How I Met Your Mother (2005-2009 - TV) [UR] ****

It's the year 2030 and the narrator (Bob Saget) explains to his two bored and restless teenage children how he, as the youthful Ted Mosby, lived as a twenty-something single in New York City, over two decades earlier, and how he eventually met his wife – their mother. Each episode in this charming and hilarious TV series tells a story about an adventure that Ted (Josh Radnor), a college architecture professor, has with his four closest friends: Marshall (Jason Segel) - Ted's college roommate, now an attorney; Lily (Alyson Hannigan) - Marshall's fiance, who's a kindergarten teacher; Robin (Cobie Smulders) – a Canadian immigrant who's a TV broadcast news anchor, a gun enthusiast and who has five dogs; and Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) - a corporate marketing suit for the same company where Marshall is an attorney, whose motto is score chicks and be awesome. Episodes are typically set in McLaren's Bar or in Ted and Marshall's apartment, above McLaren's in the same building. The basic storyline is Ted's search for his soulmate. As he observes Marshall and Lily's deepening relationship, and Barney's shallow existence, Ted intensifies his search for his soul mate, depicted in Haven't Met You Yet. Periodically Ted believes he's found the woman of his dreams in Robin, until she rejects him once again. Here's a video of Ted & Robin - Never Say Never.

Each time Robin or another woman rejects Ted, Barney once again tries to lure him into his life of seduction and meaningless sex, often with hilarious results. The writing is fresh, the casting is perfect and the acting is excellent. The series has won several Emmy awards, and Neil Patrick Harris has been nominated twice for a Golden Globe award for his portrayal of the womanizing Barney. If you enjoy romantic comedy dramas like Love Actually, Definitely, Maybe, He's Just Not That Into You, (500) Days of Summer or Valentine's Day, then you will really enjoy How I Met Your Mother. New episodes air Monday evenings on CBS, and repeat episodes air frequently during the week. The first five seasons are also available on DVD. 

Labels: college, comedy, rom-com-faves, romance     
Internet Movie Database 8.3/10     
Metacritic 69/100  
TomatoMeter (critics=83, viewers=82)
Blu-ray     
Wikipedia - HIMYM Characters

Here's a video of Robin drunk and remembering a Stanley Cup hockey match. One of the funniest lines is when Lily tries to take Robin's hockey stick away from her. Robin responds: I'll give you summer teeth... some're here, some're there. Give Me The Stick. While Ted and Robin have really good chemistry, Ted doesn't marry her. We know this because as Ted tells the story to his two children, he mentions Aunt Robin.

One of Ted's greatest loves is Victoria, played by Ashley Wiliams. Here's a video of Ted and Victoria from the episode where they first met... at a wedding: Ted & Victoria Ted and Victoria broke up after Victoria left for a two-year culinary school internship in Germany, and they couldn't make the long-distance relationship work. They met again, at the Architect's Ball, after Victoria had returned to the U.S., but by that time she was engaged to someone else.

NOTE: While the first five seasons of How I Met Your Mother were excellent, sadly, the last four seasons (2010-14) did not have the same freshness and energy that the first five seasons had, as though the creator (Chuck Lorre) and writers had lost their focus. After seven seasons, viewers really want Ted to find the woman he is going to marry. It seems to be typical of Chuck Lorre that he does not know when to pull the plug on a series. He is presently making the same mistake with both Two and a Half Men, and The Big Bang Theory.