Welcome to a new Sitcom Tuesday, on a Wednesday! This week, I’m beginning my look at How I Met Your Mother (2005-2014, CBS), which is currently available on DVD and streaming.

How I Met Your Mother stars JOSH RADNOR as Ted Mosby, JASON SEGEL as Marshall Eriksen, COBIE SMULDERS as Robin Scherbatsky, NEIL PATRICK HARRIS as Barney Stinson, and ALYSON HANNIGAN as Lily Aldrin.

You may be surprised to see this show here. I am too. I’ve been tough on How I Met Your Mother in the past, often using it to decry the declining merit of network-multi-cams in the 21st century, in reflection of some, in my opinion, undesirable trends within the genre. And to be fair, after having watched all nine seasons of Mother and studying it closely for a formal week-by-week appraisal on this blog, my big-picture thoughts remain — there’s a lot to critique. However, I’ve also cultivated enough of an appreciation for it now that I think I’ll be able to genuinely spotlight its moments of greatness, particularly in the seasons where it’s in great shape based on its own self-determined standards. As such, although I don’t think this is ever the best sitcom on the air, I think there are a handful of years where it’s a candidate for a Top 5 list – a metric that helps me determine which shows are worthy of full coverage. Mother clears that bar, and it’s also a sitcom that I think is fascinating and even important to consider in a study of this evolving genre because it genuinely embodies its era. In fact, I’d say it’s the most important 2000s-premiering multi-cam outside of those produced by Chuck Lorre (Two And A Half Men, The Big Bang Theory), and what’s more, it’s this decade’s key example of the “singles in the city” ensemble hangout rom-com, carrying on the legacy left behind by Friends but updating it in accordance with the aesthetic values of its own time. So, while I can’t pretend that I suddenly love this show and was totally wrong about it before — and you’ll certainly not see me trying to argue that it’s on the proverbial top-tier with gems from this decade like Arrested Development, The Office, or 30 Rock — I can tell you honestly that I do think it belongs here in our study, I enjoy the first half of its run, and I look forward to celebrating the moments where it’s at its best.

My main critical interest in this show, however, is how it encapsulates its era. Like Arrested Development, The Office, and 30 Rock, Mother combines “traditional” low-concept sitcom tenets with flashy, “modern” high-concept trappings that provide this type of show a contemporary mid-2000s sexiness, allowing it to distinguish itself from both its peers and its predecessors while offering a fresh hook to viewers who’d otherwise be tired of such familiar fare. Its traditional elements are obvious – for this is, again, another “singles in the city” ensemble hangout rom-com that was common in the wake of Friends’ mainstream success, when every broadcast network was looking to find the next iteration. And its application of the comfortable multi-camera look often associated with these kind of shows only further linked it to this subgenre. It’s a bond that nowadays makes Mother nostalgic in its own right, with a continuity to Friends that suggests an evolution, but during the original run was perhaps a hindrance, forcing comparisons that emphasized clichés, and at a time in our culture when the multi-cam aesthetic was heavily falling out of favor with critical tastemakers, becoming synonymous with overdone hokum and mediocrity, based on the lack of great samples (i.e., Two And A Half Men had nothing on The Office). But that’s where the modern part of Mother kicks in – it’s got a high-concept presentation of its situation that balances the traditional low-concept design and gives this series its unique, individual flavor. It’s nothing metatheatrical, like we’ve seen on so many other named examples from this point in the decade (which winked about their own identities as filmed projects), but it similarly has to do with the show’s storytelling – the way its weekly stories are told. For starters, the title seems to imply the premise: How I Met Your Mother. That is, this is not any ol’ “singles in the city” ensemble hangout rom-com about hot people coupling and uncoupling as they search for their happy romantic endings – it’s a “singles in the city” ensemble hangout rom-com where the lead tells us what its endgame is, as the central character promises to cover an explicitly stated subject: how, he, Ted, met the mother of his future kids.

We know this because Ted’s account of this elaborate tale to his two kids in the year 2030 frames the entire series, from the pilot to the finale, and is immediately established as the lens through which we’re to view every episode. This means the show’s premise is actually a high concept. Situation-satisfaction doesn’t solely hinge on how the main characters interact in relation to each other within their low-concept hangout setting; situation-satisfaction depends on literally addressing the narrator’s prescribed topic – how Ted met the mother of his kids. Beyond plot points that directly build to this moment (or tease it), what this mostly implies is that stories have to involve Ted’s romantic life, with each major move ideally bringing him closer to The Mother. To that extent, the series looks like a traditional ensemble rom-com, where dating stories are typical fodder. Mother merely guarantees, via its premise, that it’s the paramount concern — with this hook providing extra focus and weight, increasing the audience’s emotional investment as we become more and more anticipatory about this mystery lady. That’s the benefit of setting a narrative intention but leaving the details vague – it’s an incomplete story – and the audience, as in any mystery, starts looking for pertinent clues. We’re thus more engaged in the long-term plot as it unfolds. Of course, this also comes with limitations. For instance, because the show is explicitly about Ted’s romantic history, any A-story that’s not on that topic is automatically less situation-affirming and therefore weaker as a matter of situation comedy. A show like Friends, which covers similar ideas but without such a formal premise, doesn’t have those rigid parameters – it can explore its characters outside their romantic prospects and still honor its promise as a hangout comedy. After all, it’s a low-concept show about the characters and their relationships. Mother doesn’t have that freedom – according to its main character, it’s about how Ted met the mother of his kids. That’s why its weekly success is more exclusively determined by the progression of that ongoing narrative throughline. And, again, that’s why the series is high concept – it’s got a specific premise that’s not just the characters alone.

Accordingly, I must point out that this is a very idea-driven sitcom. Its single-sentence premise is the driving force of its identity and guides the value of its weekly returns, while its characters merely uphold and enable the central idea in a subjugating role where their exploration only matters tangentially and/or in support of the high concept. To that point, I don’t think this is a top-tier character sitcom. Well, let me be fair — its five leads are positionally clear. We’ve got the nuclear Everyman who’s trying to settle down, the couple who have settled down, and two singles (a guy and a gal) who refuse to settle down with anyone – and, that makes it so, just by configuration, a story for one character really couldn’t be a story for another. Also, all the leads do become more fleshed out and personalized as we learn more about them. (That’s the rising “character knowingness” I always talk about when it comes to recognizing a show’s peak.) And, as a group, the show’s sense of humor will eventually define their collective tenor. However, they’re not, on the whole, as exactly, fundamentally, undeniably precise as comic figures or as capable of guiding stories as the leads on, say, Friends, for, again, the ongoing plot comes first, and these leads merely support it. Now, this was also a critique on Friends, mainly around Sweeps, when its characters would be puppetted into artificial cliffhangers and soapy story turns that challenged their definitions and strained our willing suspension of disbelief. But that series prioritized its leads more on a regular basis and wasn’t as narratively confined as a matter of premise – so it’s a sharper concern here; the blend of character and story tilts so far to story on Mother that character feels less prominent overall. Even as a rom-com predicated on tying romantic plot points to its leads’ emotional decision-making, the plot is leading them and determining worth. And that’s a critique that manifests itself not just in the macro, but in the micro as well. With the characters less foregrounded as the main attraction, the episodic ideas tend to be less personalized to them — unmotivated by specifics. Additionally, as an idea-driven series, its micro story ideas (inside the macro plot) tend to derive most value merely from the ideas themselves, and/or, more notably, the way those ideas exist within story — more than anything distinct about the characters or how they’re comedically defined and used in action.

Nevertheless, the storytelling is where How I Met Your Mother is at its most interesting and, for this genre, special. Because the show is framed as Future Ted telling a long-form story to his kids about how he met their mom, Mother gets to tell its own weekly stories with that conceit in mind. This allows him to be an unreliable narrator — someone who, for instance, intentionally changes details (often using euphemisms), casually disrupts the linear storytelling to make a point (enabling flashbacks and flashforwards), or sometimes just mixes up facts (like when he forgets someone’s name or confuses the events). All of that is incredibly inventive and keeps the audience engaged in a manner that speaks to the increasingly complicated storytelling that network TV was starting to experiment with in the 2000s as it was becoming more dramatically ambitious. This, after all, was the era of Lost – a network drama that also began to indulge jumps back in time, forward in time, and sideways in time, all of which collectively made exciting a non-linear and therefore non-traditional type of plotting. How I Met Your Mother, though simpler and more focused than something like Lost, similarly plays with the freedom this unreliable narrator format gives it to be narratively complex, and in this case, it often derives both laughs and dramatic tension from these opportunities to more heavy-handedly shape the plot and the audience’s ever-unfolding understanding of it. This sensibility is very much a sign of the late 2000s – an overarching conceptual gimmick that’s just as foundational to Mother’s appeal as The Office’s mockumentary setup and 30 Rock’s SNL parallels are to theirs, with sexy modernity implied by this fresh storytelling hook. And in that regard, How I Met Your Mother feels born out of this unique time period, when the genre’s finest samples needed an extra “oomph” – however much an idea-led gimmick – in order to communicate creative value to a culture simply exhausted by the oversaturated derivations of familiar constructs.

Of course, this premise-approved sensibility goes beyond just the macro “Mother” plot, informing the show’s weekly plots as well – boasting a fast-paced, cutaway-rich, story-dictated rhythm that not only reiterates the basic concept of Ted narrating this to us from 2030, but also allows the show, I think, to seem more comedically charged than the episodic ideas themselves would ordinarily be. That is, more than what’s happening, the arrangement of what’s happening is fun. And just as Seinfeld’s dovetailing story apparatus became a series-defining element of its situation, Mother’s sheer sense of how to present its narratives, and the types of narratives to present (we’ll talk more about these throughout these lists), similarly becomes a calling card and a key part of its DNA as an individual sitcom, separate from its kin. To that point, it should also be noted that although How I Met Your Mother is a multi-camera sitcom because it’s staged in front of multiple cameras that are all shooting at the same time, thereby visually resembling the other classic entries in this subcategory (like Friends and Seinfeld), it actually wasn’t shot in front of a studio audience (save an episode or two). Frankly, it couldn’t be – its storytelling couldn’t be staged like a play. Accordingly, you could say the show also projects some of the single-cam notions that were increasingly coming to the fore on network TV in the mid-2000s, especially as multi-cams were floundering – giving sitcoms freedom to be more narratively boundless, with bigger stories and thus larger plots that weren’t beholden to limited sets and characters. As such, I’ve always found Mother a proverbial fence-straddler. It maintains the risks associated with the aesthetic of a multi-cam – a format increasingly earning negative connotations for critics and award-givers because of its dearth of great new examples. And yet, it also opts to forgo the primary advantages of the form, such as the studio audience as a palpable incentive to prioritize true laugh-inducing comedy — not to mention the theatrical unities of time, place, and action that force an emphasis on the characters and how they interact, the last of which always does the heavy-lifting in any situation comedy, no matter how high concept or idea driven.

In essence, this show acts like a single-cam but looks like a multi-cam, and in the process, matches the liminality of this era… perhaps not to its own benefit. At least, not as far as I’m concerned, for you see, this both results from, and further enables, Mother’s excessive idea-driven slant — spotlighting the weaknesses with both character (who are less defined because they’re less seminal to situation-satisfaction) and even ideas (which are less unique because the characters are less unique). That remains my core critique of the series, exemplifying the overall drift towards a more story-driven, idea-first conception of the sitcom in the 2000s that, honestly, I don’t favor, for, I repeat, every sitcom depends on its characters because every situation requires strong characters to either be or uphold its premise. Moving away from that understanding inevitably moves the genre away from the very attributes that render the sitcom a special, individually potent art form. For that reason, I can’t lie and tell you I think this is an A-tier sitcom. It’s a compelling image of its time, and compared to its contemporaries, it’s more enjoyable than most (again, maybe even making a Top 5 list once or twice). That’s enough to get it coverage here – especially when it’s as requested as it was. But before I can celebrate what it does well, I have to be clear-eyed about where I believe it stands in the genre. In reflection of being fundamentally idea-driven and not 100% successful on even those terms,  I’d say it’s got the soapy, rom-com interests of Friends and the plotty comic rhythm of Seinfeld, without Friends’ narratively supportive characters or Seinfeld’s ingeniously one-of-a-kind episodic notions. Compared to them, I rank Mother lower… And yet, its high concept is engaging, and it’s applied in a way that, for a while, is smart. Also, the show’s low-concept elements, though not as well-exercised as others, are supportive enough to do what they must when they must. In particular, Barney works well. He’s the most comedically distinct and narratively utilizable lead — a series-defining tenet with precise qualities: he’s a womanizer, but more white-collar and debonair than we’ve seen this archetype be lately. And he has an intelligence that enables capers and schemes that flatter the show’s fast-paced, plot-led ethos — an earned outgrowth of its narrator-shaped and similarly plot-led premise. We’ll see a lot of him on these lists.

Personally, I think Neil Patrick Harris’ portrayal of Barney is unusual – casting little Doogie Howser as a babe-hound is innately ironic and sort of detaches the actor from the role a bit, but that has its own comedic value, and with the persona well-defined enough inside the ensemble that he becomes a reliable force, I consider him the most unique participant… and really the only member of the main ensemble who, as a character, is strong. Again, that’s because the show’s gaze is elsewhere: the high-concept premise and its manifestation in storytelling. While the use of character within plot and my personal opinions about comedic success will, as always, inform the episode selections I make, the unavoidable truth is that this show is most situation-affirming, and consequently the most enjoyable as a distinct entity, when it’s directly playing up its premise in story – when it’s moving through plot points related to how Ted met the mother of his kids. That’s what’s promised, and that’s when the show is firing on all cylinders. Naturally, as in all sitcoms – especially high-concept ones – there’s a diminishing degree of novelty to this idea, as it gets less fresh and exciting over time. It also gets harder to simply come up with fresh and exciting ideas related to the premise over time, meaning that after a few years of being able to nod at The Mother in almost every entry, she gradually becomes reserved for major pivot points in a season. Eventually, at the start of the sixth year, the series even decides to recharge this kind of rom-com narrative focus by also teasing another major plot point to which its micro ideas can build: Barney’s wedding. What’s more, we’re told that this is where Ted will meet the legendary Mother, which means moving towards this big event is also moving towards fulfillment of the premise. Yet it’s more complicated in actual practice, for now we know that no one Ted meets matters until then. And this is a hindrance for weekly situation-based comedy, with the next few years also feeling interminably drawn out as a result, culminating in a final season where 22 episodes take place within one long wedding weekend.

I’ll share many more thoughts on the last few seasons when we get there. But here I’ll note that although the final year restores an explicit situation-approved direction to every episode, it too, like the Mother premise itself, loses a lot of novelty and becomes less emotionally credible the longer it’s delayed. That is, just like many finale developments in rom-coms – Ross/Rachel’s reunion, for one – this show strains its characters’ credibility (not to mention its own credentials as a narrative enterprise) when it forsakes logical developments for pre-determined Big Events that can’t occur at a more natural pace. Mother is essentially a victim of its own success — its high concept becomes harder to credibly sustain with every passing season, and by the time the Barney wedding tease is injected to help invigorate it, the show is no longer reliably playing to its situation in ways that are fully commendable and well-supported by the characters anyway. This shouldn’t be a surprise – all idea-driven shows struggle more than their character-driven counterparts once novelty wanes, and Mother is no exception. Its setup, which comes with its own freedoms, proves to be equally limiting – constraining the show’s quality inside rigid parameters. I reiterate — if its premise isn’t well-invoked episodically, this show isn’t being what makes it special and, on its own terms, great. Fortunately, we won’t have to worry about that for a while – I’d say the first five seasons (especially Two and Three) are mostly good. After that, it’s much more hit-and-miss, with every year failing a bit more, until the complicated Nine, which, again, is something we’ll dive into later… In the meantime, I should say that one of the main reasons this show was able to add a forthcoming Barney wedding as a new focal point is, by Season Six, it had indeed created a new rooting romantic interest aside from narrator Ted’s pursuits, having already introduced the initial coupling of Barney and Robin. And she, of course, had spent her first two seasons – including the well-crafted and situation-establishing pilot that otherwise set up the show’s basic ideas – as Ted’s primary lover, not Barney’s.

Now, usually when a pilot suggests a romantic spotlight on two people whose pairing is likely, if both actors stay on the show for its duration, the show will end with them together – they’re fated, meant to be, with the premiere an intended bookend to the finale. But How I Met Your Mother puts a fascinating yet complicating wrinkle in the mix by letting us know in the premiere that Robin is NOT The Mother. This is great for enhancing narrative curiosity – now that we’re aware Robin’s not the mom, we are on alert for who is the mom. And more than just watching to see Ted’s relationship with The Mother develop, we realize that we’re literally waiting to see him meet her – and the mystery is not just when and where, but who? Taking Robin out of the equation allows that suspense to accrue. At the same time, because Robin is out of the equation, the emotional stakes in her relationship with Ted are severely lessened. Since she’s not the subject of this show’s stated premise and implied endgame for its lead, we’re disincentivized from spending time wishing that they’d be together; after all, Ted declares that the point of his story is someone else. At least, that’s what we think… The finale eventually proves all this wrong – and controversially so – as it’s discovered that the series always intended Ted/Robin to be endgame, per the traditional pilot and all it typically foretells. And so even though we think we’ve been watching a show about the explicit premise told to us by narrator Ted, we’ve actually been watching a more traditional rom-com. It’s a bait-and-switch that felt more like a betrayal of the audience’s confidence than a clever but signaled twist, for although, yes, we perhaps should have taken the pilot’s subject to heart (and the many, many signs along the way), why would any show misrepresent itself – what it claimed to be about — so significantly? What’s more, why would the show spend the last few seasons – and all of Nine – building to the wedding of Barney and Robin, and therefore forcing the audience to buy into it as an earned emotional tentpole for their characters, only to deny that it’s their real happy ending?

You see, Barney/Robin doesn’t feel like Friends’ Joey/Rachel: contrived time-wasting cliffhanger bait meant to distract from the premised inevitability of Ross/Rachel, even at the expense of their characterizations. Barney/Robin happens early enough – and with our knowledge of Ted/Robin having happiness beyond each other – that their characters actually do make more sense as a couple. They’re two “alikes” – headstrong realists who don’t want to settle — as opposed to opposites (like Ted and Robin). And Barney and Robin thus force each other to evolve in tandem. Negating all the mutual growth it takes to get them together by the finale – rendering wasteful all the time spent teasing their wedding as an endgame event as well  – doesn’t just dupe the audience, it insults the characters by seeming to regress them, committing to a prematurely conceived ending that the characters outgrew midway through the run, when the situation lost its inherent freshness and was eager to conclude. By outlasting its own lifespan without necessary upkeep, Mother hurts its legacy, ending on a head-scratching note — after several seasons of already batting below average in weekly premise satisfaction. And many fans are still pissed about it. Again, I’ll share more of my thoughts later — and I understand the counter-argument as well (“timing”). But it’s worth pointing out now that Mother has remained the kind of show whose simple longevity has weakened its standing in the genre, and while I’m not as furious or confused by the Ted/Robin ending as many viewers, I do think it fights some of the more interesting and unique parts of the show – namely, the high-concept logline as an emotional engine, along with the personal development of Barney, the one regular character who proved most capable of specific narrative exploration. By harming those two series-defining elements, the ending rejects the situation as much as it cleverly fulfills it. And for a high-concept idea-driven sitcom, that’s a big deal… and even somewhat surprising.

Then again, why be surprised? This high-concept premise establishes rigid parameters that guarantee more self-defined irrelevance than satisfaction. I mean, Mother can dress itself up in flashy storytelling all it wants, with clever story beats that jump back and forth in time with the rich complexity of a Lost season, but some of its fundamentals are challenging. In fact, I’d say it’s a miracle the show is as good as it is – it’s got affable and often funny scripts from a staff led by two former Letterman scribes, whose late-night credentials engender an idea-driven and even Seinfeld-ian comic sensibility that somewhat offsets its otherwise more romantically inclined Friends-ian subject. Indeed, the show’s style is very jokey outside of the soapy plot points (which increase in later years), and as it leans into the exciting storytelling opportunities enabled by the chosen framework and its unreliable narrator, it also creates its own comic language – running gags and one-off ideas that play up shifts in perspective or awareness. These also reinforce the characters’ camaraderie, cementing a unique identity for them and the series beyond just the premise (which is also solidified via this appropriate ethos). I know I’ve been harsh here, but believe me, I’ve come to like Mother – I think its high-concept hook is more engrossing than I earlier assumed, and though it does encapsulate the more story-driven and dramatic influence within the genre that I don’t love as a trend, it has smart storytelling, and for most of its run, actual laughs. I also know how to recognize when it’s being the best, most distinctive, satisfying version of itself – and that happens regularly during the series’ peak (Seasons Two and, in particular, Three). So, I’m excited to go through the show over these next few weeks – delivering my verdicts on its many storytelling choices in exploration (or not) of its premise, while also pinpointing the many moments where How I Met Your Mother most and best embodies the kind of sitcom that reflects well upon this liminal era. As for Season One, the series is at its most novel here, but it’s still learning how to be the best it can be in practice, further developing its leads and uncovering the special benefits of its flashy high-concept design.

 

01) Episode 1: “Pilot” (Aired: 09/19/05)

Ted begins telling his kids the story of how he met their mom, starting with how he met Robin.

Written by Carter Bays & Craig Thomas | Directed by Pamela Fryman

Mother‘s pilot is effective at establishing the high-concept premise and its framework as a story told by Ted to his children in 2030, along with the basic positional distinctions between the main characters, as the newly engaged and therefore settling down Marshall and Lily serve as an explicit contrast, specifically, to Ted’s bachelor “devil on his shoulder” Barney. And while the show isn’t yet using its biased narrator design to maximize its unique idea-driven form, it’s already got the Seinfeld-ian love of elevated trivia via the “olive theory.” That’s a named comic notion that reflects a guiding sensibility within the series’ ethos, where running gags and inside jokes reinforce the “friend group” construct and, more crucially, aid the sense of long-form and callback-heavy storytelling, which thrives on details that can be zeroed in on as a marker of big-brained plotting. Speaking of plotting, the central goal here is to introduce Ted and Robin, naturally positioning them, by their focus in this series-explaining pilot, as the show’s primary rom-com rooting interest. But since, as we learn at pilot’s end, she’s not the mother of Ted’s future kids, the carrot that this sitcom promises to be chasing as its premise is misaligned with the carrot that both Ted and this first season is actually chasing in story, cementing the conceptual tension that undergirds these first few years and then will come to define Mother en masse, given its series finale and those full-circle choices. Accordingly, this proves to be an accurate sample of the show — it’s still got more to learn, but it communicates itself capably.

02) Episode 2: “Purple Giraffe” (Aired: 09/26/05)

Ted throws a series of parties in the hopes of getting closer to Robin.

Written by Carter Bays & Craig Thomas | Directed by Pamela Fryman

The series’ sophomore outing has to accomplish a few things in order to set up the status quo with which the rest of the run will actually operate. Primarily, it has to create a friend group that also includes Robin, Ted’s central object of desire whom he only just met in the previous entry. It also has to establish a buyable reason for Ted and Robin to not romantically pair right away, given how into each other they seemed just last week. What’s settled upon is that Robin is not up for the kind of marriage-minded traditional commitment that Marshall/Lily have and Ted seeks, which posits her fundamentally against the kind of lifestyle Ted wants — thereby opposing her to all of them, but only after having already built their chemistry and making it feasible that they might adopt her into their regular social circle. So, this half hour, though not as comedically polished as the premise-setting high-concept premiere, formalizes the series’ low-concept design — and I think Mother does a good job crafting itself in this way.

03) Episode 5: “Okay Awesome” (Aired: 10/17/05)

Ted goes to a club with Barney instead of a wine and cheese night hosted by Marshall and Lily.

Written by Chris Harris | Directed by Pamela Fryman

This isn’t an important offering in terms of the Mother premise, but it’s a display of the careful craftsmanship that goes into the first half of this debut season, with the first two scripts setting up the series’ high-concept situation and low-concept status quo, the next two building individual relationships in the ensemble and establishing an episodic sensibility that will allow stories that either feature one-off love interests and/or have little to do with romance at all, and this, the series’ fifth excursion, reiterating the primary differences between the main characters through the tensions that exist within the group. Namely, Marshall and Lily are settled down — or, at least, they’re in the process of settling down — while Barney and Robin are not and don’t desire to be, and Ted is caught in the middle, because he wants to be settled down but isn’t. This will remain the basic makeup of their friend group for the majority of the run, and more than any segment outside the pilot, “Okay Awesome” explores that explicitly.

04) Episode 10: “The Pineapple Incident” (Aired: 11/28/05)

After a drunken night, Ted wakes up with a strange woman and a pineapple.

Written by Carter Bays & Craig Thomas | Directed by Pamela Fryman

My choice for this season’s Most Valuable Episode (MVE), “The Pineapple Incident” seems like just an episodic dating story with a one-off love interest for Ted (played by Danica McKellar). But in the grand scheme, it’s much more, for this is the first installment to take advantage of the opportunities presented by this high-concept premise and, in particular, its inclusion of a biased, unreliable narrator. By design, the show is told exclusively from Ted’s point-of-view, but that POV has not really been challenged yet. We’ve basically accepted without question that everything we’ve seen is objectively correct and, as in most series, relevant to the overall story, with any cross-cutting and jumping around only happening because that’s what the narrative requires (and any conveniently placed info is only mirroring the normal way that serialized storytelling has always created cliffhangers in this subgenre). However, Mother discovers here that having a specific character narrating the action means that it can have more fun by reflecting the character himself in the storytelling — for instance, there are things that he might not know or remember, or things that he simply might not want to tell his children. And in calling attention to the imperfection of his guiding voice, the storytelling is then free to become even more broadly non-traditional in its framing of individual ideas, creating added humor or dramatic tension as a result of an “author” who’s got more free rein to play with details and/or move around in stories wherever he sees fit (i.e., non-linearly). This, though perhaps gimmicky and occasionally stunty, is nevertheless both funny and interesting because it’s indeed condoned by the high-concept premise and therefore a play towards the situation, making this a viable template this series can use to distinguish itself with a unique but earned form of sitcommery.

Okay, everything’s still tame here compared to what will follow in later years (when the show has to try harder to maintain excitement amidst dwindling premise novelty) — as Ted’s unawareness of how a pineapple got into his room merely highlights the bounds of his memory. But the basic structure of a self-created mystery — a micro suspense (“how did Ted get in this weird scenario?”) inside the larger “Mother” suspense — both reveals exactly how an imperfect narrator can justify an artificial structure via his personal way of telling a story (he can move around in time, dropping information non-sequentially, with “nested” flashbacks enhancing the tale) while also creating a formula that the show can hereafter routinize to reiterate its premise at large, for stories inside stories, and teased pay-offs inside one overarching teased pay-off, exist as miniature examples of what the series aims to be on the whole. Again, this is the first episode to understand how the series can more fundamentally reinforce its situation with such storytelling, so it’s the smartest and most important sample of Mother‘s first season.

05) Episode 11: “The Limo” (Aired: 12/19/05)

Ted gets a limo to escort him and his friends to a series of parties on New Year’s Eve.

Written by Sam Johnson & Chris Marcil | Directed by Pamela Fryman

Because this entry almost entirely takes place in a limousine as the ensemble goes to and from a series of five New Year’s Eve parties, How I Met Your Mother‘s aesthetic affiliation to Seinfeld feels very top of mind in “The Limo,” as this is exactly the kind of simplistic, convention-busting bottle show that the latter series often liked to produce early on in its run, where it would engage the Aristotelian Unities of time, place, and action to communicate a sense of everyday trivia. Ultimately, it’s something of a narrative gimmick — so low-concept that it’s high because it’s a stunt — and that’s perfect for this series, which is similarly idea-driven in its emphasis on form and how stories are told, with unique structures that capitalize on the opportunities presented by having a playful narrator. Additionally, I also appreciate this holiday offering for engaging some of the series’ charms as a romantic comedy, with another Ted/Robin kiss that plays into the year’s overall arc about their (seemingly inevitable) romance.

06) Episode 13: “Drumroll, Please” (Aired: 01/23/06)

Ted tries to track down a woman he met at a wedding.

Written by Gloria Calderon Kellett | Directed by Pamela Fryman

As a sequel to the previous episode, “Drumroll, Please” finds Ted pursuing a woman he met at a friend’s wedding, with flashbacks from their night together interspersed between his efforts to find her. This is another example of the show creating a mini narrative track inside its larger series-defining track, for while How I Met Your Mother says it’s about Ted finding the mother of his kids, this story is about him finding this one particular girl (Ashley Williams), and that similar rom-com focus, with mounting suspense and narrator-guided movement back and forth in time, is a self-contained reflection of what Mother does at large. (Also, she could be the mother for all we know. Heck, had the series ended at 13 weeks, she would have been!) As such, this is like “The Pineapple Incident” in that it reveals the series’ recent understanding of how it can apply its high-concept premise through its storytelling (not just its chosen stories) — a type of advanced idea-driven sitcommery that indeed makes this a special sitcom and projects narrative superiority on its own self-determined metrics regarding self-actualization.

07) Episode 14: “Zip, Zip, Zip” (Aired: 02/06/06)

Ted and Victoria grow closer, as do Marshall and Lily, and Robin and Barney.

Written by Brenda Hsueh | Directed by Pamela Fryman

This is a good relationship-building show that explores the basic contrasts within the ensemble, as Marshall and Lily’s subplot is typical of their more settled-down experience, while Ted pursues a romance with Victoria, someone with whom he hopes to settle down (which is his character’s overall objective), and Barney and Robin are wingmen for each other at the bar — an idea fitting for their depictions as people who reject the kind of traditional, ordinary commitment that the others either have or are seeking. Accordingly, this is a nice reflection of each main cast member. It’s also prescient, as Barney’s attempt to bed Robin after the two establish a unique rapport previews the growing bond they’ll share later when they become each other’s primary love interests — enabling a narrative event that, as noted above, complicates the series’ chosen ending, for the storytelling around their pairing encourages us to root for them more decisively than we did (and are doing this season) with Ted/Robin, who are undermined by our awareness that she’s NOT the mom and therefore not the implied endgame of his story.

08) Episode 15: “Game Night” (Aired: 02/27/06)

A game night exposes an embarrassing personal story of Barney’s.

Written by Chris Harris | Directed by Pamela Fryman

With a simple Friends-ian setup of a game night where the group hopes to learn more about Ted’s new girlfriend Victoria and vet her, this offering seems like a straightforward sample of the singles in the city “hangout” sitcom. But it’s really a showcase for Barney, specifically — as an uncovered VHS tape leads to him revealing his embarrassing origin story: how he became the besuited bachelor who refuses to invest in a romance that could possibly break his heart again. Oh, the others share similarly embarrassing moments as well — including Ted, who has a flashback related to the pilot and his initial pursuit of Robin — but Barney gets the most fleshing out, rendering this the first episode to zero in on the character who’ll soon prove to be the strongest flavor in the ensemble, the one who’ll most uniquely and individually inspire narrative ideas. Speaking of narrative, this is another example of stories being told inside a story being told — with “nested” flashbacks — which, once again, is condoned and encouraged as a reflection of Mother’s identity by the high-concept premise and its biased narrator framework.

09) Episode 18: “Nothing Good Happens After 2 A.M.” (Aired: 04/10/06)

Ted makes a late-night visit to Robin’s apartment.

Written by Carter Bays & Craig Thomas | Directed by Pamela Fryman

As indicated, this entire first season — and, based on the pilot, perhaps the entire series — is designed to make us root for the coupling of Ted and Robin, which is an obvious focal point and an important part of their characters’ arcs… even though we’re told she’s not the mother, and thus not the subject of what How I Met Your Mother has told us via its premise is its raison d’être. This is a dramatically interesting complication that naturally weakens our investment in their pairing. If she’s not the person with whom we expect Ted to end up at the end of this long-form story, then becoming too emotionally attached is going to be wasteful. As a result, a lot of the big Ted/Robin moments in these early seasons similarly reveal that complexity — for the show structurally wants us to “ship” them à la a Ross/Rachel, even when it feels “wrong.” In terms of this installment, I include it here mostly because it’s a major pivot point that displays the series’ rom-com ethos and the dramatic, sometimes soapy bent of its storytelling, which the sitcom genre (post-Friends) has increasingly chosen to adopt over the last few decades.

10) Episode 22: “Come On” (Aired: 05/15/06)

Ted formally pursues Robin, while Marshall and Lily argue about the future.

Written by Carter Bays & Craig Thomas | Directed by Pamela Fryman

Season One’s finale is about its big developments — pairing Ted and Robin, and splitting Marshall and Lily. The latter is part of a forced arc where the settling-down couple has a temporary breakup over her fears of settling down. Because it’s resolved so quickly in Season Two, it ultimately comes off as schmucky cliffhanger bait, deployed solely to provide dramatic tension going into another year. But despite feeling unnecessary and hand-of-writer, I think it’s also a noble effort to explore their characters through a dilemma they might face after hanging with pals who are not as romantically committed. In other words, they’d likely be influenced against major commitment by this group, and so I don’t mind the conflict as much theoretically… As for Ted and Robin, the simple design of the pilot and Season One’s main narrative focus makes their pairing triumphant… even though the premise undermines it. What does this mean for Season Two? Well, potentially a narratively richer year, with better defined characters and storytelling that can further lean into the complexities of this high concept.

 

Other notable episodes that merit mention include: “Mary The Paralegal,” a jokey entry predicated on a latently revealed prank where Barney tricks Ted into believing his date is a hooker (it’s somewhat identity-building comedically but I think its ideas are clichéd, and not as good for premise or character as those above), along with “The Wedding,” which sets up the aforementioned “Drumroll, Please,” and “The Sweet Taste Of Liberty,” an early formative outing that explores the bond between Ted and Barney, and develops the friendship between Lily and Robin. I also like “The Slutty Pumpkin” for its rom-com story and use of flashbacks to build out the characters’ history and reinforce the unique capabilities of the storytelling.

 

*** The MVE Award for the Best Episode from Season One of How I Met Your Mother goes to…

“The Pineapple Incident” 

 

 

Come back next week for Season Two and a new Wildcard!