How I Met Your Mother (CBS) is the story of five twenty-somethings in New York City who are trying to find their way in the world. Oh wait, isn't that the same as NBC's hit show Friends? Well, yes and no. All six of the Friends are equally important to the plot of the show, while How I Met Your Mother has a clear central character in an architect named Ted Mosby. The show's plot revolves around Ted's search for the perfect woman to marry. Friends made no promises about how the series would end, but having met Ted's future children, we know from the beginning of HIMYM how the show will end. Namely, we will find out who Ted's wife is and how they met.
The sitcoms are also drastically different from a ratings perspective. In its eighth season, People Magazine reported that Friends had a whopping 34 million viewers in the first week that the show aired. The ratings tell a whole different story for How I Met Your Mother. In fact, a long-awaited appearance from the mother lifted the show's ratings to a comparatively underwhelming 8.4 million viewers in the the eighth season's finale according to Variety Magazine.
The reasons behind this disparity in audience size are no doubt, complex, as the landscape of television has dramatically changed since the days of Friends. In the time elapsed, companies like Netflix and Youtube have flourished and changed the way Americans consume television shows. However, one thing that show creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas did have control over was the plot, and it may have been a mistake to make the audience wait for nine years to answer the question of who Ted marries rather than leave things open-ended like Friends. In principle, the desire to find out who the mother is would keep viewers hooked in, but in practice, that intrigue metamorphoses into frustration quickly. An Entertainment Weekly critic recently wrote, "Personally, I no longer care about the mysteries of who Ted and Barney will marry."
The New York Times reported on a jump in ratings that How I Met Your Mother experienced in its seventh season. However, this boost in ratings so late in the life of a show doesn't suggest that viewers do have a long attention span. The paper also reported that the ratings boost came after the sitcom's early seasons became available on Netflix and re-runs began playing on FX. In other words, viewers caught up on many seasons in a short period of time and are now tuning into the last few seasons to find out who the mother is. Their attention doesn't need to be held for long after all.
Can a person's search for his or her soulmate be used effectively as a television plot? I believe it can be as it was one of the central plot lines on Friends. The characters Ross Gellar and Rachel Green were famously on-again and off-again until they had a baby and eventually decided to be together at the end of the series. There was always the question about whether they'd get together, but there was never a promise that Ross or Rachel would end up with anyone. The mystery wasn't explicitly made the central plot of the show and was one amongst numerous important arcs.
The ninth and final season of How I Met Your Mother will finally reveal the last pieces of a puzzle that we've been waiting to see completed since 2005. In the time that Ted Mosby has spent looking for his soulmate, I have finished high school and college. I sure am hoping for his sanity as much as mine, that these final pieces of the puzzle come together quickly.
How I Met Your Mother's season premiere will air on September 23 at 8/7 Central on CBS.
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