THE TV FIGURATIVE
FRIENDS VS HIMYM
As minds who've matured during the growing age of tv
shows we have seen some really interesting genres unfold. From the sixties till
the eighties, Hollywood gave us laugh riots with the likes of the Dick van Dyke Show, Mary Tyler Moore Show, Cheers,
Golden Girls and its spinoff Empty Nest, and I Love Lucy. However the nineties brought forward a new type of era
for TV and especially comedy with shows like Friends, Mad About You,
and Everybody loves Raymond. The
tides changed as a greater significance for youth came into the picture. The
main game changer was Friends which
took youth everywhere by storm with the proper depiction of how each and every
one of us face issues like unrequited love, failed marriages, divorce, short
term relationships, and bad breakups during our 20s. Friends is one of the first shows to bring out the concept of
fandoms and was a one of a kind dose of life to which each and every one can
relate to. The magic was and remains to this day that all of us are like either
of the six friends, or even a fusion of certain ones. What however brought in
the need for a more in depth analysis was the arrival of juniors like How I met your Mother and Big Bang Theory. Suddenly from only only
comparing actors with roles we also debuted into the art of comparing two tv
shows and their characters. The whole phase of Joey vs Barney, Lily vs Monica,
and now coming to the main issue: How I
met your Mother vs Friends was a
very interesting phase.
A comparative overview
Friends is
firstly and most importantly about what it clearly says: Friends and
friendship. It’s about a group of six friends who meet all the time and hang
out at a coffee shop. Their everyday career issues and relationship/dating
problems are the basic subjects, along with how their lives converge as they
make compromises for each other. How I
met your mother also follows the plotline around a group of five
individuals whose lives collide at a bar. The two can be summed up in many ways
that make them look like identical cousins however both have their own
individual essence. The previous more or less is about six friends who meet,
talk and share experiences. HIMYM on
the other hand is centered around Ted and how he met his main love interest
Robin and their relationship throughout the years while being part of a group
of five friends who hung out together in a bar. How Ross and Rachel met is
something we quite frankly don’t know, we know the basic backstory and see how
they meet again and move from there. While being a big plot point that starts
everything right at the beginning, however it isn’t what the whole show is
about. Also while we’re on this, HIMYM has
a bar as the centre whereas while the place of Central Perk used to originally
harbor a bar.
Both of them are filled with some epic similarities.
Let’s talk about some in more detail and bring out the differences:
On one hand we have a goofy, carefree stud and on the
other we have a rebellious, cunning, manipulative yet childish guy. Joey
doesn’t share his food and Barney doesn’t share his suits. Joey is a struggling
actor who likes to eat, sleep, and play it cool. He describes that person in
all of us who is very caring but will laugh first when you fall down before
helping you up. He might even be the one pushing but will never go too far.
Barney is a pleaser, quite literally. He signs stuff without reading and is
paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for it. He takes it all as a game and everything’s
a “challenge” for him which he needs to win, even with women. Barney is a
person who cares for his friends but tries hard to hide it. Where barney shares
quite a few characteristics with joe, it isn’t the same otherwise. Plus Joey’s
the smooth talker and smooth lover alter ego Barney would say would make him
“ordi….wait for it……..nary!!”
Two
love-struck failures
While Ted and Rachel have the “both left at the altar”
going on, Ross and him are more characteristically similar as well as by gender
so……ya! Both are love-struck, kind hearted idiots who’d sacrifice big for
someone they care about and especially for the girl they each love. Where Ted
would give Robin away for her happiness Ross would go to lengths to get Rachel
the pendant she wanted. Ted and Ross have a lot of base similarities however Ross
has a zone of his own, of which he is mayor (Sorry. Just had to.) whereas Ted
is in every zone. Although on a serious note that’s still true. Rosshel had ups
and downs throughout just like Tobin but Tobin don’t get back together until
the end(presumed). Ted is more up the creek whereas Ross is more down river
sort of person. Both are crazy about their jobs and have been college
professors but Ted is predominantly an architect who cares more about finding
the destiny girl, whoever that may be. Ross on the other hand loves only one
till the end. While both know each of their soulmates till the end, Ted
mentally doesn’t till the end. Both of them are quite descriptive and tend to
point out mistakes which truly annoys though.
One
predominant married couple
You can almost see the similarities from the pictures
and list the differences. Both are couples who met, and smoothly fell in love
and got married. Both have an obsessive girl in the relationship. Finally both
have a guy who found it to be the easiest and hardest thing to have gotten who
they got. Both Chandler and Marshall numerously state the fact that they both
have been bad with women and yet they somehow managed to get someone hotter as
well as someone hot. The difference is where the couple of Central Perk are
sexually adventurous and accommodating, the Mclaren’s counterpart is fully
alike. We see Chandler and Monica complement each other individually but Lily
and Marshall are mostly like two people of different gender with identical
mentalities. Also Chandler has had quite a few relationships other than Monica
whereas Marshall scored one home run and retired from the game.
Career
Goals
I’ll repeat about how both shows have a professor of a
subject treated as boring. Apart from that though we have other ones too. We
also have a person from each show as having been in show business. Joey and
Robin have a basic similarity there. Both shows have a guy who is on the second
highest post of a company earning a lot while doing something he doesn’t care
much about. While having different reasons and motivation individually,
Chandler and Barney have that in common. Both have two people desperately
trying to figure out and go with his/her dream career at different points. Friends has Rachel and Chandler while HIMYM has Lily and Marshall.The
difference is Chandler was never sure of what he really wanted to do and left
his job and went into a search out of frustration.
The
Best Friends
Both groups have the two female besties who take the
tradition forward. There’s the discussion in both cases, about who’s Ted’s best
friend and who’s Ross’s. In many cases Joey gets upset on not being chosen as
Chandler and Ross are college pals. The difference is Barney is pretty hell
bent as compared to Joey. The females in Friends
have a history unlike with Lily and Robin. Monica and Rachel have a deeper
friendship while Lily and Robin have a deeper bond with each other.In HIMYM there are two separate male
friendships, between Barney and Ted and between Ted and Marshall. In Friends there’s not much chemistry
between Ross and Joey. There are only certain times like Joey’s and Ross’s
sleeping together where two of the males have their own moments, except for of
course Chandler-Joey moments.
IN CONCLUSION:
There are many other similarities including Ross and
Rachel vs Ted and Robin, both having taken time to start and both rekindling
back in the end. Barney and Robin vs Joey and Rachel, both happened but only
one of them really hit big. We can go on but I think there is a simple place
where both shows diverge and that mainly comes to their essence.Friends and HIMYM both teach us lessons that are completely different. The six
friends each tell us ways in which we all act or react in life. There’s a
Monica and Chandler in every one of us, every person who has faced hardship has
a Phoebe in them. Every one of us suffering in love is a Ross just keeping on
caring silently for that Rachel who means the world to us. Although fictional
themselves, even the characters of HIMYM have
in them traits of the six friends which is why they are so similar.
Ted and his friends teach us about the different
experiences we will have in life, the ups and downs but unlike with the lives
of those six, these five make us see the change taking place over time. Rachel
and Ross’s relationship is mainly what we focus on as time goes by, the rest of
them have relationships and experiences which don’t seem to make them grow.
Even Chandler and Monica have a graph which doesn’t venture uptil the end as
after they officially get together their relationship stays more or less
stagnant. Ross- Rachel show us that even if there are numerous fights and
differences two people who love each other will keep coming back to one another.
Meanwhile Ted and Robin symbolize two people who need each other, their lives
are connected by “destiny”.
Comments
Post a Comment