How I Met Your Mother: Season 7 - Region 1 DVD

Unlike most sitcoms, How I Met Your Mother benefits from watching an entire season all at once. Not only do episodes routinely refer to past or future events, but the show's humor depends on what the five main characters themselves find funny. In fact, How I Met Your Mother is practically an analysis of how shared humor forges a group identity, as the friendship of these five hapless New Yorkers is held together by in-jokes and mutual history--to the point that it's almost impossible for anyone else to join their tight little tribe, including new viewers. This makes watching any single episode a little off-putting; the show doesn't seem that funny and the characters seem derangedly attached to each other. But with each episode you watch, you get drawn in more and more until you find sweeping declarations, the ducky tie, long-term bets, "The Night We," and pregnancy brain just as compelling as they do. --Bret Fetzer