How I Met Your Mother
A Love Story In Reverse
The success of any television show heavily depends on how it reaches it audience. People watch shows and a filtering process begins. A person decides what messages to take in and which ones to ignore for any given type of media. For television shows, the audience must acknowledge and filter in the correct message the writers of a show want to portray. The audience makes sense of these messages and match it to learned definitions and this is where the meaning matching process begins. Meaning matching is being able to pick up on references and matching them to meanings we have memorized for those references. In television shows, making us think about a storyline as if it had happened in our personal lives or if the show’s audience could relate to a character or particular situation could really get many hooked to that particular show. Different shows have different methods of doing this. Even though many shows share the same idea, many execute their strategies differently. A show that can hook its audience by expressing ideas that people could relate to, whether it’s through a character or the plot itself, will be successful in its ratings. A show that manages to pull it off is CBS’ How I Met Your Mother. The idea of telling your kids the day you met your wife (their mother) may sound like a boring story and a horrible show plot. Writers found the right formula to mix romance, sex, relationships, and comedy all in one to create this hit show. In this analysis I will break down what the show is made of from the obvious visual to the more in-depth hidden values and messages that are coded within the show. This show came to my presences while I was on a plane and the airline showed an episode that got me hooked strictly based on the comedy. It had the elements that I looked for in a show and the timing of comedy was perfect. I, yes me, was hit with one of many of their strategies on how to target their audience. My friend who was sitting
The success of any television show heavily depends on how it reaches it audience. People watch shows and a filtering process begins. A person decides what messages to take in and which ones to ignore for any given type of media. For television shows, the audience must acknowledge and filter in the correct message the writers of a show want to portray. The audience makes sense of these messages and match it to learned definitions and this is where the meaning matching process begins. Meaning matching is being able to pick up on references and matching them to meanings we have memorized for those references. In television shows, making us think about a storyline as if it had happened in our personal lives or if the show’s audience could relate to a character or particular situation could really get many hooked to that particular show. Different shows have different methods of doing this. Even though many shows share the same idea, many execute their strategies differently. A show that can hook its audience by expressing ideas that people could relate to, whether it’s through a character or the plot itself, will be successful in its ratings. A show that manages to pull it off is CBS’ How I Met Your Mother. The idea of telling your kids the day you met your wife (their mother) may sound like a boring story and a horrible show plot. Writers found the right formula to mix romance, sex, relationships, and comedy all in one to create this hit show. In this analysis I will break down what the show is made of from the obvious visual to the more in-depth hidden values and messages that are coded within the show. This show came to my presences while I was on a plane and the airline showed an episode that got me hooked strictly based on the comedy. It had the elements that I looked for in a show and the timing of comedy was perfect. I, yes me, was hit with one of many of their strategies on how to target their audience. My friend who was sitting