Why How I Met Your Mother is so successful ?

In this last post, I want to discuss why How I Met Your Mother works so well.

In fact when you look at how the show is maid, you see that it’s the perfect representation of our lives, even if we are not New Yorkers or American. It represents a group of friends living, with the good and the less good things which can happen in a life. And because the main story is a simple thing, we can see us, in some way, in the episodes. When you can find a link with you, even a small one, you will be more focused on what you see.

When we focus on the communication aspects, you can see that, first, the characters well represents our culture. Not a single main character represents a minority. Obviously it’s racism, but when you look at the “real” world, you see that racism is still there, but in a minor way.

Also you have the representation of the complexity of the people’s mind. When you look at Ted character, you can see every people who think a lot (maybe too much). When you look at Robin’s character, you have the representation of the trouble to be a woman at work: you always have to choose between your family life and your professional life. By looking at Marshall and Lilly, you have the representation of the perfect couple in the 21^st century: they like each other, they try to talk a lot to avoid the troubles, they work as a team to make their couple work, but sometimes it doesn’t work and they broke up. It represents a “normal” couple who also have trouble. And when you look at Barney, he represents the people who don’t really know what they want to do about their lives and act like teenagers. But when he finds what he really wants, he does everything he can.

This show is full of bias because media are never neutral as is our culture. In How I Met Your Mother, you have stereotypes, arbitrary signs, sexism ...  But when you analyze a little bit the show and don’t look at it as an innocent viewer, you will learn things about your life and you can be able to improve that, and that’s why How I Met Your Mother is so successful, it’s that you can learn from yourself and try to be what you want to be.