"How I Met Your Mother" is turning 18 this year.
The show is something to be celebrated.
On Sept. 19, 2005, the friend group in "How I Met Your Mother" was introduced. Although the show follows the five friends’ lives, it is Ted Mosby, played by Josh Radnor, who tells the story of what happened to meet his wife.
"How I Met Your Mother" begins in 2030 with Future Ted, played by Bob Saget, sitting his kids down to tell them the story of how he met their mother. It flashes back to 2005, when he was 27 years old and living with his roommate, Marshall Eriksen, played by Jason Segel, from college in New York. Eriksen is in a long-term relationship with Lily Aldrin, played by Alyson Hannigan, and plans on asking her to marry him in the first episode.
Ted meets a woman named Robin Scherbatsky and goes on a first date with her. Mosby does not kiss Scherbatsky on the date but is determined to do so by the end of the night. As the episode goes on, we get a sense of how this friend group functions and how chaotic they are together.
The show went on for nine seasons, 208 episodes in total, on CBS and developed a fanbase that helped it last as long as it did.
Neil Patrick Harris played his legendary role as Barney Stinson, the "player" of the show. Harris’ character has a “playbook” with ways to get women into bed with him.
Before Hannigan was in "How I Met Your Mother," she starred in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," for seven seasons.
Throughout the show, we see Mosby find clues about the mother, Mosby’s wife, which shows their relationship's evolution.
Although it is like "Friends," it does a good job of making sure the viewers don’t view it as the same show. An example is having a love to wait for, demonstrated through Ted Mosby and his wife, instead of a "will-they-won’t-they" relationship, Ross Geller and Rachel Green. Another is having a player, Stinson, tell all his tricks to getting women instead of wondering how the player, Joey Tribbiani, gets his women.
The series goes on to try to find who the mother is and explain how the couple ended up together.