How I Met Your Mother

During the second half of the 20th century, many outstanding sitcoms were filmed and broadcasted in the United States. However, at the beginning of the 21st century, the trend stopped because the majority of successful projects belonged to drama. Only rare attempts to present TV-shows in the genre of comedy were made. The situation remained unchanged until 2005 when CBS started airing How I Met Your Mother (HIMYM). The audience warmly greeted the series that lasted for nine seasons. It touches a vast number of youth-related social issues such as the difficulty to find an own place in life and necessity to make ethical choices to become successful. Moreover, it demonstrates many phenomena of interpersonal relations and upbringing, like single parenting or the mismatch of the parents’ and child’s desires, which are common in the modern society.

The chief factors of the show success were the brilliant humor and true-to-life characters, who were in various strange and comic situations but always remained convincing. At the very beginning of the series, the viewer becomes acquainted with Ted Mosby, who is both protagonist and narrator of the story. The events take place in 2030 when Ted is telling his children how he had met their mother. He began his story from 2005, the period when he and his college friends Marshall Eriksen and Lily Aldrin lived in New York. By that time, Ted was a 27-years-old bachelor while his best friends were going to marry. Such situation motivated him to start searching for a woman, with who he could become a couple. It was the way how he met Robin Scherbatsky, an ambitious young reporter from Canada, and Barney Stinson, who is a serial womanizer, careerist, and a good example of yuppie. When all main characters were presented to the viewer, the story, full of comic situations, began.

The series has much in common with Friends. However, HIMYM was created for another generation and had the stronger focus on the social aspects than its predecessor did. The creators of Friends wanted to tell the youth that all their problems were less significant than they might have imagined. For example, almost all the conflicts in this series were interpersonal, and characters did not have to overcome the difficulties created by the external world. On the contrary, HIMYM reveals much more confrontations between a person and the world. The characters cannot solve their problems by rejecting the fact that they exist. Moreover, quite often they are to adapt to the new circumstances without knowing whether the changes can lead to the better future.

One might say the series shows the importance of friendship as one of the sources of positive emotions and support exactly as it was done in Friends. However, the characters in HIMYM have much more important doings than talking to each other all the time. Some of them devote much energy to work while the others spend their time with family and children. With regard to all facts mentioned above, HIMYM is more realistic than the vast number of the other sitcoms. The central aspect of the series is the life itself but not solely friendship, love, work or its other separate sides. The audience is to understand that the life is diverse with both good and difficult periods, but people should do their best to achieve the brighter future regardless this fact. In addition, every viewer can find a role-model among the main characters as all of them are focused on different aims.

The series touches a vast number of social issues. Nevertheless, almost all of them are referred to in the forms of jokes or hidden in characters, so that the audience could relax when watching HIMYM and later think about those issues. For example, Ted is a great architect, but he spent a long time finding the job and getting interesting projects to work at. The situation when people are to struggle to realize their potential is rather common in the modern world. Later, the viewers learn that Ted finally designed and built one of the skyscrapers in Manhattan, what had been his dream since childhood. The case makes the audience think about the number of talented people who fail due to the external circumstances and lack of inner power to resist obstacles.

Another prominent social problem is disclosed in Ted’s friend Marshall. The young man had become a lawyer to protect nature, but later he received a job offer from a big international bank and accepted it. At that period, he and Lilly wanted to have a baby and had to pay the mortgage for their apartment. The great nature lover had to betray his principles to provide for his family. One can only imagine the number of people who compromise with their conscience to receive more money and ensure comfortable conditions for their relatives and family. In this case, one may consider whether it is fair that the jobs where the persons do not have to conduct unethical actions are usually less paid than those where people are to violate ethical norms or own principles.

At the same time, the series is also full of interpersonal conflicts, which are aimed to reveal countless social phenomena. For instance, Barney Stinson is a womanizer who developed thousands of ways to get acquainted with women and seduce them. Such behavior was the result of the great psychological trauma: the girl he wanted to marry when being young preferred rich and powerful businessman to him. After those events, Barney decided to revenge all women and considered seduction to be the best way to implement his plan. Many single males and females are ruled by the same principles. On the one hand, such an approach allows people to avoid emotional turmoil. One the other hand, it makes other people choose the same behavioral pattern. Moreover, it also touches the issue of the correlation between the money and love.

The matters of upbringing are not central in the series, but there are two characters, Barney and Robin, whose parents seriously influenced them in the childhood. Robin’s father always wanted to have a son, but instead a daughter was born. Nevertheless, he did not abandon the idea to raise a boy. Thus, as a child, Robin had a short haircut and was engaged in such activities like hunting and hockey. Such upbringing made her unsure of herself and relatively insensitive. The creators of the series wanted to convey the idea that, very often, parents do not correlate their desires with the abilities and wishes of their children. As a result, a child may develop psychological complexes and suffer in the future.

In the case of Barney, his mother had been in relationships with many men but refused to tell him the name of his biological father. As a result, Barney was brought up without the male participation and attempted to compensate it when became a grown-up and found his biological father. When raising a child alone, a parent feels responsible and tries to protect him/her more than two-parent families. However, in case this excessive parental care is unlimited, such good intentions may result in complexes.

In conclusion, there is no doubt that HIMYM is one of the best modern TV sitcoms. Full of witty humor, it depicts a vast number of social and interpersonal issues. In the form of jokes, it informs the audience about negative trends. At the same time, the series does not attempt to give a piece of advice to the viewers or influence their process of making decisions. Instead, it gives them confidence that even the most serious problems can be overcome due to their inner power, friends, and family.

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Author's Note

Only rare attempts to present TV-shows in the genre of comedy were made. The situation remained unchanged until 2005 when CBS started airing How I Met Your Mother (HIMYM). The audience warmly greeted the series that lasted for nine seasons.