How I Met Your Father – This Hilary Duff Starrer Spinoff Is Charming But A Decade Too Late!

Reboots/spinoffs of 90s iconic shows is the flavour of the season. From the controversial And Just Like That, Doogie Houser MD to Fresh Prince, and the much-panned Fuller House, most of the iconic shows are banking on nostalgic value.?

And Just Like That courts a controversy every week, Fuller House got panned for being overly pretentious and focusing more on the lives of the ‘mommies’ than their kids. The cast of Friends, who recently came together for the reunion, have always maintained that they are in no way interested in any kind of reboot/spinoff and they have all moved on to different paths.

How I Met Your Father | Hotstar

When, the makers of How I Met Your Mother announced a unique spinoff of their iconic show called How I Met Your Father, a lot of people raised concerns and some very valid.?

The sitcom format no longer interests audiences. People now prefer to watch an hour-long episode of their favourite show than the 20-odd minute episodes. Which is why we hardly get to hear about any good sitcoms sticking around for more than two seasons. Even the standards and acceptance of humour has changed. People are more sensitive towards not punching down and hence ‘comedy’ as a genre has come of age and has evolved.?

Over the years, critics have analysed How I Met Your Mother’s characters of Barney, Ted, Robin, Marshall, and Lily. However, the spinoff was different in a way that none of the leads would return and that it would be with a fresh cast and with a feminist perspective. The series opens to Kim Catrall, living in a plush apartment in 2050, who tells her son the story of how she met their father.

How I Met Your Father | Hotstar

Cut to 2022, we are introduced to Hillary Duff, who plays the 30-year-old version of ‘Sophie’, a hopelessly romantic photographer living in New York. She has a set of friends namely, Jesse, Valentina, Sid, Charlie and Ellen.?

The cast is diverse and so are the storylines. Yet, the zany and the charm of the original series is missing. It also needs to be mentioned here that, the 'will-they-wont-they romances' have been done to death and audiences have long moved on from that. The ‘comedy of errors’ situations also seem redundant from the four episodes that have aired so far. A 30-year-old single woman trying to find love in New York while juggling an esoteric career is a plot that is so overdone that we feel that the spinoff has neither any story nor a perspective to offer to the loyal fans of HIMYM.

Just like HIMYM had Ted and Robin romance, HIMYF throws hints at a possible Sophie-Jessie romance that may not be resolved till the end of the series.?

The fans have moved on from such common romantic tropes. They have included GenZ plots of meeting someone on dating apps, non-binary characters and long distance romances, which was pretty much absent in the series from the 90s.

How I Met Your Father | Hotstar

We think, HIMYF is charming, Hillary Duff and Kim Catrall as ‘Sophie’ look fabulous and have done a fair job, but mainly we think so because we have grown up adoring both these actresses.

?If the spinoff was made back in 2013, when the original series ended, it would have still gathered some steam. The spinoff seems like a half-hearted attempt at recreating an iconic show that gave closure to all the fans. It was an effort in vain. To Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger, we fans deserve better.