TV Review: How I Met Your Mother

First off, I really couldn't find any sort of decent promo or commercial for this show. They all advertise specific seasons, or are specific scenes, but I chose the season seven promo because that's the season currently airing.

I started watching this show on Netflix pretty much because it showed up in my suggestions, and I have now seen all six seasons available on Netflix. I also "acquired" all season seven episodes up to the current one to air last Thursday. The show mixes up the traditional sitcom structure, and begins with informing us it is now the year 2030, and Ted (the series main character) is going to narrate to his children how he met their mother, starting back in 2005 (the year of the shows start).

He starts off not by simply telling the damn story, but narrating how he met his children's Aunt Robin, Ted's ex-girlfriend. This is one problem me and many other people have with the show, it's basically like "Hey kids, you know your Aunt Robin, I totally hit that!"  And he essentially goes on in the series to describe in detail to his children every chick he banged in his twenties. Okay. Whatever. Suspension of disbelief.

The other main characters are Lily and Marshall, one of those super annoying couples everyone hates who met their first week of college and stayed together forever. There's Robin, who becomes part of the gang after they meet her in a bar and is a somewhat cynical television news reporter, and Barney, everyone's favorite, a sex addict with some sketchy corporate job who wears suits 100% of the time and hates monogamy.

This show hardly ever makes me laugh. I've just got to say. The jokes are fairly predictable, and even though Niel Patrick Harris (Barney) is fantastic, the writers keep giving him essentially the same material over and over for seven years. But despite this, for some reason I can't stop watching it. Maybe it's its spot on observations of real life phenomena (like The Mermaid Effect, or Crazy Eyes) or I've invested so much finding out who the damn mother is I can't give up now. I don't even know if I can recommend it or not. I guess you should watch it because it's basically our generation's Friends, but it's not really my type of comedy. Maybe the soap opera aspect is more what grabs me.

Entertainment Value: 3
Artistic Value: I really have no idea how to rate the artistic value of a sitcom. 1, I guess, but not in a bad way?