The hated and beloved sitcom ‘How I Met Your Mother’ has been revived eight years after its last episode in 2014, with a new 10-episode sequel titled with a groundbreakingly imaginative name: How I Met Your Father.

Like with all comfort shows, cue the stream of overwhelming love from die-hard fans; the indifference of those who couldn’t care enough, but still wish to express how much they don’t care; those who would hope for all traces to bury themselves in the archaicity of stereotypes they believe the show perpetuates.

“Nobody watched How I Met Your Mother for its protagonist Ted (Josh Radnor). They tuned in for Neil Patrick Harris’ Barney, the quippy playboy, or for the way that Jason Segel’s Marshall and Alyson Hannigan’s Lily doted on one another. Ted was a drip. A bummer. He complained about not being able to find love. Worse still, he seemed to feel entitled to a partner… yet, somehow, a whiny Ted-like character has still snuck his way into this new ensemble,” Eliana Dockterman writes in Time.

We can endlessly discuss the repeated tropes of cisgender men being wounded about their ‘’masculinity’ in face of rejection, and criticize the distasteful baiting that comes with it. But that’s far too simple.

What’s with our obsession with characters like Barney? His predatory behaviour has been described as bordering on sexual assault. He objectifies women in an attempt to boast superiority. The list goes on, with all characters reproducing toxic masculinity.

“The four 25-minute episodes made available for review sprinkle in the likes of Tinder, Uber and the ghosts of viral videos past, but it’s a mechanical, stale simulacrum of friend hangs and dating in 2022, a relic of a bygone era that enters the sitcom uncanny valley. There’s not much reason to continue through unless the beats recalled some past time of curling up with the TV,” Adrian Horton writes in the Guardian.

Why do we love curling up to shows centering toxic masculinity?