How I Met Your Mother in a Minute: Now I Never Have to Watch It

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6SJkBuXapU

A while back I gave How I Met Your Mother a fighting chance to impress me. I watched about eight episodes, and found that the popularity of the program was indeed still as baffling to me as when I started the project. Neil Patrick Harris’s Barney was the only redeeming part of the show, but that wasn’t enough to get me to stick around.

Thankfully, thanks to Barney himself, I no longer have to worry about ever catching up with the show. In the video above, he summarizes six (seven, eight?) seasons of the show in under a minute. In short, everyone has hooked up with everyone and Ted still sucks. At least that’s the impression I got out of it.

Fans of the show, what am I missing here? Why is HIMYM so beloved?

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21 Comments

  1. I love the show for some unknown reason. Out side of Barney it’s is horribly generic. Which usually isn’t my style. I mean I love Community too, and it’s by and far a much much better show (at least the past 3 seasons). There is no real reason why I should like it like I do.

  2. Just dropped the show after the first 5min of the new season. The whole Ted thing has always been back burner to me compared to the rest of the show. After watching the opening of the season opener, I just got completely sick of seeing or hearing about Ted. I couldn’t stand it and no amount of the rest of the crew could help.

    It may have taken me too long to drop it, but I just can’t give the series another chance. When it ends, I’ll just look up the last scene on youtube.

    Oh, and yes, that was pretty much the whole depressing mess of Teds story.

    Suggestion for the writers: Ted needs to kill himself in the series finale in order to keep his imaginary kids from being born and ever learning what a complete waste of skin he is.

    If i didn’t have a family, I may have taken the same route just for sheer shame of sticking with this series for so long…

  3. No clue why i love it but i do and i keep rooting for Ted to finally get someone.

    Oh wait, i just figured out a good reason, Cobie Smulders and Alyson Hannigan are really hot.

  4. Did the writers not realize:

    1. How inane that entired 52 seconds sounded.

    2. How they basically summed up the “major plot points” of there show in 52 seconds.

    3. How only the interesting characters are in the room to tell it.

    That or the writers are too meta for the execs and sending a secret message about how they’d rather kill themselves then continue Ted as a character.

  5. I thought the first 3 or 4 seasons were really good. They took chances with different story structures and it had a sense of real continuity. Often Old Ted would mention story points that only paid off a season or more later and small bits from prior episodes were referenced later. The actors, other than Ted and Robin, were all genuinely funny. At some point the show just sort of died a slow sad death from lack of creativity. Now it is just a zombie, shuffling on towards some long promised payoff about the mother. NPH has merely managed to decay slower than the rest.

  6. I love how everyone hates on Ted … but his story is the entire underlying plot of the entire show and is what ties it all together.

    Sure his character might get annoying to a point – but there is a bigger picture to Ted.

    Also, if you don’t like the show and have actually watched the first season all the way from episode 1 … then I’m fine with that. What makes the show endearing and fun for the Fans like me, are the constant things that are mentioned and brought up again and again sparatically in episodes. Such as the bro code, or “have you met Ted?”, “Lawyered!”, the Slap Bet, Marshal always using the Robot when he dances … and the list goes on.

    In short – you either like the characters and their stories, or you don’t. My wife and I have watched from the first episode and are completely hooked. I’m not saying that every episode has been amazing by any means … but the show overall has been great.

  7. Me explaining to you why I like How I Met Your Mother would be the same as you explaining to me why you have whittled down an entire form of media, music, into nothing but soundtracks. You admit you only listen to movie and video game soundtracks, so please explain that to me. Maybe while you’re writing about that, you will realize that often you can’t explicitly explain why you like something, you just know that you do.

  8. @ Troy- I share the same sentiments.

    Yea, I almost couldn’t watch the show at first because I hate Ted so much. I don’t understand the immense popularity either, since it’s so cookie cutter, but its still entertaining to cruise through a few episodes on netflix when bored. I feel HIMYM is the Burn Notice of TV Comedies.

  9. while its not great…it does have a great timeline the way stories are brought up and it really seems like friends because they always rag on each other for stories that we, the audience, have seen just like real friends. they hardly references stuff we don’t know about, and that’s why i feel a connection to the show because they have built the relationships with us watching and not before to some stuff we don’t know about….wow that was a lot longer then i expected sorry

  10. I don’t hate Ted, but I hate older Ted. Why are his voice so different? And why do they use that voice even when it’s younger Ted who is telling the story? Or are older Ted telling a story about his younger self telling a story?

  11. Lucas has got the idea. You need to watch it from the beginning and just keep watching, fight through the generic-ness of it and you’ll find the good part of it, yes it has some dumb parts, ted could be less of a douche, but that is who he is and it’s kinda fun once you look past it. (i think they try to make him like a J.D. but they didn’t really come close). Of course Jason Segel and Doogie make the show but there is definitely more throughout the series.

  12. I watched the entire first season on Netflix, waiting to see what was so great. There was nothing for me there. But that’s okay. Different strokes for different folks and all that.

  13. Meh I guess this was more of a Barney summary then a summary of the whole show.

    It was close, but he could’ve thrown in the tramp stamp led to him getting it removed by a chick called Stella who he ended up almost marrying but who dumped at the alter and went back to her ex who got Ted a job as a college professor yada yada

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