But there is an episode where
Sophie goes downstairs from the guy's apartment and mentions it
(07:59):
and of course has a line something like, you know, I
wonder why we never hung out down here or whatever, you know?
But it's a it's a cool way to pay pay homage or homage or
however you actually say that word to the OG show without
beating us over the head with it.
Unfortunately, that particular callback comes as part of one of
(08:23):
the unearned and forced in cameos that absolutely do beat
us over the head with it, and itdidn't have to pee that way.
But alas, here's how it basically goes down.
Sophie first runs into Carl the bartender from How I Met Your
(08:45):
Mother, which would have honestly been a fantastic cameo,
and then about 5 seconds later Robin, the real cameo, makes her
appearance. And this is where it starts to
get super forced. Sophie is apparently a super fan
of Robin's. Robin still gets all extra cocky
(09:05):
when someone has ever actually heard of her, and for some
reason she asks Sophie about herboy troubles, which just so
happens to be the morning after Jesse said I love you in his
sleep. So of course Robin is there to
be able to give sage advice about why she shouldn't run away
(09:26):
from a guy for just saying I love you too fast like she did.
And I think it's worth noting when you peel back some of the
layers that I in the peeling back of those layers
unfortunately actually took me out of the show a little bit
thinking about it. But this would have taken place
(09:48):
during the How I Met Your Mothercannon when Ted and Robin were
not together. I believe the show Cannon would
have had this scene taking placein like 2020, which is 4 years
before Ted's wife passes away. Now, I don't know that we know,
or at least I don't know if she was sick yet at this point or if
(10:14):
things were just all hunky Dory for Ted and Tracy while Robin is
living her single life. You know, and and that's kind of
the the moment in time, the snapshot of the character that
Sophie is interacting with now in that episode.
(10:35):
And so you kind of have to do that mental math and like craft
that in your head to understand that at this moment for her,
she's doing this advice giving and telling this story based off
of Ted being like the one that got away type vibes, not the I
(11:00):
ended up with the guy type vibes.
It's not a bad scene, it just feels kind of out of place and
forced in how the two actually come together.
And I don't know, I think it could have been better executed,
but I think that they were really trying hard to tie to to
(11:25):
play off of the nostalgia of theoriginal show and really pull in
the audience that loved How I Met Your Mother and really give
this sequel of a shot. And while that one in particular
felt forced in, the one that wasreally, really forced was
(11:48):
Barney. And they even set this one up in
an early episode as a teaser. And then later the story tell
plays out and basically it goes something like this.
Sophie is dating an older guy and on a weekend at his second
home that he can apparently afford because he's a chef, she
(12:08):
thinks that she's having sex with her long lost dad that
she's never met. She jumps out a window and as
she's fleeing the scene, she rear ends an SUV.
And the man that steps out of said SUV is Barney Stinson.
He is apparently in a stage of, I don't even know what to call
(12:31):
this womanizer, addiction therapy, I guess, where if he
says something sleazy, he gets shocked.
Like a dog wearing a bark collar.
I guess it was sort of funny, but it wasn't that funny.
(12:51):
It really wasn't funny like it all.
However, like Robin, he acts as a vehicle to get Sophie to tell
him her story, gives her sage advice.
This time it's about how she should go and find her real dad
and that kicks off her going to try to find her real dad again.
(13:16):
Another thing that is very much akin to the character of Barney
from the original show where he has, you know, unique
experience. Like in both cases, really in
both cases, it should have been really cool to see the old
characters. And I guess in a certain way it
actually was. But it didn't feel like a very
(13:38):
natural interaction or happenstance.
And they were both used in literally the same way.
Tell me your story so that I just happened to have completely
perfectly aligned and relatable perspective from a story arc in
(13:59):
the original show, and I can give you super great advice
because I've been there before. All the while us as the audience
are supposed to feel all nostalgic about seeing those
characters that we miss and reminisce on those storylines
from the first show and then didjust.
It kind of falls flat to be honest.
(14:19):
In my opinion it falls flat. There were also some other
random callbacks and cameos likeand some of them honestly were
really funny, like Sandy Rivers.If you remember Sandy Rivers
from How I Met Your Mother, he kept being shown on TV in
progressively demoted positions.And in his report on the news or
(14:47):
the weather or whatever he was doing in that moment, he was
referencing his many, many, manypiling up sexual allegation
lawsuits from his various TV jobs.
Like that was that was the type of callback and the type of
like, yeah, you did have to watch How I Met Your Mother to
(15:09):
truly get that one. But if you did, that was pretty
funny. They also brought back the
captain and Becky, you know, from boats boats boats who
played a like tangential role oran adjacent role in getting
Sophie a chance to see her like original date Ian again at some
(15:31):
point in time. They went into GNB, the bank for
one episode and randomly ran into a couple of In Sync members
there. But that was the bank that
Marshall and Barney worked for. So, you know, there was there
was familiarity within the show that was done kind of that was
(15:52):
done more subtly or even more creatively and humorous.
And then there was other stuff that was like, you know, getting
a paddle to the face and here let me drill a couple holes in
it so that it picks up plenty ofspeed.
So I guess like that leads me tothe question that I must pose
(16:13):
myself and answer myself is whatabout the show as a whole on its
own, was it any good? Well, it was cancelled after two
seasons. So I will start by saying it
didn't get the chance to really find out if it could be super
good or not. But it was cancelled after two
(16:33):
seasons that did have progressive improvement.
And I believe if I, if I am correct and remembering this
properly, part of the the catalyst for the show being
cancelled was a writer strike that influenced it.
(16:55):
So it wasn't, I don't know that it was necessarily 100% just
like this show is not good. We cancelled it.
I think there were other circumstances going into it as
well, but was it a perfect show?Absolutely not.
Season 1 was a bit of a clunky mess.
It had some good parts in it, but it didn't feel very
(17:17):
relatable in my opinion, and I didn't feel like it was super
believable. And by that I mean it didn't
always really feel like the characters actually knew or
liked each other. And yet they were supposed to be
(17:39):
there in, I don't think they were necessarily supposed to
feel like they've been together forever because they sort of
came together in the pilot. But then in other moments, very
quickly it was like, Oh no, now they literally just do
everything together and they're the best friends and they've
known each other forever. And it's like, wait, which?
(18:01):
Which one is it? You know what I mean?
I asked myself as I record Into the Wall.
The outside of that, the writingwas a bit bland in Season 1.
I didn't think the jokes were very punchy.
I also didn't feel like the acting was as strong in Season
1. It took me a little bit of time
(18:24):
to engage with the show because in the beginning, I felt like
there was very much a your turn,my turn in the way that lines
were actually being delivered. And it often didn't feel like
these characters were having a natural conversation.
And that's something that I never felt in the original show.
(18:48):
And anytime you're doing a sequel, spinoff, remake,
whatever, like you're always going to have that comparison in
your mind. And we'll talk more about some
of those comparisons as we go here.
But like it was a high bar to reach.
And so the fact that there wasn't that chemistry wasn't
inherently tangible or noticeable in the beginning.
(19:15):
And the setup of some of the relationships were kind of non
existent, especially the main will they won't they characters
of Jesse and Sophie. They meet because he's her Uber
driver taking her to meet her date that she met on Tinder.
And for some reason, he and Sid,who's in the passenger seat, are
(19:37):
just asking her all about this texting relationship he has.
She has with this guy that she'sreally into, you know, like all
Uber rides do. That's exactly how Uber's go all
the time. And when she gets out of the
car, Sid just looks at Jesse andis like, Oh my gosh, you're
super into that girl, aren't you?
(19:59):
And later after the episode doesthe whole like, accidental phone
swap thing and the date doesn't work out for Sophie because he's
leaving the country on a cliffhanger.
I guess Sophie and Val are like,hey, let's go hang out with
those dudes from your Uber ride.They were cool.
(20:20):
And now, like I mentioned, that's kind of the way that they
come together and they're this just whole ass friend group for
the rest of the show and are just supposed to be immediately
like intimately close. I guess I, I don't know, it was,
it felt a little clunky, let's just say that.
(20:43):
But season 2 actually started towork out some of the kinks and
it did feel like they were hitting a bit of a groove
towards the middle of the seasonand through the like,
particularly up until like a certain point, characters really
did start to feel like they actually knew each other.
They started to feel like they actually cared about each other.
(21:04):
They'd actually been through some stuff together.
So that was making sense as to why they were always together.
The writing started to get more intricate as well.
You know, at least in a sense that they were setting up some
teasers and some stories and it was starting to feel a little
bit more like the original show did to kind of keep the the
(21:27):
stories as they were being told,compelling.
But it seems like they must havelearned that they were at risk
of getting cancelled because they just kind of scrapped some
of the tease storylines. One that jumps into my mind is a
future Valentine's Day date thatSophie was supposed to have with
the guy Ian, the original Tinderguy.
(21:48):
They then shoehorned in some ways to fast track the Sophie
Jesse getting together thing through this like love song that
he wrote on the back of a receipt and her getting super
jealous about a New Girl he starts dating.
And they gave them this this bigkiss scene at the end of the
season that could constitute as a natural ending of the whole
(22:11):
story if they needed it to. They even tossed in a picture of
Val and Charlie together with their child to basically give
them the like hey, they ended uptogether in the end too and he
apparently changed his mind. He wanted kids now because hey,
look, they have one, and they that's sort of their way of
(22:33):
tying a bow on everything. But they did at least leave the
door open to a Season 3 by not actually saying that Jesse was
the father and causing a big riff in Sid and Hannah's
marriage with her apparently cheating on him in LA.
So if there was a season 3, theyhad an emotional cliffhanger to
(22:55):
build from that was actually very, very similar.
This whole thing, if you really break it down, really felt like
the end of the season where Ted and Robin finally actually get
together that first time and he comes home and Lily had left
Marshall. This was very similar in that
Jesse and Sophie have this big kiss scene and they're like
(23:17):
getting together and they're whatever, starting there,
happily ever after or whatever. But like they're going to walk
back into the bar and Sid and Hannah are I don't know, are
they heading for divorce? Are they, you know what, what is
going to come of this fiasco that's happening?
(23:38):
And it I get it like from a writing perspective, if you
think you might be cancelled andyou need a backup plan.
I know if you if you watch any of the content that's come out
about How I Met your mother thatwas actually researched and not
some guy that just watched it 20years later or whatever.
But the some of them talk about how the writers had put in like
(24:06):
backup plans for the mother kindof in in multiple seasons where
it's like, OK, if we don't make it past this, we have a way to
tie the story up if we need to. Even though like they're still
driving towards the end that they ultimately gave us.
It felt very much like that, like this could wrap up the show
(24:27):
if they cancel us, but we have something to build off of and we
don't end the story in case we actually get to continue writing
this. So it was I, I understood, I got
it. At the same time, it felt a
little rushed, as if they reallydid have an inkling like, Oh
(24:50):
yeah, we're we're done here or we're very likely done here.
And we need to give, we need to give her an ending that like
with Jesse, that suggests he is the father, even if we can't say
that out loud. So yeah, that's kind of where
they end things and we'll, I guess never know where it could
(25:10):
have gone from there. So the next question that I
posed to myself is, does it holdup to How I Met Your Mother?
No, no, it certainly does not. While I found myself
disappointed at the abrupt ending and not having a next
season to watch, at no point didI think I was in the same like
stratosphere of quality of a show as How I Met Your Mother,
(25:34):
which I don't actually knock it for.
How I Met Your Mother is a really great show in my opinion
and honestly had a fantastic cast to carry it.
Even when the story took a weirdturn or felt like it was falling
flat. Or even if you hated the finale
of the show, like you still wouldn't argue that that cast
(25:57):
didn't do a phenomenal job with the material that they had.
How I Met Your Father had some recognizable guest stars in it
and having Hilary Duff from who you know, this generation that
is likely watching the show would recognize from Lizzie
McGuire for sure play Sophie is obviously a name that somebody
(26:22):
would know and someone that theywould recognize.
They had Josh from Drake and Josh who was a recurring guest.
The actress whose name I just apologize about not being able
to properly pronounce, but she played Emily Prentice on
Criminal Minds. She was Sophie's mom.
Padgett Brewster. Is that actually how you say it?
(26:43):
I guess Padgett Brewster. I anyways.
Padgett Brewster, I believe, played Emily Prentice on
Criminal Minds and was phenomenal in that particular
role for when I when I watched that show, at least the parts of
it that I have seen. Sophie's long lost dad was
played by Clark Gregg, who was Agent Coulson in a bunch of the
(27:06):
Marvel stuff, and everyone else in the main cast, at least to
me, was new. Maybe they'll go on to have
great, amazing careers, but How I Met Your Mother, when you try
to compare like they struck gold.
Jason Segel, who played Marshallwas a movie star, Neil Patrick
Harris, who played Barney massive.
(27:29):
Allison Hannigan, who played Lily, iconic for my generation.
You know, Cobie Smulders who played Robin was in Marvel as
well. It was really just Josh Radner
who played Ted that didn't have a massive catalogue of success
that was bigger than How I Met Your Mother was.
(27:50):
You know, again, I don't know that the jury is out on on the
cast of How I Met Your Father. Maybe they will do, you know,
some amazing things as their careers go.
But that original cast was absolutely phenomenal and how
talented they were to elevate whatever material they were
(28:13):
given, and trying to live up to that was going to be incredibly
difficult, if not just completely impossible, even if
the writing was actually as goodas How I Met Your Mother was.
And of course it wasn't. I saw a YouTube video made that
broke down a really interesting concept about the writing
(28:35):
differences between the two shows and it was on the Never
Nothing channel if you want to watch it.
I think I mentioned it in my last episode when I talked about
How I Met Your Mother, but it was it was really well done.
The new How I Met Your Father like show was not using the same
(28:55):
people and was not written in the same way.
So like, I'm not going to steal the Never Nothing channels work,
but it basically broke down someof the clever writing styles and
storytelling techniques that were used on the original How I
Met Your Mother show that How I Met Your Father just didn't use
and was written in a much more just linear straightforward.
(29:18):
This happened, then this happened, then this happened way
of delivering the story. And since they didn't use
interesting ways to tell said story, you need the story to be
really, really interesting to keep people engaged.
And most of the time it wasn't that interesting of a story
being told, at least not when using How I Met Your Mother as a
(29:43):
bar of success. Again, we're talking about did
it live up to How I Met Your Mother, which is one of the most
successful sitcoms in history. So now that we've gotten the
gist and gotten that out of the way, let's give away some silly
made-up awards. Some good, some not so good.
I like to call them Bingis. We're going to start with the
(30:05):
I'm no Marshall Erickson, but I still make a hell of a comedic
sidekick award for best main character.
And to me, Charlie is the best. He is pure comedic relief.
He doesn't have a lot of clunkers.
You know who the character is, why he's there, and he delivers
on his role. You know, it's worth asking why
(30:26):
the character does not go back home where he is super rich when
Val breaks up with him. But it's great that he doesn't
because he's the most consistentcharacter at bringing value to
the show. Everyone else has kind of ups
and downs and annoyances along the way, and I can't remember a
single time that Charlie was on screen that I thought I just
(30:48):
wish he wasn't here. I'm not sure I could say that
for any other character on this show.
And that's not to say that the other characters suck, it's just
that it's hard for a character on a show to almost never annoy
me. Charlie is gold, and not just
the golden spoon that he sells to pay for a nice place, but
(31:09):
then immediately gets mugged of the cash that he just got.
The next word we're going to do is the will they won't they make
this guy make sense award for the worst main character.
Of course I could go with one ofthe, you know, bad random
characters along the way, but that would be a cop out.
(31:29):
That is why I put the rules in place for myself to choose main
characters to talk about and tear down essentially.
Sorry, but the worst main character I think is probably
Jesse. To me, he's supposed to be the
everyman. He's the love interest.
(31:51):
He's the one we're supposed to emotionally connect with, yet
he's a musician that barely makes music, a teacher that
barely teaches, a roommate that barely pays rent, the romantic
that says I love you in his sleep on the first night but is
also anti Valentine's Day and skeptical about love.
(32:15):
He's honestly just not that endearing of a character.
He's not all flaws he's got, he's got some heart he's got.
You know the whole like coping with going viral on the Internet
for a failed marriage proposal is actually like really good.
And then having him get steamrolled by his ex-girlfriend
(32:35):
when they get back together makes you start to actually feel
for the character and get emotionally invested in him.
But also having that happen literally like 10 minutes after
his oops I said I love you plot with Sophie just makes him look
like a shitty potential partner for Sophie.
Like it only took her walking down stairs and your
(32:56):
ex-girlfriend is already at yourdoor making out with you.
Like it. I don't know it it's that sort
of inconsistency with the character throughout the show
that just makes him sort of meh for me.
Everyone else has flaws and theyleave things to be desired, but
(33:19):
they feel like you at least get who they are and you get who
they are in the group and in theshow and they at least feel like
they make sense as a character, whether you like who that
character is or not. Jesse doesn't make a ton of
sense to me. He doesn't feel like the same
(33:40):
character, not just throughout the show, but sometimes even
episode to episode or scene to scene.
He sort of changes personality traits to fit the drama of the
episode as the writing needs himto.
And to me, that takes away from the connection of who the
character is and why we should actually want him to end up
(34:00):
being the father at the end of this show.
That's just my two cents. The next award that we're going
to do is the Poppy That means Daddy Right award for best joke.
When Sophie thinks she might be sleeping with her dad, that one
hits pretty hard. So to set the scene, set the
(34:25):
stage for how this goes. She's been dating this older
guy. I mentioned this episode earlier
in the recap, but you did fleshing out a little bit.
She's been dating this older guy, which is a completely
rushed and like weird relationship for her to get
into. But it became funny because of
how it ended. Sophie goes to stay with him at
(34:46):
his 2nd house. As I mentioned before, he's a
chef, so apparently he can afford 2 houses in New York, I
guess. And at some point during this
romantic getaway, he says that he went to Lollapalooza the same
year that Sophie's mom has always told her that she was
(35:07):
conceived at Lollapalooza. Yeah, did I mention that at any
point in time, Sophie was conceived at Lollapalooza and
doesn't know who her dad is? At this point in the show, she
obviously gets hung up on the idea that he could be her dad
and there are some kind of well placed quirky jokes in there
(35:30):
where they have similarities that she never noticed before.
But now she is like, they both like start laughing and they
both snort in the same way. And he's like same snort.
What are the odds? And she's like very low, very
low. And she's losing it.
She thinks this dude is definitely I.
(35:50):
I got my snort from my dad. I've been sleeping with my dad.
And then he goes and finds an old picture from that
Lollapalooza concert, and Sophie's mom is cuddled up under
his arm and Sophie completely freaks out and leaves, jumps out
the window. And this is where she rear ends
(36:12):
Barney, as I mentioned before. And while she does find out that
he wasn't her father, he and hermom did apparently get to every
base but home. And they share one final, very,
very cringy attempt at a kiss atthe end of the episode before
they both agree that they just can't stay together after he's
(36:34):
been with, well, mother and daughter.
In a show where you set up the mother of your main character as
a promiscuous sex addict and someone who conceived a child at
a concert and told her about it,this joke is written really,
(36:55):
really well and lands even better than that.
There aren't many times that I feel like I'm watching a show on
the level of How I Met Your Mother, but this, within context
of the show, definitely felt like one of them.
The next word we're going to do is the wait.
I'm supposed to like you, right?Award for worst running joke.
(37:21):
And this one for me is the ongoing joke that Sophie is like
a perpetual liar. That one kind of sucks.
We're supposed to be invested inthis woman finding her soulmate
or whatever the that's kind of the premise, right?
That means we should be rooting for her, we should like her, we
(37:42):
should care, and she's just not the best character to root for.
It's one thing to give her flaws.
Her predecessor, Ted Mosby, had flaws, but he was a good dude
most of the time. And most of his flaws were
related to his pursuit of love and being hung up on Robin.
(38:04):
Or he did something in a specific relationship that was
like not great. Or he was like, I don't know, a
little like self absorbed in terms of finding love.
And he was, you know, is that kind of stuff that were his
flaws. The flaws that they gave Sophie
were like, she's super selfish and takes advantage of her
(38:27):
friends, and she will manipulatepeople or just flat out lie to
get what she wants. And these are the kind of flaws
that are kind of hard to look past as an audience member
that's trying to invest in you. I'm not rooting for her to find
her person. What am I doing watching a show
(38:48):
called How I Met Your Father if I'm not rooting for you finding
the father? I might be alone in that, but it
also might be that I'm not alone.
And that played a role in the show's cancellation.
The next word award we're going to do is the If 3 is a crowd,
(39:10):
what is 4 award for best story plot?
And for this, I'm kind of going with a little like a moment of
the show. And it's Sophie's breakup with
Drew. It's completely unwarranted, but
the sequence is actually really funny.
(39:31):
When they commit to doing it, she kisses Jesse, goes over to
break up with Drew. The next day, she unexpectedly
meets his parents and gets stuckwith his mom, who she blurts out
that she's there to dump her son.
And then they get in an argumentabout who's actually going to be
allowed to give him bad news that day because his parents are
(39:53):
there to tell him that his father's going to prison.
And there's. They play like rock, paper,
scissors for who gets to deliverbad news and ultimately.
Sophie still breaks it off and then later at the bar there's
this crazy three-way merge scenethat happens where Drew is
(40:16):
wasted and coming to confront her.
Jesse is coming to confront her as well.
Because this also comes after the premature I love you and the
getting back with his ex-girlfriend.
And in this moment, that guy Ianis back and she's talking to him
at the bar. And so like, they're all three
(40:38):
converging on her at once. And the joke, like the jokes in
this are pretty punchy. It's pretty cringy, but like in
the way that it's supposed to be.
And it was, it was a highlight for for that season.
(40:58):
The next award that we're going to do is the I will never get
This Time Back in My Life award for worst story plot.
And this is the weird thing where Val's parents are always
trying to set her up on dates and end up mad that she doesn't
date or like marry a 20 year oldor whatever.
That whole subplot is weird. And on top of that how Sophie is
(41:21):
so sexually attracted to them while also saying she's looked
into them adopting her despite being a 30 year old woman.
I don't. Why would you be adopted by your
friend's parents if you're also going to obsess over how hot
they are and make reference thatsuggests maybe even wanting to
sleep with them? Then they would be your parents
(41:42):
and that's even weirder. I don't understand it, I I it
doesn't make any sense to me. I don't know.
Thou's parents as a whole are maybe the worst part of this
show. In terms of storylines that are
supposed to have some substance.They don't matter that much, but
every time they do it's weirdly uncomfortable and not in a cute
funny way that the show is trying to make it.
(42:07):
Honestly all parents in the showare weird.
Like all of the older people in this show are written to be very
very sexual, which is a choice Iguess.
And Val's parents are definitelyno different.
You know, while they can't keep their hands off of each other
like there's some horny teenagers, they add in the layer
(42:28):
that they're also obsessed with their daughter getting married
to a man that can take care of her, and they're genuinely upset
when she doesn't do it, even when it would be a horrible
decision for her. It's a bad subplot.
It never gets a resolution. I guess maybe you can infer that
since she eventually has a kid with Charlie that they would
(42:51):
have probably been happy and then proud of her at some point.
So maybe that would have been that makeup moment that we don't
see, we never get there, and it wouldn't actually make up for
what makes them bad. It would just be finally she did
the thing that they wanted, so now they actually love their
(43:12):
daughter. So either way you slice it, they
just they suck. The next award we're going to do
is the Put Me in Coach, I'm Ready to Play award for best
side character, and this one feels a little bit like a cop
out to me, but I'm going to do it anyways.
And I'm going with Ellen. Technically she's in the main
(43:32):
cast so she shouldn't be eligible for this award, but
they treat her within the group as an extra and they often cut
her off and brush her off and forget she's there.
And she doesn't get a ton to do.Ironically, until season 2 when
the show actually starts gettinggood.
(43:53):
And there aren't that many side characters to choose from in
this show. The parents, as I mentioned, all
suck. Sophie's dad is OK but he's only
there for a second. Drew is going to get his moment
a little bit later. The ex-girlfriend for Jesse
sucks. The Ian love interest sucks.
Almost all of the love interestssuck actually.
(44:17):
And that's basically all this show is.
And that's why I also don't think that it holds up to How I
Met Your Mother. Those characters experienced
life together. These characters experienced
dates together. And I don't think it's a
coincidence that the show got better when they started giving
Ellen more to do. She's a character that has
(44:40):
comedy and heart. She's interesting.
I don't like how they made her obsessive about her girlfriend
going to Jersey so that they could break up.
But she's ultimately a really strong character that spends
most of the show on the sidelines, even though we could
see her face a lot. So it's the best I got.
(45:03):
The next word we're going to do is these jokes should be
literally written for me but whyam I not laughing?
Award for worst side character. And since I've already shit all
over Val's parents, I'm going toshit on Sophie's mom.
She really only gets 1 moment tobe a real human and have some
(45:26):
substance. And it's the line where she
tells Sophie that she likes her bikini modeling poster so much
because it was at the very beginning of her pregnancy, so
it reminds her of Sophie in every other way.
She's useless for more than justa dirty joke.
She's a great actress and she honestly delivers on what she's
(45:49):
asked to do. The inappropriate humor is
actually good. I enjoy it.
I just wish she had more to her.I like characters that have
dimension and again, aside from the one line that feels
completely out of place based oneverything else that we learned
(46:10):
about her, she's 1 dimensional and falls really flat because of
it. The next award we're going to do
is the if you just want to tasteand not the whole thing award
for best episode. And I think it was disengagement
party in season 2. And it's the one where Charlie
and Ellen are fighting and nobody knows why.
(46:34):
And then they finally say that it's because in the middle of
the night, Charlie had walked upbehind her to make a move,
thinking that she was the New Girl that he had been dating and
had spending the night that night.
And this leads to a story from Jesse about how he almost jumped
in the shower with Sid at one point in time during them being
(46:57):
roommates. And the experience was mutual
because while Jesse was almost jumping in the shower, Sid
thought that he was Hannah and he was preparing for her in,
well, sex mode essentially. And his solution is that what
(47:18):
they did is all the cheesy, you must do these things in New York
City that they found in a big, thick tourist book.
And he has this line about, like, make so many new memories.
It just like pushes the bad one down to basically the point you
forget about it. And in Charlie and Ellen's haste
(47:39):
to do that and accomplish that, Charlie completely neglects the
New Girl that he was with, and she just leaves.
At the very end, Jesse and Sid actually remember the incident.
And then they take the book and they rush out to make more new
memories to forget again. It's not even the main plot of
the episode, but it's just really good.
(48:02):
It's the most memorably comedic story contained in a single
episode that I can remember fromthe show.
And so that would be the episodethat I would watch if I were
you. The Vinyl award that we are
going to do is the he's kind of got done dirty.
Has any award for best Not the father?
(48:27):
As much as I find him bland, theanswer is Drew.
He's a decent dude, he's actually funny, and he doesn't
do anything that warrants being dumped by Sophie in the 1st
place. He just happens to be the guy
she's with when she When the show decides that they're going
(48:48):
to push the first will they won't they with Jesse into the
show and now she's, you know, got a break up with him because
that's their through plot for the whole premise of this show,
right. And sure, the one thing like the
way that they set this up is that he tells her that he thinks
that she should get a real job because, you know, she's 30.
(49:14):
It's actually good advice. Get a real job while you
continue to support your like, pursue your passion and try to
turn that into your real job. I don't know, like building a
real career while hosting a podcast.
Maybe This one hit home for me just a little bit.
(49:37):
He has his cringe, like when he makes Jesse say something
awkward to earn his job back or whatever.
And he has his moments where hiscomedic chops really do shine
through, like when he got a spray tan and his overly white
teeth. He absolutely rocks that scene.
(49:58):
Is he the best character in the world?
No. Is he the best potential father
that she interacted with on the show?
Yeah. Yeah.
Probably was. All right.
So that leads us to the final question, and that is, was this
worth the binge? You can if you want.
(50:23):
If you enjoyed How I Met Your Mother, you're at least going to
enjoy the callbacks in this one.It's got some clunkers of
episodes that you got to power through, but it's generally an
enjoyable watch. I know I complained about it.
It's not perfect, you know, but it's really unfortunate that the
(50:44):
show got cancelled just as it was getting its footing.
You know? I don't think you'd actually be
all that disappointed if you watched it, but you're not
missing out on something. Legend.
Wait for it, Dairy. I had to do it one last time,
just in case. I don't find any other reason to
(51:06):
make an episode about this universe.
So there you go. Anyways, Yeah, I you can watch
it. You'll probably enjoy parts,
you'll probably not enjoy parts,and it's only two seasons, so
it's not that big of a commitment.
Anyways, If you enjoyed How I Met Your Mother, you might as
well give it a shot and just seeif there's anything in it that
(51:29):
that stands out. Yep.
So that's all I got for you on How I Met Your Father.
Thanks for being here. Follow at Belated Binge on
social media and make sure that you are following or subscribed
on the podcast player that you're using right now or on
YouTube so that you don't miss any of my future episodes.
(51:49):
And now go watch How I Met Your Father if you want.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Ruthie's Table 4
For more than 30 years The River Cafe in London, has been the home-from-home of artists, architects, designers, actors, collectors, writers, activists, and politicians. Michael Caine, Glenn Close, JJ Abrams, Steve McQueen, Victoria and David Beckham, and Lily Allen, are just some of the people who love to call The River Cafe home. On River Cafe Table 4, Rogers sits down with her customers—who have become friends—to talk about food memories. Table 4 explores how food impacts every aspect of our lives. “Foods is politics, food is cultural, food is how you express love, food is about your heritage, it defines who you and who you want to be,” says Rogers. Each week, Rogers invites her guest to reminisce about family suppers and first dates, what they cook, how they eat when performing, the restaurants they choose, and what food they seek when they need comfort. And to punctuate each episode of Table 4, guests such as Ralph Fiennes, Emily Blunt, and Alfonso Cuarón, read their favourite recipe from one of the best-selling River Cafe cookbooks. Table 4 itself, is situated near The River Cafe’s open kitchen, close to the bright pink wood-fired oven and next to the glossy yellow pass, where Ruthie oversees the restaurant. You are invited to take a seat at this intimate table and join the conversation. For more information, recipes, and ingredients, go to https://shoptherivercafe.co.uk/ Web: https://rivercafe.co.uk/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/therivercafelondon/ Facebook: https://en-gb.facebook.com/therivercafelondon/ For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iheartradio app, apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com