Brief Story Line
Sophie (Hillary Duff - Lizzie McGuire TV series, A Cinderella Story etc) was a struggling photographer who lived in New York and a hopeless romantic who tried to find the love of her life through apps. She was living with her best friend Valentina (Francia Raisa - Grown-ish TV series, Bring It On: All or Nothing etc) who was having a relationship with a British guy Charlie (Tom Ainsley).
During one of her dates, Sophie met and befriended with Jesse (Chris Lowell - Private Practice TV series, Promising Young Woman etc) who was a musician and also drove Uber. Jesse lived in an apartment together with his best friend Sid (Suraj Sharma - Happy Death Day 2 U, God Friended Me TV series etc). Jesse also had an adoptive younger sister named Ellen (Tien Tran) who came to New York to reconnect with him.
The story of how Sophie met with her husband was told by her future self (Kim Cattrall - Sex and the City TV series, Police Academy etc) to her son.
End of Brief Story Line
You know how a first impression is always important when you start watching a new series? Now I did not really get that when I watched the beginning of the pilot episode. Personally to me, the introduction of the characters was not too smooth and a bit messy, plus they did not exactly gave the interesting vibes. Unlike when I watched How I Met Your Mother (HIMYM) for the first time which immediately made us fell in love with the characters (obviously I made the comparison since it was after all based on that series).
Anyway, I decided to continue watching despite the pilot episode not being impressive at all. The subsequent episodes were a bit better as we got to know them more, although sadly till the end of the first season, I still find some of the characters uninteresting. Funnily enough, I felt this sitcom had stronger Friends TV series feel than the original series it was based on. Although to be fair, the first season of HIMYM was unfavorably compared with Friends as well.
During the first season of this series, I think the writers were trying to give balanced screen time for the characters while also giving us hints of the father of Sophie's future son. What could be appreciated in here was the effort to keep up to date with the current world, like the concept of finding dates through apps, or the power of social media and other stuff. However, other than that, I always had a feeling that the ending of the series might be similar to the original, which did not leave any room for surprises. And in the end it just feel like a gender swap remake without any distinct specialty of its own.
For a sitcom, this one to me was not really successful in making me laugh out loud. I think the jokes were more misses than hits. The good thing though, there were few special guest stars that make the series more interesting plus some references to the original (which you would have immediately spotted if you still remember them). Of all the episodes here, my favorite would be the finale (due to reasons you would understand once you watched it), while the least favorite was definitely the pilot.
I mentioned above that I thought some of the characters were not interesting and I personally think that they were the weakest part in here. It seemed to me they were created to give representations of people from various background. Now I have nothing against the cast at all as I believed they did their best, but it's just the way they were written which seemed to be created as different as possible than the original characters. Of all the characters in here, I think my favorite one was Sid who could be funny and mature at the same time.
Overall this sitcom for me is still OK in few aspects as I could still laugh few times and the part of finding out the father was still intriguing (cause I might be wrong in guessing who it would be), plus it did have some fun interesting references with the original series. However, if you want a really enjoyable and entertaining sitcom, especially if you compare with How I Met Your Mother like I did, then this is definitely a pale comparison. I read that the series had been renewed for second season. We will see if it's going to be better and more well received by critics and audiences. So you can give this a try if you are feeling nostalgic, but maybe need to refrain yourself from doing the comparison to avoid being disappointed.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3 out of 5 stars
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