How I Met Your Father Season 2, Episode 1, "Cool and Chill" (2023) TV Show Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? So I was wrong about the season 2 premiere of How I Met Your Father. It did drop on Disney+ internationally the same day as it dropped on Hulu. Which is today. So I'm here to review the premiere of the season, "Cool and Chill". There will be some minor spoilers because there was a cameo at the end of the episode that I really want to talk about in this review. So let's get into it.

As much as I enjoyed the first season of How I Met Your Father, season two was not off to a great start. I mean I enjoyed Sid because he was my favourite character in the first season, and Hannah, his girlfriend, now wife, was great too. But, nobody else really had much going on except for wrapping up loose ends from the first season. Which is kinda of why this episode wasn't great. Too much of the drama from the season one finale carried into this season and it made the episode too clunky. It also painted Ellen in a really bad light in this episode. Which really sucks because I liked Ellen in season one. She was goofy but sympathetic, but here, here she's just annoying, and not funny. Almost as if the writers forgot who they were writing for and then the actress who plays her, Tien Tran, forgot how to play her. 

Even Jesse and Sophie weren't great this episode. And Sophie, played by the still wonderful Hilary Duff, is the show's main character. So it's not good when your main character isn't great in the season premiere. I still loved Charlie and Valentina though. They didn't do much in this episode, but being that they'd just broken up in the season one finale, they had that to deal with, and it was done decently. Kind of. And by kind of, I mean that they'll probably be back together at some point in the next five or six episodes. 

So I'm kinda thinking that this show isn't going to get renewed for a third season. The reason I think that is because they have Barney Stinson coming in this season. Yes, they had Robin in the season one finale, but they didn't foreshadow it in the pilot by having her appear as a quick cameo in a flash forward sequence at the end of the episode. In fact, I don't think they even announced that Cobie Smulders was returning as Robin until like a week or two before the finale dropped. Here though Barney shows up in a flash forward sequence at the end of the episode and there doesn't seem to be a story or character reason for Barney to even be there. So I think they're trying to boost views by teasing Barney's appearance in a later episode. I don't know for sure though.

Overall this was not a great start to a show that's already on shaky grounds as a weird retread of a show that is completely outdated in 2023. Don't get me wrong, I love How I Met Your Mother, but I love it for what it was for the time it was on TV (2005-2014), and it had already outstayed its welcome by the time it got to its ninth season. So this show doesn't work quite as well because of that connection. It's a 20 episode season though, so I'm hoping it gets better. 

Alright my friends, that's it for me for today. I'll be back on Friday with my review of season 2 of Stargirl. Hopefully. Though I might do another blog post before then. We'll see. Until then have a great rest of the day and I'll talk to you all later. Take care.