How I Met Your Mother (often abbreviated HIMYM) is an American sitcom created by Craig Thomas and Carter Bays for CBS. The series, which aired from September 19, 2005, to March 31, 2014, follows main character Ted Mosby and his group of friends in New York City's Manhattan. As a frame story, Ted (in 2030) recounts to his children Penny and Luke the events from September 2005 to May 2013 that led to him meeting their mother.
The series was loosely inspired by Thomas and Bays' friendship when they both lived in New York. The vast majority of the episodes (196 out of 208) were directed by Pamela Fryman. The other directors were Rob Greenberg (7 episodes), Michael Shea (4 episodes), and Neil Patrick Harris (1 episode).
Known for its non-contemporary structure, humor, and incorporation of dramatic elements, How I Met Your Mother was popular throughout its run. It received positive reviews initially, but reception became more mixed as the seasons went on. The show was nominated for 91 awards and received 21.
Premise The series follows the adventures of Ted Mosby (Joshua Radnor) and his love life as a single man. His stories are narrated by Bob Saget as Ted Mosby 25 years later, as he tells them to his adolescent children, Luke (named after Luke Skywalker) and Penny (named after Ted's love for coins).
The narrative leads to a flashback, and the story proper starts in 2005 with 27-year-old Ted Mosby living in New York City and working as an architect. The story deals primarily with his four best friends. These include the long-standing couple Marshall Eriksen (Jason Segel), a law student, and Lily Aldrin (Alyson Hannigan), a kindergarten teacher, who have been dating for almost nine years when Marshall proposes; and the playboy Barney Stinson (Neil Patrick Harris) and the Canadian news reporter Robin Scherbatsky (Cobie Smulders). All of the characters' lives are intertwined. The series explores many story lines, including "will they or won't they" relationships between Robin and each of the two single male friends, Marshall and Lily's relationship, and the ups and downs of the characters' careers.
The show's frame story depicts Ted (voice of Bob Saget, uncredited) telling the story to his son Luke (David Henrie) and daughter Penny (Lyndsy Fonseca) as they sit on the couch in the year 2030. This frame is the show's putative narrative present, and How I Met Your Mother exploits this narrative structure in numerous ways: to depict and re-depict events from multiple points of view; to set up jokes using quick and sometimes multiple flashbacks nested within the oral retelling; to substitute visual, verbal, or aural euphemisms for activities Ted does not want to talk about with his children (sexual practices, use of illicit substances, vulgar language, etc.)(ex."Sandwiches" used to refer to marijuana)
Although the traditional love story structure begins when the lead characters first meet, How I Met Your Mother does not introduce Ted's wife (Cristin Milioti) until the eighth-season finale and only announces her full name, Tracy McConnell, during the series finale. Her first name, Tracy, is mentioned in the first season at the end of episode nine.
Production How I Met Your Mother was inspired by Carter Bays and Craig Thomas' idea to "write about our friends and the stupid stuff we did in New York", where they previously worked as writers for Late Show with David Letterman, among others. The two drew from their friendship in creating the characters. Ted is based loosely on Bays, and Marshall and Lily are based loosely on Thomas and his wife. Thomas' wife Rebecca was initially reluctant to have a character based on her but agreed if they could get Alyson Hannigan to play her. Hannigan was looking to do more comedy work and was available. Joshua Radnor and Jason Segel, who were cast as Ted and Marshall, respectively, were not well known, although Segel had been a cast member on the short-lived Freaks and Geeks and a recurring guest star on Judd Apatow's follow-up show, Undeclared. The role of Barney was initially envisioned as a "John Belushi-type character" before Neil Patrick Harris won the role after being invited to an audition by the show's casting director Megan Branman. Pamela Fryman invited Bob Saget to be the voice-over narrator, Future Ted, explaining to him that the show would be like The Wonder Years but "kind of into the future". Saget either went to the television studio and recorded the narration while watching the episode, or did so separately and rerecorded with the episode if necessary. He normally did not attend table readings but did so for the last episode.
In multiple interviews Bays and Thomas have stated that "a pretty famous actress" turned down the role of Robin, who they revealed in February 2014 was Jennifer Love Hewitt. They then cast the unknown Cobie Smulders; Bays and Thomas later said, "Thank God we did for a million reasons... when Ted's seeing her for the first time, America's seeing her for the first time—the intrigue of that propelled the show going forward and kept the show alive". Although Ted is initially smitten by Robin in the pilot, it is quickly established at the end of the episode that she is not the mother, which Thomas said was done so they would not repeat the "will they or won't they" Ross and Rachel storyline from Friends.
According to an Entertainment Weekly article, the writers adopted facets of each main actor's personality and incorporated them into their characters. This includes Neil Patrick Harris' skills with magic, Jason Segel's passion for songwriting, Alyson Hannigan's absent-mindedness while pregnant, and Josh Radnor's intellectualism.Entertainment Weekly (September 6, 2013).
MacLaren's, an Irish bar in the middle of New York City, in which a lot of the show is set, is loosely based on four of Bays and Thomas's favorite bars: McGee's, a Midtown tavern near the Ed Sullivan Theater where the Late Show is taped; McHale's, a legendary Hell's Kitchen bar which closed in 2006; Chumley's, a since-closed historic Greenwich Village pub; and Fez, another closed bar on the Upper West Side. McGee's had a mural that Bays and Thomas both liked and wanted to incorporate into the show.How I Met Your Mother 1st Season DVD Commentary The name for the bar is from Carter Bays' assistant, Carl MacLaren; the bartender in the show is also named Carl.
Episodes were generally shot over a three-day period in the Los Angeles-based Soundstage Studio 22 and featured upwards of 50 scenes with quick transitions and flashbacks. However, the pilot episode was filmed at CBS Radford.Audio commentary at 00:58 min. of the HIMYM – Season 1 DVD The laugh track was later created by recording an audience being shown the final edited episode. Thomas claimed that shooting before a live audience would have been impossible because of the structure of the show and the numerous flashforwards in each episode and because doing so "would blur the line between 'audience' and 'hostage situation'". Later seasons started filming in front of an audience on occasion, when smaller sets were used.
The theme song is a portion of "Hey Beautiful" by The Solids, of which Bays and Thomas are members. Episodes from season 1 generally started with the opening credits. A cold opening was used from season 2 onwards. Viewers then occasionally see Ted's children on a couch and hear him talking to them, telling the story of how he met their mother. Alternatively, scenes from previous episodes or shots of New York City are shown with Ted narrating over them. Thomas has stated that Future Ted is an unreliable narrator, since he is trying to tell a story that happened over 20 years earlier; this has been a plot point in several episodes including "The Goat", "Oh Honey", "How I Met Everyone Else", and "The Mermaid Theory". Nevertheless, Thomas has also emphasized maintaining a coherent and consistent universe and trying to avoid continuity errors, a problem he noticed in other shows.
A scene relating to the identity of the mother, involving Ted's future children, was filmed in 2006 for the show's eventual series finale. This was done because the teenage actors portraying them would be adults by the time the final season was shot.
During the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike, How I Met Your Mother shut down production; when the strike ended, the show returned on March 17, 2008, with nine new episodes. The network announced a change in the timeslot to 8:30 pm ET/7:30 pm CT, flip-flopping from the summer schedule with The Big Bang Theory. CBS renewed the show for a fourth season on May 14, 2008, which premiered on September 22, 2008.
In September 2008, Lifetime Television announced it had purchased the cable rerun rights to How I Met Your Mother at a rate of about $725,000 per episode. The four-year syndication contract stipulated that the studio deliver at least 110 half-hour episodes by 2010 and allowed for up to eight seasons of the show. At the end of the fourth season only 88 episodes had been produced, and a further 22 episodes were required, ensuring that there would be a fifth season. There also was a complication with the writing of the show because of Alyson Hannigan's absence due to her pregnancy; in response, the writers had to create episodes that did not include one of the five main characters. On May 19, 2009, the fifth-season renewal was announced. May 20, 2009, CBS announced that How I Met Your Mother would again be aired at 8 pm, leading into the new comedy Accidentally on Purpose. On January 12, 2010, the show aired its 100th episode, and CBS announced that the series would return for a sixth season. Upon learning that the series would be syndicated, Thomas said, "We're thrilled that it will live on in other forms," and they were proud of the show and it was great to see the strong demand.
Reruns of the series began airing on local American broadcast television stations and on Chicago-based cable superstation WGN America on September 14, 2010. Featured in these airings are vanity cards previously unseen in the CBS and Lifetime airings due to marginalized credit sequences used by the two networks. Shown in between the closing credits and the production company credits, these vanity cards show portions of "The Bro Code", a list of rules frequently referenced by Harris' character, Barney Stinson, on how men should interact with each other, with an emphasis on activities involving pursuing members of the opposite sex. The opening theme song for the syndicated reruns is also slightly edited, running shorter and not using all the pictures seen in the opening montage that runs on DVD and the original CBS broadcasts. The episodes are also slightly shorter, to allow for more commercials during a timeslot in syndication.
One of the series' traditions involved giving guest roles to actors from various Joss Whedon productions, many of whom co-starred with Hannigan on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Bays attributed this to their being "huge fans" and to those casts representing "a big talent pool".
On March 4, 2011, CBS announced that the show had been renewed for two more seasons, with the seventh season premiering with back-to-back episodes on September 19, 2011.
On July 27, 2011, the FX channel announced it had picked up the series for syndication. On September 5, 2011, FX began airing the series.