The Obsessive Viewer

I have a quick Streaming Saturday for you guys today. It’s one of my favorite sitcoms and on Monday it will begin its final season.

How I Met Your Mother is my pick for the most consistently funny sitcom. It’s had 8 full seasons and surprisingly little of that has been disappointing. I won’t pretend the series is perfect. But no sitcom this close to a decade on the air should still be this good.

HIMYM takes a unique approach to the standard sitcom format. It tells the story of how protagonist Ted Mosby met the mother of his kids. People get hung up on the fact that it’s taken Ted so long to reach the end of his story. The show’s detractors in this respect seem to lose sight of the fact that this is a network television show. It’s sole reason for existing is so CBS can air ads in between scenes. The harsh truth of television is that creativity is secondary.

That “creativity is secondary” concept is something that keeps a lot of shows down. The ratings for a show aren’t good, so the studio forces their absurd version of creativity into the plot. Most series fail to break out of the creative black hole network television creates.

HIMYM sets itself apart from the pack of sitcoms on the airwaves. This series takes its concept and rides it into the most clever areas. It’s dependence on an unreliable narrator gives the series the edge to take its storytelling in directions other sitcoms can’t possibly go. The fact that the series oftentimes feels like a long running romantic comedy gives it a special tint.

The bottom line is that when How I Met Your Mother concludes next May, I have a feeling it will go down in the TV history books as one of this generation’s best sitcoms. I could sit here and give you reason upon reason to watch it, but it would just waste time that should be spent watching the show.

Below are some links to find the show. Check back here on Monday for a look at my favorite episodes of the series thus far.