Sitcoms have evolved tremendously over the past 20 years. We’ve seen a general trend away from the sitcom staples of yore. Since shows like The Office rose to prominence we’ve seen a sharp decline in the use of things like the multi-cam setup we’re familiar with from classics like Seinfeld and Friends that rely on the live studio audience as a crucial part of the show’s framing. And with these changes in formatting, we’ve also left behind laugh tracks and other instances of audience engagement during a live recording. With the comedy giants of the last decade taking a more cinematic approach, the distinct features of a sitcom filmed before a live studio audience have gone by the wayside. This is what makes How I Met Your Father such a perplexing case, as the show strives to be a modern comedy while clinging to the style of yesteryear.
How I Met Your Father is a follow-up to the hit mid-aughts sitcom How I Met Your Mother. The show borrows the framing device used in the original series as we start the show with a much older Sophie (Hilary Duff) sitting her son down to share the story of how she met his father. Aside from some callbacks and cameos the show and its characters are completely unrelated to those from How I Met Your Mother. This time we’re following a group of millennials all trying their best to find and maintain romance in the modern day. How I Met Your Father is steeped in modern fashion, modern dating, and modern references to reflect this updated cast and setting — however, the show has maintained one thing from its predecessor and that is the multi-cam sitcom format.
Immediately from the start of the show, there’s a sense of dissonance. We hear Sophie’s older self start to talk about the good old days of 2022, but all the while the din of canned audience laughter reminds us of sitcoms past. The make-up of the show is in conflict with its constant appeals to be hip and modern through its writing and characters. The multi-cam format was already starting to feel played out by the time How I Met Your Mother hit the scene in 2005, so to see its follow-up still using the same look 15 years later immediately makes the show feel dated. Hearing a laugh track at this point feels antiquated and forced. They can seem like a crutch, a “please laugh now” sign that audiences can be resistant to. More than anything, the laugh track is distracting, each instance reminding the audience that this is nothing more than a play which makes it more difficult to relate to the characters. When we can see the artifice of entertainment so plainly, it becomes harder to engage with it completely. The multi-cam sitcom looks and feels like a stage play, one that’s been recorded from multiple angles and projected into our homes, but is still distinctly not real.
Modern comedy shows, whether styled like documentaries like Abbott Elementary or regular single-cam shows like Insecure, lean into a sense of realism in the cinematography. Not all sitcoms need to be like this now, but How I Met Your Father’s dedication to an outdated format makes it feel out of place with its contemporaries. The set design and costumes may be on point for a modern show, yet the way the show itself is shot makes this modernness feel strange. Every set feels like a set and every costume feels like a costume, even if both are tailored to look like something a real millennial would exist in. This only creates a stronger sense of dissonance. The modernness feels more like an aesthetic than a fully realized part of the show’s identity. You tune into the show expecting 2022, but end up feeling like you’re looking back into a paradoxical version of 2005.
It creates the sense that the show is unsure of its own identity. Clinging to the format that worked so well for How I Met Your Mother has held How I Met Your Father back from standing on its own. There’s insecurity there that without the familiar format the premise wouldn’t work, when in truth the show is held back by the way it straddles the line between past and present without fully committing to either. It creates an environment that feels artificial. A joke about BTS Jungkook leaving BTS followed by a laugh track just feels unnatural and makes the joke feel tryhard rather than organic.
Just like how screen-wipe transitions remind us of classic sci-fi films, laugh tracks remind us of classic sitcoms. For a show that wants so badly to represent modern life and dating, the use of these outdated staples of sitcoms past only reminds the audience that this is an artifice. It means the bits that don’t work have even less going for them because we can see the man behind the curtain (or rather, the writer's room behind the supposed millennial cast). At this point, things like laugh tracks and the traditional multi-cam setup are used mostly to parody or pay homage to a format we’ve moved on from. The only place we really hear from live studio audiences anymore is on talk shows, so their heavy presence in How I Met Your Father only serves to create discord for the viewer between the story they’re being told and the format it’s being told in.
If How I Met Your Father hopes to step out from the shadow of its predecessor, it should fully embrace its modernity. The old sitcom style does nothing to further the show’s comedy and only serves to break any sense of audience immersion by clinging to staples that no longer have the desired effect. How I Met Your Father is not incapable of modernity; it’s shown its willingness to adapt to the more diverse standards of modern television or even just in its fashion sense. The show just needs to embrace those updated sensibilities more fully and remove any sources of anachronistic dissonance. The easiest way to do that is to change the formatting. The old way is comforting, but we’ve moved past it. How I Met Your Father’s best chance to stand on its own is for it to firmly put both feet in 2022.