All About Me and Your Mother

Have you met Ted? Well, if you haven't, Suit Up! It's going to be Legendary!

If those phrases mean nothing to you, you've been missing out on the best comedy in recent memory: How I Met Your Mother. Since the demise of shows like Friends and Fraiser, "everyone was saying the sitcom was dead," co-creators Craig Thomas and Carter Bays said in the first season DVD commentary. "Maybe what it's lacking is just a little bit more heart." They set out to create that sitcom with the perfect mixture of humor and heart. Out of that mission came a show about Ted, present and future. In the year 2030 Ted (Bob Saget) narrates to his two kids about (and the title nicely gives this away) how he met their mother. Flashback to the present, and the story follows Ted (Josh Radnor) and his lovably comedic group of friends. Ted's friends from college, Marshall and Lily (Jason Segel and Alyson Hannigan), have been dating as long as Ted has known them, and have been engaged since the pilot. Ted's love interest on the show is Robin, but beware, in the pilot episode Future Ted introduces her to the story as Aunt Robin. "The cherry on top of the sundae of awesomeness," that is this show is the womanizing, gambling Barney, played hilariously by Neil Patrick Harris.

The heart of this sitcom with heart is, predictably, the relationships. Lily and Marshall have been together for about nine years now, and they're the epitome of the ideal couple. Sure they have their fights and their differences, but ultimately they're perfect for each other. As for Ted and Robin, after Ted spent all of the first season pining for Robin, they're finally together-except we know it can't last. While the investment in a relationship that's doomed to fail may be off-putting to some, the show has something else to say about it. In a recent episode, while talking about watching a football game in which they already knew the winner, Future Ted said, "Sometimes even if you know how something's going to end, that doesn't mean you can't enjoy the ride." So, fans are in for a treat through the rises, falls, and eventual failure of the Ted and Robin romance.

The show also plays with time lines in a cool way. Eventual outcomes have been defined since day one, courtesy of Future Ted, but there are also other time-frames that pop up. For example, in an episode this season, the show flashed ahead to "one year later," and while Marshall and Lily are married within the year, the writers left themselves open to the whims of the Ted-Robin romance. It's ambiguous as to whether or not they're still together in a romantic sense, though they're definitely still friends.

As this is a sitcom, the jokes play a large role in the show and it walks a fine line between sophisticated and potty humor. An episode will often have a joke about doo-doo within a series of jokes about Ted's love life. A lot of the show's humor centers around recurring gags-even though it's not necessary to watch every episode to understand the jokes. This season saw the introduction of the slap bet between Marshall and Barney wherein Marshall gets to slap Barney five times as hard as he can whenever he wants to. The key is to not forget about fun nuggets like that because they have a way of popping up again­-like last week, for example. The show also incorporates elaborate jokes that culminate in fantastic surprises, the most notable example being "Robin Sparkles" which, without giving it away, spends the entire episode exploring Robin's past and the conspiracies surrounding it, and was in fact the introduction of the slap bet.

The simplest of phrases that don't even seem funny out of context have the ability to crack viewers up when paired with this fantastically witty cast. The catchphrases that have emerged over a mere season and a half prove that this show has the potential to just get funnier-especially if "Ted Mosby: Architect" has something to say about it.