Warning: Contains spoilers for How I Met Your Father episode 8.
In How I Met Your Father episode 8, the spin-off series included a narrative about Sophie and her tooth that was almost the same as a scene between Barney and Nora in How I Met Your Mother. The spin-off series has had some big shoes to fill, arriving on TV screens almost a decade after How I Met Your Mother’s 9 seasons concluded. This has left How I Met Your Father walking a delicate line between acknowledging and paying homage to the original series and trying to strike out with a new tone.
How I Met Your Father episode 8, “The Perfect Shot,” follows Sophie (Hilary Duff) and Jesse (Chris Lowell) as they both strive to take their next step in their creative careers. While trying to get the perfect shot to impress Naomi, the owner of a prestigious gallery, Sophie falls and breaks one of her teeth. She reaches out to Jesse for a sketchy cheap dentist and he accompanies her while she waits for it to be fixed and they both question the validity of their career choices. After it is fixed, a problem with Jesse’s car causes a jolt that once again damages Sophie’s tooth leaving her attending Drew’s (Josh Peck) fundraiser with a broken tooth.
While not beat for beat, this scene largely recreates a storyline from How I Met Your Mother, season 7, episode 7, “Noretta.” After they’ve been dating for a while but haven’t been intimate, Nora tells Barney they go on a date where Barney hopes to make sure that everything is perfect. However, Nora trips while ice skating and breaks her tooth. Barney takes Nora to a sketchy all-night dentist as part of his plan to avoid the night being ruined. While Nora only breaks her tooth the once, multiple other bad things happen on the date, similar to the second tooth breakage and Jesse’s car failing, and the events all serve a similar purpose in moving the relationship between the two characters forward.
While this is an example of How I Met Your Father almost copying How I Met Your Mother, it is also a prime example of how the new series can expose the flaws of the old show and improve upon those ideas. Barney Stinson as a character has been heavily critiqued in the years since the show originally aired, and How I Met Your Father already took a jab at people like him in the opening episode of season 1. Throughout the Barney/Nora tooth story in How I Met Your Mother, Barney’s concern is never truly for Nora, what she wants, or who she is as a person, his only push is to keep things going so that he can have sex.
In stark contrast, the Sophie/Jesse tooth scene in How I Met Your Father is entirely about the people involved and what they want from life. The two are not on a date, but rather Sophie knows that she can turn to Jesse for help in a time of crisis. All of this facilitates deeper conversations between them that allow them to bond over the struggling lives to make careers in art happen, and the pressure that society puts forward to bail on those dreams. While Barney and Nora’s narrative sees Barney help Nora for self-interested reasons, How I Met Your Father puts a more positive spin on the plot by using it to highlight a deeper emotional connection between the two before they kiss for the first time at the end of the episode.
How I Met Your Father releases new episodes Tuesdays on Hulu.