What Made "How I Met Your Mother" So Popular to Watch?

"How I Met YourMother" was a unique and engaging show that kept audiences guessing. There are many sitcoms in which you can watch different episodes at different times without having to miss out on most of the storylines, but with "How I Met Your Mother," it acted as a timeline that you had to keep up with; an excellent way to keep audiences engaged for each airing. Besides this, there were many other reasons why "How I Met Your Mother" was so popular for audiences to watch.

Good Cast Chemistry
The cast of "How I Met Your Mother" seemed to have always been friends. They were friends off-screen, which helped them to develop this dynamic, and it worked. Barney and Ted had the perfect ‘bromance’, and Lily and Marshall were the perfect couple and it felt wrong that it wasn't that way off-screen, although they’re friends. And Robin added the perfect twist with her unstable, but close relationship with both Barney and Ted.

Unique Comedy
The social rules in "How I Met Your Mother" were probably one of the most intricate and unique pieces of comedy that the show offered. There were things such as the ‘slap-bet’, ‘bro code’, and the ‘nothing good ever happens after 2 AM rule’. Audiences watched as the characters struggled to follow these rules, mostly according to the way Barney developed them, which was always entertaining and sometimes even took over the whole story-line of episodes. Audiences also had to remember that the stories were being told from future Ted's perspective. He was telling the stories to his kids, and sometimes they were censored or changed slightly, which was another comedic aspect of the show that was unique. For example, many bad words were changed to "Grinch" and "smoking marijuana" was changed to "eating a sandwich."

Intricate Character Personality
With the multiple flash-backs, audiences follow throughout the entirety of the show. The character development shines and makes their personalities intricate, more in-depth, and overall, more comedic. With Robin going from a Canadian teen pop star and Barney going from a confused kid with no father and a brother who looked nothing like him to a hippy barista to an always wearing a suit bachelor, it kept audiences intrigued and entertained. Not only were there flash-backs to show character development, but there were also flash-forwards that gave little hints to future events, but not enough to give anything away completely.

These three factors were what made this show so unique, funny, and connectable. Many audiences find themselves wanting to re-watch the episodes to catch subtle hints of the ending that they might not have noticed before. Even though the show’s over, it still seems to be going on.