Even though New Girl fans disliked Jess’s season 4 romance with Ryan, How I Met Your Father inexplicably repeated the sitcom’s story. Perhaps because the series is a How I Met Your Mother spinoff, How I Met Your Father has not been shy about borrowing from other hit shows that came before it. The show’s season 1 finale featured a twist that effectively reversed the sad ending of Alexis and Ted’s Schitt’s Creek romance, while Leighton Meester’s How I Met Your Father role subverted her most famous part as Gossip Girl’s Blair Waldorf.
However, what is surprising is the fact that How I Met Your Father has also borrowed some story elements from sitcom plots that were hated by fans when they appeared on earlier shows. For example, Ryan’s short-lived romance with Jess on New Girl has frequently been cited by fans online as one of the show’s weakest storylines due to their lack of chemistry and its vague resolution. Despite this fact, Charlie and Valentina’s love story in How I Met Your Father bears a striking resemblance to the earlier widely-disliked plot.
Ryan was a teacher who Jess dated in New Girl season 4 and, unlike the show’s less well-off regulars, he eventually was revealed to be a member of a wealthy aristocratic British family at the end of one Christmas episode. Similarly, in How I Met Your Father, characters struggle with money for the most part but Valentina’s boyfriend Charlie, like Ryan, doesn’t have to worry about this issue. That is because Charlie is slumming it in How I Met Your Father having chosen to go to New York with Valentina, despite his rich aristocratic British family threatening to cut him off if he did so. Similarly, Ryan was assumed to be a working-class teacher in LA but was later revealed to have huge family money that he could fall back on.
To be fair to How I Met Your Father, the sitcom spinoff did ensure that Charlie’s setup was not an exact replica of Ryan’s backstory. Although the season 1 finale saw Charlie and Valentina break up, Charlie was always forthright about his family’s money, and he did choose to pursue a relationship with Valentina over his inheritance. How I Met Your Father‘s season 2 may see him regain access to his family money now that the relationship is over, but Charlie chose Valentina over his family wealth whereas Ryan never had to decide between Jess and his inherited money.
However, despite all these differences, there is also another similarity between the duo. Both Charlie and Ryan’s romances don’t work out, and while Ryan was already established as an LA-based teacher before meeting Jess, Charlie only moved (and gave up his fortune) for the sake of being with Valentina. As a result, there is a good chance that Charlie, like Ryan, won’t be seen on the series after the breakup. While New Girl never properly wrote Ryan out, How I Met Your Father has a perfect setup to drop Charlie by saying that the character returned to England (and to his family’s wealth) between seasons.
