How I Met Your Father 2, the review: team that proposes itself, not convincing

The review of How I Met Your Father 2: the sitcom that returns to Disney + with the second season tries to rejuvenate and detach itself from the original series, but it fails that much.

We mentioned it in our review of How I Met Your Father: unfortunately this spin-off / reboot of How I Met Your Mother doesn’t work, above all because it was already born old in its narrative setting, and in the characterization of its characters and its situations. Coming to the review of How I Met Your Father 2the second season from April 19 on Disney + with the first part, unfortunately despite the prominent guest stars and the evolution of the characters we find ourselves encountering the same structural and development problems of the comedy, which among many others has tried to keep alive and sitcom genre high on tv.

Already seen

How I Met Your Father is a harmless series and this second season confirms it, for better or for worse. This means that it doesn’t necessarily do an injustice to the original series by affecting and ruining some of its relationships and characters, but at the same time it doesn’t bring something really new to a story that, although set in the present day, seems to have come out more from the first decade of 2000. The story of how Sophie (Hilary Duff in the present, Kim Cattrall in the future) has known the padre of his son, continues with a new maxi chapter: twice as many episodes as the inaugural season, complete with a mid-season finale, a nostalgic element but at the same time perhaps a little out of time.

In these new episodes, while Sophie has to choose between the newfound Ian (Daniel Augustin) and Jesse (Chris Lowell, always the most successful of the group among the already known actors), who in the meantime has found her ex Meredith (a tremendous Leighton Meester ), others also have to plunge even more headlong into the world of relationships and dating. Val (Francia Raisa) and Charlie (Tom Ainsley, the most successful of the new entries) have to figure out how to stay friends now that they’ve broken up, Sid (Suraj Sharma) and Hannah (Ashley Reyes) have to face their new married life. .. at a distance, finally Ellen (Tien Tran) and Rachel (Aby James) define their “relationship” of neighbors.

How I Met Your Father, the review: how (not) do you a revival

Laughter already jokes

Although the storylines of the characters try to find their own path and in part succeed, How I Met Your Father once again follows paths and laughter already beaten in the first season (and in the mother series). Time helps to become more attached to the character-types and their characteristics, as well as to that retro sitcom flavor that tries in every way to be modern, but the result is still unbalanced and out of time. We see how much the creators Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger are indebted to the original series, for influences, for writing method, for comedy of misunderstandings and evolution of the protagonists, whose group friendship relationship sometimes seems even too much started compared to the ‘original as little as they know each other. The series also tries to create new catchphrases, neologisms and typical phrases that return in subsequent episodes, but even here the result is lame.

How I Met Your Father, the creators: “With Hilary Duff and Kim Cattrall we hit the jackpot twice”

Important guest stars

The are not enough guest star calls in large numbers for new episodes to save the appearance of a non-solid script basis. Among the many, in addition to the return of Leighton Meester and Josh Peck, we mention Eden Sher of The Middle in a role partly opposite to her Sue Heck, John Corbett’s Sex and the City (and which we will soon see again in And Just Like That) as Sophie’s new love interest with some age difference, Wendie Malick of Hot in Cleveland as Valentina’s new potential and terrible client, partially mimicking Miranda Priestey.

In addition, some great return directly from How I Met Your Mother as Cobie Smulders did in the first season (but we won’t reveal who it is so as not to spoil the surprise). Also in this sense, the constant winks at the universe we already know and have loved or at some future reference to the padre of the title do not have the desired effect, because we seem to have ended up in a continuous and eternal déjà vu. The most interesting and revealing part is given by a sequence starring the new special guest star from the original series: a scene that tries to update a dated topic and that underlines the extremely different social context between the two shows, making us regret the old one, Once again.