How I Met Your Father 1x02 "FOMO" Review

This episode aired at the same time as the first episode, but I watched them about a day apart. That might have affected how I feel about the episode. One thing I can say is that I have less to say about this one than the first, which I expected. It's a half-hour sitcom, so there's not always going to be a lot to talk about when it comes to individual episodes.

At one point in the episode, Sophie says, "This story is about the journey, not the destination," and also that she'll be with a lot of guys before she gets with the father. Which...yeah. Anyone who watched How I Met Your Mother would be expecting that. It's interesting because I think one of the downsides of HIMYM was that it didn't always feel like it was about the journey that it was supposed to be about.

I didn't think about this until I was reflecting on this episode later, but where Ted's story starts with his children is actually incredibly weird and pointless in the grand scheme of things. It has nothing to do with meeting their mother. Even when looking at the whole show in context, it makes no sense that he would start the story there, so it's about a "journey" in a certain sense, but it also kind of isn't.

How I Met Your Father is already a bit different here in that we know Sophie met the father in the first episode, so at the very least, it makes sense that she started the story there. It seems like this time around it will actually be about the journey of them getting together and not just nine years of Sophie's life where she finally meets the father eight years into it.

But let's get into thoughts specifically about this episode.

There's a scene where Sophie and Valentina make drip coffee using a kettle, and it made me laugh. I know very few people in the US who have kettles, and I've had friends from other countries ask me how Americans make tea without kettles multiple times. (The answer is that a lot of Americans don't make tea at all, and people who do often use the microwave.) I made coffee the exact way they do in this episode when I lived in Japan, but I honestly don't know anyone in the US who does that. I'm sure some people do, but I definitely don't think it's common, so that was interesting, I guess.

Most of the episode is centered around Sophie and Valentina trying to set the guys up as friends, while Sid convinces Jesse that they're trying to set Sophie up with him. It was a pleasant episode, though noting super noteworthy happens.

I found Charlie more annoying in this episode. I know he's supposed to be an aristocrat who doesn't understand how the "real" world works, but there are so many moments where it surpasses the point of believability, and if it keeps up, I feel like it's going to get old fast.

This episode makes me think even more that Jesse is the father. Or, at the very least, we're supposed to think he is. I still think it would be interesting if we wound up being surprised by one of the other guys being the father, but I'm not holding out hope for it.