5. The Similar Types Of Male Characters
The most notable of any similarity between How I Met Your Mother and Friends has to be the male characters. HIMYM has five main cast members Ted Mosby and his four friends Barney Stinson, Marshall Eriksen, Lily Aldrin, and Robin Scherbatsky. Friends has Ross Geller, sister Monica Geller, Joey Tribbiani, Chandler Bing, Pheobe Buffay, and Rachel Green. Ted Mosby, a geeky Star Wars fan, has a boring job as professor of architecture. He has an on-off relationship with Robin, where the pair fall in and out of love with each other through a number of the seasons. He's been left at the altar, and has no luck with women. Ross Geller, also a geeky Star Wars fan, has a job as professor of palaeontology, and has an unenviable string of failed relationships, three divorces, having been left at the altar, and has had an on-off relationship with Rachel Geller stretching over a number of seasons. Both characters are portrayed as intellectual with high-arty tastes that their friends often differ from and make fun of as a result. Ross was definitely a template for the Ted Mosby character. Marshall Eriksen is the 'nice guy' who is seen in a relationship with Lily from the start, and eventually gets married and has a child with her. He hates himself for being a corporate sell-out in his job, but chose to stay with it in order to support his family. He's seen as the submissive one in his marriage. Chandler Bing, also a 'nice guy' who ends up marrying Monica, hates himself for being stuck in the boring corporate world where he doesn't belong, but also has children to support. He's seen as the submissive one in his marriage too. As if that wasn't enough, the actors who portray the respective characters look ridiculously similar with their appearance. Far too obvious for anybody remotely paying attention. Barney Stinson is the ladies-man and comic relief of the show. He has a lot of money and uses charm and deceit to sleep with vulnerable, gullible women with whom he never speaks to after having sex with them. Joey Tribbiani is also a ladies-man and has one-night stands with women, only to never call them again. He's more often than not used as breakaway humour often subsidiary to the plot of the story, but both are given more depth in the latter series. However, it seems the HIMYM team have greatly taken a lot from Friends when coming up with the different personalities of the male casting, as Friend's three main characters have been deconstructed and thinly adapted for the HIMYM series.