How I Met Your Father. Review Season 2

Over the course of its nine seasons on CBS, How I Met Your Mother had an intriguing mystery that viewers had to work to uncover: WHO WAS THE MOTHER GOING TO BE? It makes reasonable to want to repeat the formula because the writing was intelligent and the cast was excellent, so we watched and waited. How I Met Your Father on Hulu, which is currently in its second season, is making an effort to achieve this, but it misses the original's witty scripts and memorable catchphrases, and the cast lacks the chemistry that made the first show so exceptional.

How I Met Your Father's first season established the dynamics of our main group in 2022, beginning with Sophie (Hilary Duff), a photographer who yearns to be in a committed relationship and whose future self tells her son's story. Sophie had affections for Jesse (Chris Lowell), an Uber driver and music teacher. However, Jesse also introduced Sophie to Drew (Josh Peck), with whom she briefly dated before breaking up with at the end of season one. We also have Sid (Suraj Sharma) and Hannah (Ashley Reyes), who are engaged, as well as Jesse's sister Ellen (Tien Tran), who moved to New York to be nearer to her brother, and Valentina (Francia Raisa), Sophie’s best friend, and Charlie (Tom Ainsley), Valentina’s British boyfriend.

Just a few seconds after the previous season ended, Sophie finally had a gallery show for her photography. All of her pals are there to support her, but during the past 48 hours, a lot has changed for each of them: Sid and Hannah secretly wed at City Hall, Charlie and Valentina split up (but can't stop touching), and Sophie had a relationship with Jesse, who declared his love for her while he was sleeping. She didn't expect it from him, and that is truly making her confused. The marine biologist Ian (Daniel Augustin), who relocated to Australia last season, has returned, further complicating matters.

If not for all the complicated feelings Sophie now has for Jesse, Ian’s arrival would have been a thrill, but instead it just complicates her feelings even more.

Spinning off a show from something that was so successful involves a risk, and we all know that enormous risks can result in great rewards or significant losses. I watched and enjoyed How I Met Your Mother for nine seasons, but I find it difficult to like How I Met Your Father. The risk seems like it wouldn't be worth it as a spinoff. But even when considered as a show separate from its predecessor, it just isn't filled with the qualities that make a sitcom appealing and hilarious.

Most of my dissatisfaction is due to the very terrible humor - "jokes" - in the program, but some of it has to do with the actors' chemistry, which doesn't make me want to root for anyone to be together or be the actual father. In the final minutes of the episode, Sophie rear-ends a car, and the driver just so happens to be Barney Stinson (Neil Patrick Harris), which is the one thing the program actually has going for it.

We only get a fleeting glimpse of him, just like we only got a fleeting glimpse of Robin Scherbatsky (Cobie Smulders) last season, but the familiar presence of trusted adults makes the whole situation feel soothing and, if only for a split second, less horrible than it actually is. However, a show can't survive on reassuring cameos alone. HIMYM was a program that was far from perfect—nine seasons is a long time to maintain impeccable quality control—but like, say, Lost, it was a show you endured awful episodes of because it made you care about how it ended. (Although the finale wasn't great either, at least we got there!) The biggest flaw in How I Met Your Father, even two seasons in, is that I still don’t care how it ends.