'HIMYD' Woman's POV Will Set it Apart

Whether you were horribly disappointed by the How I Met Your Mother series finale or whether you loved it so much you ate it up for breakfast, your reaction to the show's ending was likely strong. But that's because the series was so beloved. The sitcom held an air of mystery. It kept you guessing. Its twists and turns weren't always welcomed, but they were always surprising. With spoilers splayed all over social media these days, a show's ability to keep it's audience in the dark is a rare and beautiful thing. So, for Greta Gerwig's How I Met Your Dad to work, how will she keep up the sense of intrigue and suspense?

Gerwig doesn't want you to worry about that. She explains it simply and most assuredly:

When the premise of the show is that it's a young man looking for his true love, it's a very different feeling than a young woman looking for her true love.

True, but to only to an extent. Though presumably (hopefully), the show will be from the female gaze, making it decidedly altered, are men and women really all that different? We suppose there won't be a womanizing, suit-wearing, narcissistic best friend with a raging libido, but for every Barney there's a Samantha. It's possible that the different dynamic among this new group of friends will shift the feel of the series, but if the majority of the seasons are spent with the main character continually failing in her quest for love, how different from HIMYM could it really be? After awhile, Ted's romantic tribulations just made him seem trite and picky rather than unlucky or star-crossed. Hopefully, Sally can be more in control of her fate. If Gerwig wants this to be different, she has to make her strong where Ted was weak. This story should be one of self-discovery as well as one of love.

Is the audience going to watch for another nine seasons to find out that there wasn't a father and she decided to do it on her own? Will it last long enough for the plot to fully play out? It isn't clear how Gerwig plans to map out this spin-off, but she has definitely took on daunting and probably thankless feat. Here's to hoping she proves everyone wrong and makes it even better than the original. A girl can dream, right?