COMEDY THAT HITS ALL THE RIGHT NOTES

Let’s talk about the humor. How I Met Your Mother is packed with jokes that land because they build on each other throughout the episode—and the series as a whole. It’s a lot like the earlier seasons of The Simpsons, where seemingly random one-liners or offhand comments from the first act come back later on in clever, unexpected ways. The show has mastered the art of callback humor. There’s a satisfying joy when you realize that something a character said early on is coming full circle, and it makes those jokes even funnier.

Take Barney Stinson (played by Neil Patrick Harris), for example. He’s the classic playboy, a charming chaos agent who’s always concocting elaborate schemes to pick up women, crash parties, and make his friends’ lives more complicated. At first, it seems like he’s just a one-dimensional character—a womanizer who gets off on creating chaos. But as the show goes on, his storylines and motivations grow more nuanced, and it’s fun to watch his antics evolve into something bigger and even more ridiculous.

Barney is constantly playing the role of the "devil on Ted’s shoulder," pushing him to embrace a more reckless and fun-loving side that often gets him into trouble, but also leads to hilarious situations.

The show also has that classic visual humor and cutaway gags that you can’t help but laugh at. It’s the kind of sitcom where you can just sit back, not think too much, and let the absurdity wash over you. One of the best things the show does is taking corny or overdone concepts and making them funny through sharp writing, unexpected twists, and, of course, great timing.

Take Season 2, Episode 12 where the gang gets into a conversation about their “first times” and body counts. It’s the kind of episode that sounds like it could be cringe-worthy, but the way it’s executed—through hilarious exchanges, personal revelations, and an absurd amount of off-the-wall scenarios—makes it one of the better episodes of the season.