Warning: Contains spoilers for How I Met Your Father episode 2.
In How I Met Your Father episodes 1 and 2, the new show has already addressed several of the How I Met Your Mother controversies in a way that suggests they’ll avoid repeating them. The How I Met Your Father is long-awaited, coming 8 years after How I Met Your Mother finished. While the new series has some big shoes to fill, it also needs to work to fix some major problems from the original show.
While How I Met Your Mother developed and kept a devout following, it was not without its controversies. For many, the most memorable controversy was related to the highly divisive series finale that came after 9 seasons. However, the show was criticized for some of its choices as it aired, and more issues with the original series have become more widely acknowledged in the years since it concluded.
In only two episodes, How I Met Your Father has at nodded to several of the issues that the original show was criticized for. These acknowledgments either take steps to directly repair the problem or at least serve to show that they recognize that it was a problematic part of How I Met Your Mother. With luck, this is a signal that How I Met Your Father will not repeat the past controversies in 2022 and beyond.
The Naked Man Returns
In the How I Met Your Mother season 4 episode “The Naked Man,” a man named Mitch performs a trick where he undresses while his date is distracted in the hope that they will be shocked into sex with him or have sex with him out of pity. Barney marvels at the move and Robin, Lily, Barney, and Ted all try the move themselves before the episode is over. The movie is played for laughs, but it is rooted in an aggressive sexual advance designed to put people in a position where they feel like they have to have sex to avoid the situation, and is a form of sexual harassment. “The Naked Man” move became such a joke for the show that it was called back to in a later episode when another character tried it on Robin after reading about it on Barney’s blog.
In How I Met Your Father, the introduction of Charlie (Tim Ainsley) references the idea of “The Naked Man” but with an important twist. While “The Naked Man” was an act of coercion and based in predatory behavior dressed up in awkwardness, How I Met Your Father recasts the situation as both accidental and farcical. When Charlie finds himself accidentally naked in front of Sophie, all parties are mortified and apologies are made, rather than it being played as titillating for anyone involved.
Barney’s Sexual Conquests Were Always Problematic
While some characters in How I Met Your Mother would occasionally joke that Barney was gross, he was primarily portrayed as a puckish and charming character. However, Barney’s sexual conquests are frequently predatory and under false pretenses in a way that is abhorrent, and the show regularly ran afoul of apologist tendencies. The first episode of How I Met Your Father, however, introduces a Tinder date that appears to be a parody of the Barney character. He explains that he is late to the date with Sophie (Hilary Duff) because he was on another date and just had sex. Sophie, Jesse (Christopher Lowell), and Sid (Suraj Sharma) are all openly appalled by this, and the character’s behavior is regarded as an unacceptable way for someone to behave, rather than being played off as a character quirk.
HIMYM’s White Cast And Yellowface Episode
It is hard to ignore that the entire central cast of How I Met Your Mother was white. While there were some recurring characters and characters who came in for a season or two that weren’t white, they were primarily in later seasons, were short-lived, or were mostly made fun of, as with Ranjit. How I Met Your Mother season 9 managed to take this to a new level by including an episode that saw the white cast in yellowface and the show received a lot of criticism at the time for the choice. How I Met Your Father’s cast is already significantly more diverse than the original shows, and it doesn’t seem unreasonably optimistic to think that they will handle things with greater cultural awareness going forwards.
LGBTQ+ Representation In HIMYM
How I Met Your Mother scored pretty poorly when it came to LGBTQ+ representation. While actor Neil Patrick Harris is gay, none of the central characters were queer and when they did introduce Barney’s brother, James, in the later seasons, he was played by a straight actor (Wayne Brady), continuing a problematic trend for wider LGBTQ+ representation. In How I Met Your Father episode 1, the new show takes the first step towards rectifying this by including the character of Ellen (Tien Tran), who is a lesbian and is enjoying living in New York as it is an opportunity for her to find a queer community.
However, How I Met Your Mother had a deeper problem when it came to LGBTQ+ representation. The series includes multiple transphobic jokes, and while this was sadly typical for the time, it remains problematic. To continue rectifying How I Met Your Mother’s failing of the queer community, How I Met Your Father would do well to not only avoid transphobic jokes (which should be a given) but to include nuanced trans characters. If Ellen is to have a natural exploration of her identity, that is likely to take her into more overtly queer spaces, and everyone should be properly represented there.
HIMYM’s Improbable New York Apartments
There are some tropes that crop up in sitcoms that might seem harmless but do drive an unrealistic view of the world and push unreasonable expectations, such as characters with average jobs who can easily afford to eat takeout for every meal. In How I Met Your Mother, all the characters had huge apartments in New York City, and the couple of occasions when they didn’t, the fact was played for a joke. In How I Met Your Father, the show has already pushed back on this image as Sophie and Valentina (Francia Raisa) share a cramped apartment and the matter is never questioned, and Sid and Hannah’s occupying Lily and Marshall’s apartment is given a reasonable (if generous explanation).
How I Met Your Father releases new episodes Tuesdays on Hulu.
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