Friends and How I Met Your Mother : A Comparison

Friends

How I Met your Mother

There are many shows that go along the same line, either in the story lines or the character building because when creating a show the creators select a target audience. There are only so many types of shows that can be created that satisfy a certain targeted audience. Likewise there are many shows that are created to target the audience aging between teens, young adults and people in their early twenties.   

The sitcoms; Friends and How I met your mother are also targeted for a specific kind of audience. They also happen to share some similarities as well. Both shows have been rated very high and have been quite liked by the people. But like so many other shows along the lines these both shows follow, they share some mutual characteristics in story, Characters and setting.

The comedy sitcom Friends was created by David crane and Marta Kauffman. It was first aired on NBC in 1994. The series aired its finale in 2004 after ten mega successful seasons. The story is set in New York City; it is about six very different yet really good friends who have different jobs and idea about life. The story was about their lifestyles and comedy was about their experiences. Internet movie database (imdb) rated the series 8.9 out of a 10.

The comedy sitcom How I Met Your Mother started and first aired on CBS in 2005, it has aired 7 successful seasons and still counting. It is created by Carter Bays and Craig Thomas. The story of how I met your mother is set in New York City. The story follows about five best of friends who are very different in thinking and lifestyles yet they are best of friends and learn and share experiences in the city. The basic aim of the story is that the main character Ted Mosby is telling his son and daughter in the future about how he met the girl who is their mother in the future. The internet movie database rated this show as 8.6 out of a 10.

The two shows that have been chosen for the analysis paper are very different in some ways yet they share similarities as well. They posses some clichéd characterizes that basically most of comedy sitcoms based on friends posses. Friends aired first and it had 6 characters; Ross Gellar, Monica Gellar (who later becomes mina Bing), chandler Bing, Joey Tribbiani, Phoebe Buffay and Rachel Green. The show How I met your mother is based on five characters; Ted Mosby, Lily Aldrin (who later becomes Lily Eriksen.), Marshall Eriksen, Barney Stinson and Robin Scherbatsky.  Both shows have a common place where most of the time the friends are shown to interact together; in Friends they are often shown to hang out at Monica and Rachel’s apartment which later becomes Monica and Chandler’s apartment, the second place is Joey and Chandler’s apartment which later becomes Rachel and Joey’s apartment. Apart from the apartments the six friends are always shown to hand out at the Coffee shop below the high rise apartments called the “Central Perk”. This hanging out place and living situations resemble to the situation in How I Met Your Mother where they hang out in Ted and Marshal’s apartment which later becomes Ted and Robins apartment , in the later seasons they start to hang out at Marshall and lily’s house in the suburbs also. They are always shown to hang out at the bar below their high rise apartment called the “McLaren’s”.  The both show have a similar hanging out places where most of the series is filmed. The McLaren’s has a specific booth that the group always takes, likewise in the Central Perk there is a sofa and seat that the group always use when they go there which I quote often as in both series the bar and coffee shop are below the apartments.

The characters and their styles also happen to share resemblance to one another. Ross Gellar in Friends is the character which is always in search for his true love, Ted Mosby plays that

Role in how I met your mother. In Friends, Monica and chandler are the happy couple of the group whose love makes everyone wants to find their own special someone. Likewise in How I Met Your Mother, Marshall and Lily play that role. Joey Tribbiani is the guy who hits on every girl and is quite charismatic and charming when it comes to girls similarly Barney Stinson plays the role of the charming smooth talking guy who gets every girl he flirts with. Barney and Joey also have their own phrases that became very popular like “hey, how you doin?” by Joey and “suit up!” by Barney. Robin Scherbatsky is the career women in How I met your Mother like Rachel Green in Friends. 

Apart from the show settings and the characters the shows do have different story lines the story follows but yet there still are striking resemblances like the fact that despite Joey and Tribbiani and Barney Stinson being the flirty and womanizer kind of guys they do end up falling in love with their friends ex girlfriends who also happen to be their friends; Joey falls for Rachel who is Ross’s ex while Barney falls for Robin who is Ted’s ex.

The two shows also share Family dysfunctional behavior among some of the characters like Barney’s mom and their queer relationship also that his brother is shown to be a black guy who is a homosexual. his brother is shown to be quite liked by the group. In Friends the character Phoebe Buffay has a twin sister who is her most opposite in everything and who Phoebe never liked. There is however no black Character in the show Friends. The hated family member of one of their friends like Phoebe’s sister is balanced out by Lily’s dad who is very irresponsible and not very liked by the group in How I met your mother.

The two shows are somewhat similar yet they are both have been rated very high and happen to be very hilarious, anyone who happens to love the show Friends also likes How I Met Your Mother rather than disliking it for being the copy of Friends. The language and jokes both shows have are mainly based on daily normal life events and experiences because both shows are based on the normal life of New York City.  Despite all the similarities among the shows they still have a very different basic story line, How I Met your mother is basically a story of Ted Mosby and the girl he is going to end up with who still has not been revealed in season 7, while the show Friends followed all six of the group members stories from Joey’s acting career to Monica’s wedding with Chandler. The show Friends does not have a basic story line while the show How I Met Your Mother does. Both shows have been very successful in their audiences and rating.