and I have these observations:
Not sure I get, or care for, the premise of the show, but it really doesn’t matter that much.
The Barney character is preposterous. It makes me want to change the channel any time he is on screen. If I met anyone that acted like that in real life, he would not be in my social circle.
Holy crap! Where has CobieSmulders* been all my life? I have a new TV fantasy crush.
*four separate links to pics
Sitcom characters don’t act like real life people? Did they really think anyone would accept such absurdity?
Barney has many layers (surprisingly enough). Yeah, he’s completely over-the-top, but he’s also secretly a decent (although deeply-flawed) guy.
Barney’s an A-1 asshole to anyone (especially women) who aren’t his closest friends.
I thought the first season or two of that show was the most spot-on portrayal of 2000’s late 20 somethings I’ve ever seen. Pretty realistic characters (Barney aside), and dialog that I swear could have been lifted from stuff me and my friends have said (and then polished, with the mundane parts taken out).
After that it just turned gimicky, IMHO, and they started to loose me in season three, and I haven’t gone back.
I too started watching HIMYM in the middle, about 2 years ago, about the time when Sarah Chalke played Ted’s love interest. The character that bugs me the most though is Marshall. He’s rather wishy-washy: sometimes he’s tough, sometimes he’s wimpy.
I started to lose interest, until this season’s “Symphony of Illumination”: instead of Future Ted narrating to his kids in 2030, Future Robin is narrating to her kids, who end up being figments of her imagination, because she learns from her doctor that she’ll never have kids. 
That’s funny, I just watched my first episode of the show today, and my observations are quite similar to yours. It wasn’t bad, but just… meh.
Next up is to watch my first episode of Big Bang Theory. I generally don’t watch very many broadcast TV sitcoms, and don’t feel I’ve missed all that much. The only time this approach really failed me was when it was around 3-4 years into the run of Seinfeld before I watched it for the first time.
Stick with it a while, he’ll grow on you. And, as I’ve said about other shows, just remember, it’s a sitcom, you don’t have to relate to it, it doesn’t have to be like real life, just watch the show and laugh. If you like it, give Scrubs a shot, for how different they are, I find them very similar. JD and Ted (IMO) seem like the same character.
The most important question for a prospective viewer of either show is, “Do you like sitcoms?”. Both are straight-up three-camera sitcoms; IMO they’re well-executed, but many people don’t like the genre.
well, now you know why I despise sitcoms of any sort. along with every other pile of shit hollywood shovels out there.
I just started watching this on Netflix. I think Barney is a horrible, wonderful character. I am little tired of the guy talking to his kids shtick, though. I realize that’s the premise, but it gets old.
I had pretty much given up on multi-camera sitcoms once Seinfeld and Friends ended (which also seemed to usher in the era of the single camera sitcom). HIMYM has been the only “traditional” sitcom since then that I’ve enjoyed. Probably because of the all the fast cuts and what not to where it is sort of halfway between a traditional and a modern sitcom. I tried out BBT, but I never got into it.
Pretty much my feelings. I wouldn’t want him as a friend but I’m amused to watch him on TV. Sort of like I don’t think Don Draper is a particularly good person but I enjoy watching him when he’s at his Draperyist with the women and the creative brilliance.
It is indeed the premise of the show, but they play with it a lot to get around network TV restrictions, for example when Ted tells his kids that they used to, um, “eat a lot of sandwiches” in college, and every time there is a reference to sandwiches henceforth you know it’s about smoking dope. They also use it for language restrictions, and the whole concept of flashbacks and misremembered story lines goes perfect with it. It’s not just a gimmick, it’s the heart of the way they tell the story.
Strange. I find the show to be quite boring with Barney being its sole saving grace. I can’t stand the whiny couple, what’s their name - Marshall and Lily.
You also have to keep in mind that the entire show, with the exception of when we see the kids, is told as a flashback from Future Ted. He admits in several episodes he gets things wrong, embellishes, and so forth, so keep that in mind.
Haven’t you ever embellished when you told a story? Or had a “wacky friend” in college that most of the time really wasn’t that wacky, but why tell anyone else the non-wacky stuff when that’s boring? You concentrate on the zaniness!
Sad story - Lesley Jordan (plays the really short, southern, overly gay guy in Will and Grace) spoke at my workplace last year as part of an LGBT month event. He talked about the niche that an openly gay actor like him has to accept that they’re in, even in this supposedly enlightened time we live in. HIMYM had offered him a role where he played a neighbour of Jason Segel who they wanted him to be constantly leering at and making moves on. In the episode they pitched to him he was going to ask Jason Segel for help moving a piece of furniture “because he’s such a strong young man” and gave him a beer as thanks for the work. Segel later wakes up, clearly having been drugged, with Jordan’s character implying he’s had his wicked way with him whilst he’s unconscious.
I’ve never been a great fan of HIMYM as I found it derivative and a text book Friends wannabe clone, but being told how the writers of the show decided they wanted to portray an older, openly gay man as an automatic rapist ensured that I never wanted to watch it again (and naturally Jordan was pretty insulted that this is the role he was being asked to play, generally as a gay man and specifically as him). Ironic considering Neil Patrick Harris is a cast member, but then he’s okay because he’s playing a raging heterosexual douchebag. :rolleyes:
^
The gentleman doth protest too much methinks.
Considering the number of positive gay potrayals on the show, like Barney’s brother, I would the gentleman doth BS too much. That doesn’t sound remotely like a story HIMYM would do. Or there would be a twist at the end where the neighbor character isn’t even gay and it’s all in Marshall’s head.
I think what the OP is discounting in his critism, or outright missing, is the premise of the unreliable narrator. That’s the beauty of the show to me. It’s not that I’m expected to believe that people like Barney operate like that on a day-to-day basis, but that when we are confronted with a character like that - like, say, on a sit-com - we are to realize that it is a way over the top, and unreliable, retelling.
It’s taking the construct of a sit-com (and all the unbelievable shit that goes down in one) and turning it into a plot-point; the fact that Future Ted is way the fuck off on all the stories he’s telling his kids … so much so, that it almost sounds like he describing a sit-com and not the things that he and his friends went through.
Anyway … it’s the only sit-com I’ve paid attention to in quite a while (and poorly - I’m up on all my re-runs, but behind on the current season)