How I Met Your Father canceled after just 2 seasons at Hulu
No fathers will, in fact, be met, as the Hilary Duff sitcom has been killed off after just two years on the streaming air
Aux News How I Met Your Father
Kim Cattrall is going to be kicking her kid off the phone a little early today, turns out—as Variety reveals that Hulu’s How I Met Your Father will not, in fact, get a chance to tell anybody how any fathers ended up getting met. The series, a spinoff of CBS’s long-running How I Met Your Mother, has just been canceled after just two seasons on the streamer, father decidedly unfound.
The series, which last aired new episodes back in July, starred Hilary Duff as the modern-day version of young woman-about-town Sophie Tompkins, detailing her various travails in love and friendship (as recounted, in the series’ framing device, by an older Sophie, played by Cattrall). The show also starred Francia Raisa, Suraj Sharma, Tom Ainsley, Tien Tran, and Christopher Lowell—the last one playing one of HIMYF’s prime candidates for potential future fatherhood.
Unfortunately, critics were not especially kind to How I Met Your Father, comparing it unfavorably (and maybe inevitably) to its, uh, parent show, noting that it lacked the original’s quick-moving spark. (The show’s second season was noted for at least working harder to get out of the shadow of the original, despite a high-profile cameo from original series star Neil Patrick Harris.)
Streaming companies are notorious for not sharing numbers that don’t make them look good, but it’s hard to imagine, given the cancellation, that How I Met Your Father was burning the world down in terms of ratings. The show’s Friday night cancellation, paired with the apparent lack of one of those conciliatory “We loved working with you and we’re sorry to see you go” messages from the overlords at Hulu, also suggests a certain tone to the show’s inventual father-free demise. Series creators Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger are currently right in the middle of a three-year overall deal with Disney’s 20th Television, which produced the show.
31 Comments
Honestly, I think we’re all surprised it even got a second season.
The second season, while surprising, wasn’t the most surprising part. It was that it got a TWENTY episode second season. That just does not happen in the streaming era. The first season was 10. So I guess, in a way, this got 3 seasons? I thought the fact that they immediately renewed it for 20 meant they had a lot of faith in it. Wonder if the strike had anything to do with it. The second season was still worse than the worse season of HIMYM, but it had its moments.
I also wonder if, by ordering 20 episodes, they were hoping to generate a high-count streaming-native binger show (like The Office, Friends, Gilmore Girls) that they could own outright.
I thought season 1 was fine, and haven’t gotten around to 2 yet. Guess I’m part of the problem, whoops!One thing I think they overcorrected on from HIMYM was the narrator, where they wrote themselves into a corner by having the kids onscreen and getting stuck with an ending they made years prior. Here, they didn’t put her son onscreen so they could show the framing scenes whenever they wanted, and for some reason they wanted to go to them like every three minutes.
How I Cancelled Your Spinoff
I liked it a lot! Wasn’t as funny as the original show, but it kept getting better and the “mythology” and teasing clues actually seemed like it could end up being more satisfying than HIMYM. Bummer.
At least cut a voice over to stick on the last episode and answer the question .
The series wraps with Hillary revealing that all the friends died in a fiery bus crash. There is no laugh track. The screen fades to black.
Anything that give Chris Lowell work, I’m a fan of, but this show was godawful at times. Great and talented ensemble, but the humor was a great example of cringe. A lot of the jokes could have be in a Miller/Boyett production.
Yea the show just wasn’t very funny and I also thought the initial setup was bad. The majority of the characters barely knew each other at the time of the pilot so it often felt like watching strangers pretending to be best friends.I did think S2 was an improvement on S1 and probably would have kept watching as I liked the cast.
Killed off in its prime, just like The Mother was.
I’m sad. The jokes in the show aligns greatly with my sense of humour. The raunchy shenanigans are hilarious, and the chemistry really improved in season 2. I will miss the cast. Given the cancellation, hopefully we would get to know the canon ending that the writers had in mind.
I am mildly bummed about this. It definitely had its lows, but at its best it was at least as good as mid-tier HIMYM. It was… fine. Something the wife and I could agree to watch, and it had its moments of genuine hilarity. And this wasn’t even the worst show in 2023 to feature Kim Cattrall and John Corbett!
Yeah it held a similar role in my household. My wife and I thought the first season was fine but it was good as something to put on in the evening and occasionally focus on. But the second season? It still never hit “must see” levels but it was a lot better and genuinely funny a lot of the time. The show never quite figured out it’s characters but it improved so much over the second season I think a third season could’ve been great. Oh well!
And to think, this could’ve all been Greta Gerwig’s…
What?
Gerwig starred in a 2014 pilot for a HIMYM spinoff called “How I Met Your Dad” which CBS declined to bring to series.
‘”Streaming companies are notorious for not sharing numbers that don’t make them look good, but it’s hard to imagine, given the cancellation, that How I Met Your Father was burning the world down in terms of ratings.”’This means nothing they just want to win the court of public opinion, which judging by the comments in the comment section? Bravo, good job! But you know they just want to strengthen their position when it comes time to renegotiate.But if they really wanted to do that they should be more transparent with their numbers instead of hiding them under lock and key…
This is disappointing. Second season showed that the series was improving. I really don’t like the position sitcoms seem to be in today, being written in a small room and filmed well in advance of its release, and not given the chance to respond organically to audience reaction. The show didn’t get the opportunities the original series did in its first season. The original took about half of its first season to find its characters and half of the second to define their world. It takes longer in the current format, which is unfortunate because people give shows less time to please them.
Have any streamer shows attempted to run on a more traditional schedule? It seems like it could be a great solution to the cancellation bloodbaths.
No. That’s one of the reasons the strike is happening, to be honest. Writing a show all at once in a small writers room is what the streamers want because it’s cheaper for them. The quick and easy cancellations of shows that they have determined to not work for them is considered a feature, not a bug. Then whatever they did produce can live on in perpetuity on their service as something they can pay low residuals for.
I guess the thing that sticks with me is the fact that every streamer knows that their most watched shows are almost uniformly legacy titles with hundreds of episodes banked. The Office, Suits, Gilmore Girls, etc. From a strictly greedy POV you would think at least one of them would attempt to produce their own streaming-native version that they could own outright. They wouldn’t want to do this with every show for the reasons you outlined ($) but certainly a successful version of this model would be more than worth its added expense. For instance, Netflix has been hammered by pricey multi year deals to hold onto things like Gilmore and Seinfeld. If they could find a way to make some of their own binge-able old-school-style shows, and tweak them as they go based on audience feedback on early runs of episodes, they could free themselves from the massive payouts they have no choice but to make. Netflix started making its own shows for this very reason. They wanted to own their content as much as possible. But I think, for cost reasons, they “fixed” the production system to the detriment of content that could potentially keep their subscribers locked in — and save them money overall — for the long haul. People love Stranger Things but once a micro season is consumed (within a day or week) they have no reason to stay. Unless they’re fans of one of those older shows, in which case they’re bound to stick around month to month. It’s the older shows that create the stickiness. But it comes at such a high cost.
I agree. So much. It’s interesting how streamers talk about bingeing but don’t make content that can be binged for more than one or two days. If they made shows with higher episode counts, people would have a reason to stick with them longer. The unintended effect of having a higher episode count is also that people who binge high volumes will select them because they just want to have something consistent playing for a while. It also implies that something is worth watching, too, whether it’s true or not. People who don’t Google reviews will just accept that it must be good if it was allowed to get so many episodes.
I’m with you, on all this. Ive commented on this before, but it’s getting harder to want to get attached to any shows on streaming because these cancellations with no wrap up or closure keeps happening- and doesnt look like its going to stop soon.
To be fair, it’s not like we didn’t get shows that were cancelled without a proper wrap-up on traditional TV. It just happens more on streaming for many more reasons.
Ah well. I really enjoyed a lot of the second season once they started figuring out the characters a bit more.What’s funny to me is apparently How I Met Your Mother wasn’t a hit until the episode where they stunt cast Britney Spears somewhere in the third season, so I wonder if that show would’ve even gotten a chance to get that far in this day and age.The other thing that’s funny to me is looking at the in-continuity timeline of HIMYM, uh… 2024 is not a great year (at least if you look at the original broadcast ending instead of the schmaltzy but much better DVD ending), so I was morbidly curious how any cameo from the original cast would’ve gone down in the third season of HIMYF.
They should give them enough money to film a 5 minute short where it’s revealed she met their father in the bathroom at a white snake concert. It was the most amazing 2 minutes of her life and she never saw him again. At least these kids will be spared the psychic trauma their HIMYM kids were not. “Hey Dad, how did you and mom meet?”“Well that is a long convoluted story that requires me to tell you about all the women I slept with before your mom”
Does anyone else constantly get a Youtube ad that shows Hillary Duff being asked out on a date, with absolutely no context, nothing funny going on, and no indication of what I’m supposed to gather from it?Can those stop now?
I’m wondering how many of the cancellations we’re hearing about are about audience numbers or budgets and how many are due to the fact that execs anticipate year-plus gaps in seasons due to the strikes, rendering shows out-of-sight-out-of-mind. It could potentially be easier to clear the board than it is to remind people two years from now “hey, remember this show and its stakes?”
First, Disney won’t let Hilary Duff have sex. Now, she doesn’t get to meet the father of her son!? What’s gonna happen to her next!?
Hilary Duff is still a singer though, right? So she could do some concerts, put her feelings of the past few years into lyrics/song and resume making a living that way. She may have been an actress first but she’s also a singer.