Even though it’s been 20 years since How I Met Your Mother was released, fans are still debating whether it’s better than another major sitcom that ended a year earlier: Friends. Despite a slow start in 2005, How I Met Your Mother went on to release nine seasons and a spinoff, cementing it as one of the most successful sitcoms of the 21st century.
How I Met Your Mother’s debut was especially significant following the Friends series finale in May 2004. Friends was, and still is, one of the biggest sitcoms of all time. How I Met Your Mother needed to differentiate itself if it was ever going to find any success in the wake of the hit NBC show.
Whether it did is still in question. Even now, years later, people still compare the two shows. Is that fair? Is one truly better than the other, or are they more dissimilar than they appear on the surface?
How I Met Your Mother Was Described As The New Friends When It Came Out
Both Sitcoms Featured 20-Something Friends Living In New York City
When How I Met Your Mother first premiered, it was essentially described as the “new” Friends. CBS saw an opportunity to fill an upcoming void and did so, introducing five 20-something friends living in New York City who were trying to figure out their love lives, careers, and futures. Sound familiar?
While Friends’ Rachel, Ross, Joey, Chandler, Monica, and Phoebe hung out at a coffee house named Central Perk, HIMYM‘s Ted, Robin, Barney, Lily, and Marshall gathered at a bar named MacLaren’s. In both series, the group had dreamy, unaffordable apartments to visit each other in, and they never needed to call to spend time together. Someone was always just there.
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Even one of How I Met Your Mother’s biggest relationships felt lifted from Friends. Ross and Rachel’s and Ted and Robin’s continuous, will-they-won’t-they romances were leading story threads for both shows, shaping nearly every season and ultimately, their respective series finales.
Honestly, it’s no wonder that How I Met Your Mother was compared to Friends when it first came out. It did take a while for the show to find its footing. Once the writers figured out the characters and their dynamics, though, How I Met Your Mother created its own space within the sitcom landscape, setting it apart from Friends once and for all.
How The Friends Comparisons Hurt How I Met Your Mother’s First Seasons
How I Met Your Mother Was Competing With A Show That Had Already Ended
Unfortunately, when How I Met Your Mother premiered, network TV and audiences were still reeling from the loss of Friends. This was a show that had been on the air for a decade. It was so popular that the actors were paid a million dollars per episode in the final season. How could any new show, especially one with such a similar premise, ever hope to compete?
Was Barney the new Joey? Was Ted the new Ross? In season 2, How I Met Your Mother even slyly references the comparisons to Friends, when Barney, Ted, and Marshall sit quietly in a coffee shop (one with a similar color scheme to Central Perk’s), until Barney proudly declares: “Hanging out at a coffee place is not nearly as much fun as hanging out in a bar.”
Once How I Met Your Mother hit seasons 3 and 4, though, the show had become a quotable pop culture phenomenon, with a plethora of recurring jokes and theories surrounding the mysterious identity of the titular mother. The series finale was, like Friends’ before it, a must-watch event, even though How I Met Your Mother‘s ending was not the one we’d hoped for.
How I Met Your Mother Was Always More Than Just The New Friends
How I Met Your Mother’s Storytelling Is Completely Different
I would argue that, despite their surface-level similarities, Friends and How I Met Your Mother were two very different shows. Their comedy styles are hard to compare. How I Met Your Mother’s comedic style was in tune with the kind of humor developing on the internet, especially recurring jokes like Barney’s Bro Code and the “Have you met…?” game.
How I Met Your Mother‘s writing truly felt like a new era of network TV comedy, leaving behind ’90s-’00s sitcoms like Friends, Frasier, and Everybody Loves Raymond.
Friends’ humor feels more straightforward. The longer it went on, the more the show relied on our previous knowledge of the characters, leaning into situational and physical comedy. Both approaches worked for their respective shows, but How I Met Your Mother‘s writing truly felt like a new era of network TV comedy, leaving behind ’90s-’00s sitcoms like Friends, Frasier, and Everybody Loves Raymond.
Of course, it’s hard to forget that How I Met Your Mother’s and Friends’ narrative structures are very different, too. Friends was never working towards a specific goal; sure, the characters’ relationships continued to develop, and certain storylines influenced others, but How I Met Your Mother had a narrative destination in mind from the very beginning: Ted meeting the future mother of his children.
The entire story is written with that fated meet-cute in mind. Yes, as the series continued, changes were inevitably made to the show’s hypothetical original outline, accommodating character development and the actors’ performances. Yet every flashback, every flashforward, and every relationship brought Ted one step closer to meeting the Mother. The late Bob Saget’s narration frames the entire show. Friends never used any narrative devices like that.
How I Met Your Mother truly belongs to a different graduating class, including shows like The Office, 30 Rock, and Scrubs, all of which, much like How I Met Your Mother, were trying something new and slightly more experimental, distancing themselves from the massive cultural behemoths that came before.
On the surface, Friends and How I Met Your Mother do have a lot in common, but it’s hard to say whether one is truly better than the other; they might just be too different.
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Friends
8/10
Release Date
1994 – 2004
Showrunner
Marta Kauffman
DirectorsKevin S. Bright, Gary Halvorson, Michael Lembeck, James Burrows, Gail Mancuso, Peter Bonerz, David Schwimmer, Robby Benson, Shelley Jensen, Terry Hughes, Dana De Vally Piazza, Alan Myerson, Pamela Fryman, Steve Zuckerman, Thomas Schlamme, Roger Christiansen, Sheldon Epps, Arlene Sanford, David Steinberg, Joe Regalbuto, Mary Kay Place, Paul Lazarus, Sam Simon, Todd Holland
Writers
Jeff Astrof, Mike Sikowitz, Brian Boyle, Patty Lin, Bill Lawrence, R. Lee Fleming Jr.
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How I Met Your Mother
9/10
Release Date
2005 – 2014-00-00
Showrunner
Craig Thomas
Directors
Michael J. Shea
Writers
Chris Harris, Stephen Lloyd, Joe Kelly, Robia Rashid, Greg Malins, Chris Marcil, Phil Lord, Sam Johnson, Tami Sagher, Gloria Calderon Kellett
