Stream It Or Skip It: ‘How I Met Your Father’ Season 2B on Hulu, Where Sophie Meets Her Own Father

Season 2 of Hulu’s How I Met Your Father is running two main stories at once; Sophie (played in present day by Hilary Duff, and by Kim Cattrall as her older self), is not only regaling her son with the story of how she met his father, she is also telling him the story of how she was united with her own father, whom she had never met. While Sophie’s romantic life continues to be plagued with drama and mystery, the discovery of her father is one thing we’ll actually get a clear answer on this season.

HOW I MET YOUR FATHER (SEASON 2B): STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: “Son, we’re going to take a quick break from the story of how I met your father and talk about how I met my father,” older Sophie (Kim Cattrall) says to her off-camera son. Though the bulk of the series is Sophie’s look back at her romantic life, she declared at the end of the first part of season two that she wanted to find her birth father, so here we are.

The Gist: Hilary Duff’s Sophie spent the beginning of season two wondering who her birth father was. Her mom, Lori (Paget Brewster), told Sophie she was conceived at Lollapalooza ’91. After Sophie ruled out her own older boyfriend, Robert (played by John Corbett) as a possible dad earlier in season two, Sophie decided to go full private investigator in the season 2B premiere to find her father, who could be one of three men who worked at Lollapalooza, and has a name that ends in “ick.” That narrowed the choices down to three men: Nick, Rick, and Dick.

“Do you see what’s happening here? This is a Mamma Mia!” Sid (Suraj Sharma) says of the situation. “I think it’s more of a revered, gender-swapped Philomena,” Charlie (Tom Ainsley) says. “What we have here is a hetero The Kids Are Alright,” Ellen (Tien Tran) suggests. “Sophie’s life is most like the beloved Paul Reiser TV show My Two Dads,” Jesse (Chris Lowell) states. (Sorry, have to disagree entirely with that, My Two Dads was a Staci Keanan TV show, Jesse.)

While I can appreciate the onslaught of pop culture references, this situation absolutely resembles a Mamma Mia! the most, and so the gang divide and conquer to meet each of the three men. Rick turns out to be Asian, so we know he’s not the guy. Then Charlie and Ellen look for Dick, a male stripper, and hire him to see if he he’ll strip in order to reveal a tattoo that Sophie knows her dad has. As he’s stripping, Sophie, Val, Jesse and Sid head to Staten Island and discover that the owner of Nick’s Hot Dogs (played by Clark Gregg) is most definitely her dad. Except that once Sophie figures that out, she can’t build up the courage to talk to him.

In the way of B-stories, Val (Francia Raisa) is still implausibly engaged to Swish (Michael Cimino), her younger boyfriend whom she is desperate to break up with, and Sid is text-cheating on Hannah (Ashley Reyes) with a woman named Taylor that he met on a flight to L.A. Even though Sid cut things off with Taylor before anything actually happens to threaten his marriage, this plot definitely sows some seeds of marital discord between the two. We’ve constantly wondered what the show’s deal is with Hannah, and now it looks like they really might be looking for a way to break her and Sid up, even if it doesn’t happen right away.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Obviously the show is built on the same foundation as How I Met Your Mother, but this episode is clearly based around Mamma Mia! (and also the 30 Rock episode with a Mamma Mia! plot).

Our Take: When I reviewed part one of season two earlier this year, I wrote, “There’s a risk in spinning off a show from something that was so successful, and we all know big risks have either great payoffs or big losses. I spent nine seasons watching and enjoying How I Met Your Mother, and yet I struggle to enjoy How I Met Your Father. As a spinoff, the risk feels like it doesn’t pay off. But even as a show judged independently of its predecessor, it just lacks so many elements that an endearing, funny sitcom needs.”

Now that I’ve spent a little more time with these characters, I can say that, at the very least, I’ve warmed to them and I think that the ensemble consists of strong performers with chemistry that has gelled. The show’s structure, too, feels more and more like the original HIMYM, with the “will they or won’t they” relationship moments and the genuine friendships that feel believable, especially between Sophie and Val. However, I’m still disappointed by the writing and the jokes, which all feel like rough drafts. The show desperately needs a rewrite to sharpen the humor, because it’s so close to being good, it’s just missing some cleverness. When Jesse, thinking that Sid’s new, funny text buddy Taylor is a guy, and that Taylor is threatening Jesse’s friendship with Sid, Jesse says, “Oh, you have a new buddy? Cool, love that for you. Funny Taylor. You know, I’ve got some pretty hysterical hot takes about Whole Foods you haven’t heard. Whole Foods? More like whole paycheck!” I get that the joke here is that Jesse is telling a dumb joke, but this? It’s a non joke. This is an unoriginal reference to Whole Foods that someone else made up like 20 years ago. If we’re going to make Jesse a hack, at least give him something original and clever, something unique to Jesse, to say. I don’t need the show to copy HIMYM exactly, but there was an originality – albeit a silly, stupid originality, to slap bets and doppelgangers and DOWISETREPLA – that this show is lacking.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Sophie, having Mamma Mia‘d all three potential dads on her list, realized that Nick was THE ONE. Back at Pemberton’s she tells her friends that she didn’t introduce herself to him when she had the chance because she wasn’t ready. A moment later, who shows up at Pemberton’s but Nick. “Hi,” he says, as Sophie turns around. Ready or not, here’s daddy.

Sleeper Star: You don’t cast Clark Gregg if you’re not going to use him over the course of a multi-episode arc, so here’s hoping we see more of him as Sophie’s dad, Nick.

Most Pilot-y Line: “Rambling on about his horrible love life? Definitely Sophie’s dad,” Charlie says when he meets Dick, the male stripper who is one of Sophie’s potential fathers.

Our Call: SKIP IT. How I Met Your Father has potential as a sitcom; I am admittedly interested in several of the characters and the situations they find themselves in, it just continues to not stick the landing on the comedy part.

Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.