How I Met Your Father (Pilot and FOMO)

It isn’t that a “How I Met Your Mother” spinoff NEEDS to maintain its zany energy, commitment to delivering emotional moments, and staging bits that take advantage of the faux three-camera setup; HIMYM was not a flawless show and moving things in a different direction isn’t necessarily a bad thing. “Father”’s problem is that it has little direction, soullessly moving between bits and conveying so little that it feels as though hardly anything has happened after two episodes (for comparison, HIMYM’s second episode was a comedic, low stakes “The Great Gatsby” knockoff). The cast are spirited, but this was painful.

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