We really like Mad Love. We really like the whole cast, and we really like the fact that it looks at two very different kinds of relationships when both are still so obviously meant to be. We’ve been rooting for it long before it premiered, seeing ourselves in some of the quirks and characters. We even like the similarities to its Monday-night lead-in How I Met Your Mother, but we have to admit that those similarities keep increasing as the episodes go on, and it’s getting a little crowded in here.
Maybe they can’t help it. After all, a show about young adults trying to find love in New York City seems to lend itself to very specific situations and scenarios; there are only so many stories in the world; yada, yada, yada. And for a new show, just out of the gate like this, there are way worse programs to which it could be compared, but the amount and the details of which are still surprising. And if they hope to break out of the comparison shell, they're going to have to step it up soon.
It all started with the lead of Ben (Jason Biggs) being eerily reminiscent of How I Met Your Mother’s Ted. He’s a young guy in a highly important job; he’s an old-fashioned romantic living in a big city; he is a bit buttoned-up; he has oddly feminine qualities and not-the-best taste in music. Thankfully it doesn’t really seem like Ben went through an overtly pretentious phase, though. So one point Ben and Mad Love, then?
Of course both male leads have “guy’s guys” best friends who get laid way more than the leads themselves. And when it comes to the women, well, there’s the “it” girl-next-door who just seems perfect right off the bat (Mad Love’s Kate, played by Sarah Chalke and HIMYM’s Robin, aka Cobie Smulders), as well as a cute but quirky “gal pal” in Judy Greer’s Connie and Alyson Hannigan’s Lily. There were even important moments occurring around the Empire State Building, a seeming staple for sitcoms about life New York, if not an actual staple for natives (or anyone but tourists) in real life New York.
But tonight’s episode will take it a bit farther with specific plot points when in “The Kate Gatsby", Mad Love flashes back to see how Ben and Kate really first met-- at an elaborately themed costume party thrown for a very special occasion. Sound familiar? Well, it did to us. In fact, we immediately got ample shades of the “Slutty Pumpkin” episode of HIMYM, during which Ted was so sure he had met his own soulmate.
Of course there is also Kate’s little sister (played in the March 7th episode “Little Sister, Big City” by guest star Brittany Snow), a girl who she sees as still so young and innocent, who visits New York for the first time and ends up sleeping with someone, well, perhaps less than savory in the eyes of her big sister. Just like when Robin’s little sister came to visit her in New York and was hell-bent on losing her virginity to a kid named Kyle.
And these are only the first few episodes!
But let’s face it, sitcoms are not a perfect science; the formula does allow for a lot of cross-over between themes and ideas, and as long as the punchlines are different and the characters real and relatable in their own way, both shows can co-exist more than comfortably, as they have been doing every Monday night on CBS. They are companions for each other and where one (in this case HIMYM) has taken a turn for the more meaty and emotional, the other (Mad Love) can pick up the slapstick and gags.
Besides, just because they share some means, does not mean they share the same end. Mad Love’s Ben meets the love of his life right from the get-go, meaning their weekly episodes will not draw out his love life or show him bumbling and fumbling through misguided relationship after misguided relationship to get to “the one.” Instead we get to see what a relationship meant to last looks like from minute one to…well, however long you the viewers demand it! So tune in tonight when How I Met Your Mother airs at 8pm and Mad Love follows at 8:30pm, both on CBS.
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