How I Met Your Father

Season 1 - 5/10.

While I didn't really have high hopes, I was still intrigued. The concept of HIMYM was just super fun and you can be quite flexible with your story-telling, so perhaps HIMYF will also give us some interesting episodes.

Unfortunately, immediately in the first episode I realized that this is not it. The show just does not have the charm of its predecessor - there is no Barney, there is no Marshall&Lily, there is no Robin and there is no Ted. The new characters are rather bland and boring and definitely not legen-wait for it-dary. The story-telling is not creative and I find the narrator just annoying who also somehow appears in every episode in contrast to the original show. The jokes never managed to make me laugh and many feel rather forced.

The last episode was not bad, however. Especially the part when Robin appeared (which took me by surprise) was nostalgic and actually quite amusing. But so the best part of HIMYF remains HIMYM. This is not a successful spin-off.

The laugh track is so obvious and poorly done that it detracts from the story. I gave up after two episodes because I found the laugh track so annoying. If they would re-release this laugh track free I would give it another chance.

The acting is OK though I don't think any of the characters are even close to what How I met Your Mother characters. Some of the characters are just over the top stupid. Perhaps they are better developed in later episodes, but unfortunately I will never know because the annoying laugh track is intolerable. I read somewhere that Hillary Duff was initially against the laugh track. She should have stuck to her instincts.

The pilot isn't that great but a lot of pilots have been awful - even the Seinfeld and Friends first episodes ain't that great. Remove the connections to its predecessor and give it a shot. It gets its groove better in the second episode. The cast gel well too. The negative reviews are based on having too high of a benchmark.

So far away from how I met your mother, those characters just not funny at all, a comedy with no comedian, not hard to understand why so many bad reviews.

They are laughing but the audience aren't.

Was it unnecessary? Absolutely, but this isn't bad. The moment you compare it to the original or listen to big fans of "How I Met Your Mother" you'll instantly dislike or be disappointed by this. It's not perfect, the problem, which unfortunately is a big one, is that it adopted its name from a fan favorite and those rarely ever live up to the name unless the fans were actually asking for it. HIMYM was a show a lot of people held close to their hearts.

Judging from the first couple episodes released so far(which isn't advisable) I'd give it a good 6/10, most definitely not a one or three; we've all seen actual crappy shows but this isn't one of them, if you manage to consider this as a separate show you might just be able to enjoy it. People abhorred this before it even came out so sadly it never stood a chance.