Preface

• Hello all!
• How I Met Your Mother is a show that I’ve spent a lot of time on.
• I’ve done a Review, I’ve done a Spoiler-Filled Review, I’ve even done a Review of the Alternate Ending!
• But on the 10^th Anniversary on when How I Met Your Mother originally aired its first episode, here I am back again to talk about my slightly revised thoughts on the show.
• Mild spoilers ahead. But really don’t worry about it…

Review vs. Re-Review and Characters

• Now there won’t be a TON of new content in this Re-Review, but there will be some new thoughts in play.
• That being said, feel free to check out my Review and see my thoughts on it from June of 2014.
• If you’ve read those already or read them and come back or just don’t care, then here it is: I still have the same problems with How I Met Your Mother that I did last June.
• But at a point I realized that they didn’t really matter.
• I still think Season 6 is a weak point in the show and feels pretty unnecessary.
• I still feel like Season 9 had a fair number of weak episodes and would’ve worked better if it was 13 episodes.
• Ultimately, if the show was 7 seasons altogether then it would have been perfect.
• But those complaints don’t matter, because How I Met Your Mother is probably my favorite show.
• I’ll differentiate for you all though!
• Community and Breaking Bad, in my opinion, are the BEST shows to be on recent TV. How I Met Your Mother is my favorite though.
• This is all coming from a movies guy who doesn’t get to a ton of TV, but just in my opinion…
• The reason I love this show so much is because of something that you pick up after seeing every episode for the fifth or sixth time a piece.
• Everything in this show always works.
• A show like Friends is brilliant and one of the best sitcoms ever, but there are times when I’m re-watching episodes and I’m like, “ehh Phoebe is a little annoying in this episode…” Or “yeah, the subplot with Monica just wasn’t as good as the main plot with Chandler and Joey.”
• How I Met Your Mother stays consistent, even in the seasons that aren’t as awesome.
• The characters are always fantastic. Some people complain about Ted, but I think that’s just because Ted is the manifestation of everyone watching the show.
• Lily and Marshall always have just the best chemistry. Marshall is adorable in every episode, his lines are the ones that still make me laugh out loud even if I know they’re coming. Lily is one of the few sitcom moral compasses that doesn’t feel annoying or whiny.
• Robin is just one of the coolest female characters in a comedy. (Even though she does fall for Barney…) Robin is the one who’s always an enigma yet always has enough to her that you can see all these guys falling in love with her.
• And Barney… Ah Barney. One of my favorite all-time television characters.
• One of my friends complained one time that Barney isn’t a three-dimensional character, which I completely disagree with. In fact, in a show that excels for its three-dimensional characters, he’s probably the most three-dimensional of any other one on the show.
  • Just look at Game Night in Season 1, or (ESPECIALLY) Season 6 with “Jerome” (no spoiler there…).
• These characters are the people who you see elements of in your own friends, and you see elements of your own friends in these characters. And they’re magical.

Emotion

• Much like the “main character” debate that I addressed in my Friends Re-Review, the emotion is what really made How I Met Your Mother my favorite show in recent memory.
• The comedy is always spot-on, the characters are always UBER enjoyable, the episodes are written hilariously.
• But it has heart.
• And that’s something that not a lot of shows have nowadays.
• After countless re-watches (that I’ve already mentioned nerdily), I would definitely say my favorite episode is No Pressure.
• If you haven’t seen it, I won’t ruin it for you.
• It doesn’t have a ton of burst out loud laughing jokes (though the subplot with Barney, Lily, and Marshall is spot on), but this episode excels by showing its humanity.
• It presents this real sense of emotion and this real-feeling series of events that almost make you cry. IN MORE THAN ONE PLACE.
• It’s one of those episodes that just made Season 7 one of the best that it could be.
• The show did so well in differentiating between good emotion and bad emotion and happy emotion and sad emotion too.
• When I say ‘emotion’ it could refer to a bunch of things, yet every aspect of the word ‘emotion’ is covered in this show.
• The sad emotion is done brilliantly in the Season 1 finale. Just that last shot. One shot. It sells the entire show’s emotion.
• Or the tension that you feel when Ted and Zoey (who I still don’t like) are fighting.
• It’s all there and it’s all relatable.
• This is a show that you can and you will repeatedly project yourself into.
• A show like Breaking Bad is brilliant because of the dynamic characters and smartly executed writing that it pulls off. It’s one of, if not THE, greatest drama ever to air on television.
• How I Met Your Mother doesn’t have all of that going for it. But it has the emotion. And in a lot of cases, that’s the only thing that matters.
• And that’s why it’s my favorite TV show.

***

So guys, that’s my updated review/Re-Review of How I Met Your Mother! What are your guys thoughts on this show if you’ve seen it, and what’s the most emotional moment of the series in your opinion? Let me know in the comments down below, and as always, thanks for reading guys.