‘How I Met Your Father’s’ best quality is that it’s not for cynics
“How I Met Your Mother,” which ran on CBS from 2005 to 2014, has been rebooted by Hulu as “How I Met Your Father.” Like its structural model, it uses the framing device of a narrator from the future explaining what the title promises (Kim Cattrall in 2050, looking back on younger self Hillary Duff in 2022); is set in New York, in a world without COVID19; and features a bar.
Duff plays Sophie, who, after 87 Tinder dates has made a love connection with Ian (Daniel Augustin), whom the script whisks out of the picture by the end of the pilot. Jesse (Chris Lowell) is internet famous for a rejected proposal caught on video.
Directed by Pamela Fryman, it’s a looking-glass reboot. Sophie’s future self is on-screen, where, in “Mother,” narrator Ted’s was not; Ted’s future children were on-screen, where Sophie’s son is not. Where most of the main characters of “Mother” arrived with a long history together, the “Father” pilot is chockablock with new relationships. Sophie is picked up by Jesse in an Uber, in which his friend Sid (Suraj Sharma), who owns the series’ bar, is a passenger; her roommate Valentina (Francia Raisa) has returned from a trip to London with Charlie (Tom Ainsley), an aristocratic hunk, whom she has moved into their apartment; Ellen (Tien Tran), Jesse’s adopted sister, has moved to New York to reconnect with him, but they are essentially strangers, having grown up separately after their parents’ divorce. As a result, the pilot does a lot of heavy narrative lifting; subsequent episodes settle down into more relaxed rhythms.
The series’ most appealing aspect — perhaps a legacy of its broadcast roots, or the fact that rebooters Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger were showrunners on NBC’s “This Is Us” — is its unwillingness to decouple sex from love. Sophie, despite her many bad dates, still wants to “find my person”; Jesse, despite his carapace of cynicism, is an emotional marshmallow. The word “monogamy” is spoken in a positive light.
Not to take the series more seriously than it merits, or asks, but if it has a theme — and it does return to this point often and explicitly — it’s the fearful onset of maturity. Valentina fears becoming “old and boring.” “We’re young,” says Sophie. “We can still make bad choices for a few more years.” Drew, a recurring character played by Josh Peck, is a relative grown-up: He takes taxis, specifies the year when he orders wine and, most importantly, understands when it’s time to let the waitstaff go home, which attracts and muddles Sophie. Meanwhile, an even younger generation is represented by an NYU student who tends bar for Sid, and says things like “simping” and “that’s fire.”
The cast members sit comfortably in their parts. I particularly enjoyed Ainsley, who answers in the affirmative the question of whether a buff man can be funny; Peck, a former child star like Duff, whose innate gentleness I find most pleasing; and especially Tran, who never acts as if she’s in a sitcom and, given a serious scene to play, pulls the show into a more naturalistic space — no mean trick.
Where to watch: Hulu