While How I Met Your Mother will be coming to an end in March, fans of the show are gearing up for the potential new spinoff show, How I Met Your Dad. As co-creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas have repeated over and over, it will be an entirely new show with a new cast of characters and no connection to the current series.
It stands to reason that How I Met Your Dad will be similar in storytelling format to HIMYM, maybe not so much with the “Kids, this is the time I…”, but we could expect comparable themes in the overall structure of the show. There are some elements from HIMYM that the writers can pull from to create an equally outstanding HIMYD without suffering the sophomore slump of their second series, or lack in quality storytelling.
These are what should and should not pop up on How I Met Your Dad – given it is picked up for the fall season.
What we want to see
The tiny quirks that give each character their uniqueness
Whether it’s Barney’s numerous catchphrases and ridiculous rules, or the mystery of his job (though, that running gag recently ended), he has been one of the most entertaining comedy characters in the past decade. If there’s one thing the Bays/Thomas team knows, it’s how to create unique characters who stand out from the typical character tropes – their characters are multidimensional. That, and they made one of their characters a retired Canadian pop-star.
Characters with vastly different stories, but still can connect with each other
Marshall, Lily and Ted met in college, but Barney sort of shimmied his way into their group, and then well, Robin’s entry was murky and sometimes messy, but even Marshall has found a way to bond with her through their love of hockey. In the end: they all love each other.
Set us up for the long haul
We waited nine seasons to see this!
In HIMYM, once they realized they’d get a season 2, they started crafting an elaborate story that would unfold for seasons. Not every plot line was tied up – it took them seven seasons to just barely address the pineapple – but they’ve deliberately dropped hints about the mother for eight full seasons before revealing her, and over the next three months, we hope we see how all of the dots connect.
For instance: we know the Mother was in Ted’s first class he taught, she left her super-symbolic yellow umbrella at the same bar as him one St. Patricks day, and she was once the roommate of Ted’s ex, Cindy (Rachel Bilson). New York City might be a small island, but there are millions of people there to make all of the aforementioned just coincidences that Bays and Thomas won’t mention again.
The fun games (or something similar)
Haveeee you met Ted?, the slap bet and ensuing Slapsgivings, was Marshall drunk or a kid? Never in recent collective television memory has a show introduced so many ridiculous games, bets, and revelry. They are memorable and a quality that only HIMYM fans truly appreciate, and we’re sure we’d love to see similar – but different – types of games in HIMYD. Challenge accepted!
Trademark heart and humor within scenes of the same episode
The two most notable examples of this season 6’s episode, “Bad News” and season 7’s “Symphony of Illumination.” Marshall’s dad’s death and Robin’s struggle to accept she won’t have kids, respectively, whopped us in the gut with tear-jerking moments. It shows the characters are real (as real as you, the viewer, are willing to accept) and gives us reasons to root for them when times get tough.
On the next page: what we don’t want to see.
What we don’t want to see on ‘How I Met Your Dad’
Reincarnations of the same characters
It would be lazy of the creators – and therefore, highly unlikely – but we don’t think we want to see another gang of four to six with The Couple, the Womanizer (or, Manizer). There are tons of careers out there, so hopefully this new gang won’t have a newscaster, lawyer, teacher, architect and/or whatever Barney does. (Although, we just found out last week. Didn’t see the episode? Read the spoilery recap here.)
The characters’ relationship with technology
How I Met Your Mother premiered in 2005 – virtually an entirely different world compared to today. The iPhone wasn’t around, Facebook was merely a blip in Mark Zuckerberg’s eye and people weren’t Instagraming their meals before eating.
We’re assuming HIMYD‘s characters will be in their 20’s today – that is a more Snapchatting, Tweeting, and all around smartphone-addicted generation than the HIMYM gang, whom are just nine years older. Despite all this, we don’t want to see this new crew gather around the bar, or cafe, or wherever, and immediately glue their eyes to their texting conversations.
“Kids, this is the story of the time…”
We just spent nine years listening to Ted (Bob Saget) explain to his captive audience – his kids, and us – that “this is the story of the time I/the gang did [insert crazy adventure].” We know that because of continuity within the episode, it technically makes sense for Ted to set up the story as such, but we hope the narrator of How I Met Your Dad has a slightly more inventive approach to her narrations.
It’ll be hard to watch HIMYD initially because we’ll be coming off nearly a decade of HIMYM and expect to know everyone’s quirks, ticks, stories, tells, qualities, but we’ll have to be patient and allow the story to grow naturally.
We know the characters will have no connection to the current story, but man, wouldn’t it be great to see the tiniest nod to Ted or the bar or a blue french horn? We can already see the gifsets paralleling the two series!