FAQ for
"How I Met Your Mother" (2005) More at IMDbPro »

Like most traditionally-scheduled series, HIMYM starts up in the fall (September) and ends in the spring (May). On June 24, CBS issued a press release announcing HIMYM's fifth season premiere date as Monday, September 21. For the fifth season, HIMYM is moving back to the 8:00 p.m. Monday timeslot.

http://www.cbspressexpress.com/div.php/cbs_network/release?id=22101

From the pilot:

Future Ted: . Because that, kids, is the true story of how I met your Aunt Robin.

Son: Aunt Robin?

Daughter: I thought this was how you met Mom?

Future Ted V.O.: Will you relax? I'm getting to it. Like I said, it's a long story.

Clearly, Robin and the mother are not the same person.

In fact, Robin not being the mother (a revelation that provided the big twist in the pilot episode) is one of the "pillars" in the premise of the show, a constraint that makes the series fresh and largely takes it out of the "will they/won't they" territory familiar to "Friends" fans. The creators of the show have reiterated in interviews that while Robin is going to be important and crucial in Ted's romantic journey, they intend to stick to their guns: Robin is not "the one," and there will be no ultimate loophole or twist to make it otherwise.

No, "Aunt Robin" doesn't necessarily mean he's married to Robin's sister. Future Ted also refers to "Uncle Barney," "Uncle Marshall," and "Aunt Lily," meaning that his kids follow the custom of referring to their father's close friends as "aunts" and "uncles."

Also, see the "Lucky Penny," "Something Blue," and "The Leap" statements FAQ ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0460649/faq#.2.1.6 ). Narration in those episodes establish that Ted has not met the mother prior to those points, which rules out a number of women we've seen in the show, not the least of which is Robin. "No Tomorrow" also explicitly places Robin as spending the whole evening with Lily and Marshall at their apartment, while The Mother is at a St. Patrick's Day party in a Manhattan nightclub that Ted was also attending.

One of the "loopholes" some new fans frequently reach for is the idea that Ted isn't the father of the kids and that he's just some uncle or family friend telling them how he met their mother (thus leaving him free to be with Robin in the future). The fact is, it isn't true, as the kids have explicitly called Ted their father. Here's just a couple of instances:

"Dad, can't you just skip ahead to the part where you meet Mom? I feel like you've been talking for, like, a year." - the daughter, "Where Were We?" (Season 2 Premiere).

"Dad!" - both kids, not buying Ted's story about how Robin's sister Katie's life turned out, "First Time In New York."

"Bump Girl" is the nickname fans have given to the character played by Nicole Muirbrook Wagner in the third season episode "No Tomorrow." Her entire scene amounts to Ted accidentally bumping into her while walking through a nightclub, Ted briefly apologizing and her graciously dismissing him.

Because Ted earlier notes that the Mother was in the nightclub at night but that he didn't meet her, some casual fans have jumped on the theory that since the scene is pointless otherwise, Bump Girl must be the mother.

However, most of the more seasoned fans have come to the consensus that Bump Girl is simply a red herring; HIMYM has a recurring habit of subverting fiction tropes, often tied in to Future Ted's recurring theme of "that's not how it is in real life." In real life, people don't get over a broken heart overnight right after a seemingly healing epiphany; in real life, people don't triumphantly push a dead Fiero to 200,000 miles; in real life, friends don't always do the smart and thoughtful thing and tell their friends that purchasing an expensive apartment despite a horrendous interest rate and huge credit card debt is a stupid thing to do.

The trope that "Bump Girl" is riffing on is that of The Conservation of Information, also known as "Chekhov's Gun"--you don't show something if it's not important. The writers are aware of this, and know that sparking a discussion is always a plus when it comes to the show. Bump Girl was thrown in to inspire that discussion, but one needs to keep in mind that "that's not how it happens in real life," and while she's not technically ruled out as a candidate for "Mother," knowing the life lessons HIMYM puts forward, it's not a path that the writers are likely to pursue.

The "Tracy Theory" is based on the concluding scene of the Season 1 episode "Belly Full of Turkey," where Ted meets a stripper who introduces herself as "Tracy," upon which Future Ted's narration chimes in, "and that, kids, is how I met your mother." The kids react with shock, and Future Ted quickly reveals he's kidding.

Fan consensus, however, is that there's nothing that definitively establishes the mother's name as Tracy, and the "Tracy Theory" is typically disregarded:

- We know what we see and hear on the screen isn't necessarily what Future Ted tells verbatim to his kids, unless we actually hear Future Ted say it (one example: Ted and Victoria's last day together in "Cupcake"). In other words, just because we heard the stripper say "I'm Tracy," doesn't mean that Future Ted told his kids, "She said her name was Tracy."

- The kids' shocked reaction in that scene would've happened regardless of whether Future Ted mentioned the mother's real name or not. Future Ted defused the situation before the kids might've uttered something like "but her name's not Tracy!"

- Considering the series' previous "contingency mothers" (people who would've been the mother had the show been canceled at particular times) were Victoria and possibly Stella, the creators are certainly open to a mother who wasn't named Tracy.

So while there's no ruling out "Tracy," there's nothing definitive about it either.

Once in a while, someone will post their theory about how the mother could be [insert previously seen character here]. The "Lucky Penny," "Something Blue," and "The Leap" statements are lines of Future Ted's narration that establish that he has not yet met the mother prior to those episodes.

- At the end of "Lucky Penny," Future Ted wraps up the story by saying that the firm he was interviewing for hired someone else, and that person had to move to Chicago three months later. He points out: "Kids, funny thing about destiny; I thought I was destined to get that job. But I was wrong. My destiny was to stay in New York. Because if I hadn't, I never would've met your mother." Aside from strongly suggesting that he meets the mother in New York, it clearly means that he had not yet, at the time of "Lucky Penny" (and some window of time afterwards, prior to when he would have moved to Chicago) met the mother.

- At the end of "Something Blue," Future Ted closes the story with this revelation of his and Robin's futures: "And as hard as it was at the time, in the end we both got what we wanted. She did eventually go on to live in Argentina, and Morocco, Greece, Russia, even Japan for a little while. And I? Well, I met your mom."

- At the end of "The Leap," Future Ted offers up this summary of the fourth season: "That was the year I got left at the altar. It was the year I got knocked out by a crazy bartender. The year I got fired. The year I got beat up by a goat--a girl goat, at that. And dammit, if it wasn't the best year of my life. Because if any one of those things hadn't happened, I never would've ended up in what turned out to be the best job I ever had. But more importantly...I wouldn't have met your mother. Because as you know, she was in that class. Of course, that story's only just beginning."

So anyone Ted can be construed to have "met" before the events of "The Leap" can be definitively ruled out as the mother, including Victoria, the coat check girl, the Slutty Pumpkin, Wendy the Waitress, Trudy, Stella, and most other female characters Ted has personally significantly interacted with from Seasons 1 through 4.

Notable characters who have not definitively been ruled out by this phenomenon include the Perfect Match from "Milk" (she and Ted never met in person, though they presumably know each other's names and what the other person looks like), and the Bump Girl from "No Tomorrow" (since they merely bumped into each other).

Additional (though less explicit) statements that nonetheless establish Ted as not having met the mother yet:

"No Tomorrow" - Future Ted makes a point of the fact that he learned years later that the mother attended the same St. Patrick's Day 2008 party that he did, but did not meet her there.

"The Three Days Rule" - after telling the story of how things with Holli went, Ted mentions that when he met the mother, he didn't hesitate to call her back as soon as he got her number, strongly implying that this event has not happened yet in the timeline.

(updated May 2009)

Ted was an architect. He once worked for a big firm, but in Season 4 he gets fired from his firm and decides to become self employed, setting up a firm called "Mosbius Designs." After his one major project falls through, Ted decides to take up an offer made to him by his ex-fiancée's current fiancé Tony to teach architecture at Columbia University.

Lily is a kindergarten teacher. For a time (early in Season 2, when she returned from studying art in San Francisco) she worked as a waitress in a Hawaiian-themed restaurant and as an administrative assistant in Ted's architectural firm before returning to teaching.

Robin was a reporter, then a news anchor for a small-time local cable station ("Metro News One," presumably based on real-life station NY1), but quit for a brief stint at Tokyo Ichi (think CNN meets a Japanese game show) in Japan before quitting that job and returning to New York. She went through a period of unemployment but, with Barney's help, was hired by Channel 12 to host their 4 a.m. morning news show, "Come On Get Up New York."

Marshall was a law student in Season 1 and 2, with some time spent interning in the legal department of Barney's company Altrucel; after passing the bar, he worked for the corporate law firm Nicolson, Hewitt and West, but quit partway into Season 3; Most recently, he's taken on a job in the legal department of Goliath National Bank, a company recently acquired by Barney's company.

As for Barney, he works for Altrucel, a large evil corporation (who prefer to be recognized as the company that puts the fuzz on tennis balls), but what *exactly* he does for the company remains a mystery, a running gag for the show (upon being asked what he does for a living, Barney immediately chuckles and dismisses the question with a "please.") He has since apparently been assigned to work directly for Goliath National Bank, Altrucel's newest acquisition. One of Barney's titles is the "head of the search committee" at GNB, but it is not necessarily his full-time position at the company.

The title of the theme song is "Hey Beautiful," and it's by The Solids, an unsigned band led by the show's creators, Carter Bays and Craig Thomas. The song is available on iTunes, and can be heard in full on the band's MySpace page.

See this thread on the HIMYM Message Boards for an up-to-date list compiled by the fans: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0460649/board/nest/119954955

Craig Thomas, co-creator of HIMYM, revealed in an interview with TV Guide (http://www.tvguide.com/news/craig-thomas-mother/071112-02) that MacLaren's is based on McGee's Pub on 55th and Broadway in Manhattan, not far from the Ed Sullivan Theater (where he and co-creator Carter Bays worked as writers for The Late Show With David Letterman).

(Note: the following is theory and should not be regarded as fact)

HIMYM has had to address the possibility of cancellation at least twice (and perhaps three times) so far in its run.

The first instance is something that's common to most scripted TV shows (a little TV industry primer follows): When commissioning a TV series, broadcast networks usually put in an initial order to the production company for 13 episodes or so. If the series is launched in the fall and brings in satisfactory ratings, the network will order additional episodes for the season (aka "being picked up for the rest of the season," or "picking up the back nine" for a full season of 22 episodes). Otherwise, if the show isn't an instantly-yanked disaster, the network will allow the rest of the initial 13 episodes to be produced, and will typically burn them off (i.e. air the episodes even though it's a doomed, "lame duck" series), though in some cases some episodes are not aired on the original network and instead air on a cable partner, shown online, or put on the DVD release of the series.

So like any freshman series, HIMYM had an initial order of 13 episodes. And as with any series that have ongoing subplots, the writers of HIMYM were particularly motivated to provide a reasonably satisfying conclusion if those 13 episodes were all they were going to get.

And what was the 13th episode? "Drumroll, Please." And if you watch the episode, one can see where it would have provided a satisfying ending--Robin winds up unhappy, but one can see where she was instrumental in bringing Victoria and Ted together (a prerequisite of the whole story, at least if it were to end this early in the game), Lily and Marshall having a moment in the previous episode that they feel is a landmark in the journey to their wedding day, Barney being awesome as usual, and Ted and Victoria getting together in a very romantic fashion. All the episode was missing to become the finale of the show was a final voiceover from Future Ted saying "and that, kids, was how I met your mother"--something that could've been added had the situation required it.

The show was renewed for a second season before production on the first season was finished, so a "contingency" wasn't needed for the end of the first season--in fact, they made the season finale a cliffhanger.

The end of the second season wasn't as sunny, and the finale even aired before official word of HIMYM's renewal came down. So what we got in "Something Blue"--bittersweet but slightly reassuring and satisfying to some extent, with Ted's narration providing a little closure to the mother mystery without actually revealing the mother, and a memorable final punctuation mark (not a period, exclamation point or question mark, but a nice ellipsis) courtesy of Barney.

While HIMYM's renewal also came too late in the third season, it seems that the ratings boost from Britney Spears' appearance may have given the producers enough confidence in a renewal that they gave the show a little cliffhanger as well, though it's also conceivable that they would have been content with the "question mark" ending with the further assumption that Stella was the mother.

Three so far: 1) In "Slap Bet," shortly upon Barney choosing the "five slaps any time" option. 2) In "Stuff," bringing Barney's one-man play to a sudden end. 3) In "Slapsgiving," after the Thanksgiving embargo is lifted.

Two more slaps are forthcoming.

One of HIMYM's conceits is that the entire story is being told in one sitting; the kids are wearing the same clothes (except for the pilot, a discrepancy we're supposed to ignore because there are often changes between a series' pilot and the subsequent episodes), and have on occasion alluded to how long Ted's been droning on.

The problem is that actors Lyndsey Fonseca and David Henrie have been growing up; one can even see the difference between their Season 1 footage and Season 2 footage. So all the footage we've seen (and will probably ever see) of the kids was shot in Season 2, with what apparently is a small library of reaction shots to be used in future episodes. Since many of these episodes were/are yet to be written back when they shot the footage, the kids won't be specifically reacting to stories in the future (unless they recorded some responses that are generic enough to be used as a reaction, something we haven't seen yet). The creators of the show have acknowledged this limitation, and believe that now that the show is well-established, viewers only need an occasional reminder of Ted's framing narrative (the non-interactive shots that we've seen since Season 3).

There *is* one instance of a pre-recorded reaction to a future episode that we know of: A scene with the kids that directly relates to the identity of the mother was shot in Season 2 under very secure/secret conditions. This scene is being saved for the show's finale. (http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/entertainment_tv/2008/07/barney-writes-a.html)

Like most network shows, HIMYM is renewed year-to-year. However, a recent bidding war over syndicated rerun rights is a very good sign that HIMYM will run at least five seasons. Creator Craig Thomas expressed in an interview that he hoped that the show's finale will air in 2012, meaning that they were hoping for a run of 7 seasons.

However, HIMYM's continued success has resulted in the cast not only getting pay raises, but also an extension of their contracts through an 8th season (2013), meaning that the door obviously wide open to go beyond the original 7-year plan. Of course, there's an upper limit to these things, too: Since Future Ted's son and daughter are teenagers in 2030, sooner or later Ted is going to have to meet the mother and have these kids.

"Bachelor Party," Episode 19 of Season 2. Lily reveals this because Marshall was mad at Barney for ruining his bachelor party and was upset enough to consider leaving him out of the wedding.

She says: "Ach Du meine Güte, gar nichts klappt mehr, aber überhaupt gar nichts mehr" (Oh dear, nothing is working out anymore, absolutely nothing).

(thanks to IMDB HIMYM fan dancer_in_the_snow for the answer).

Aside from the CBS website, "Barney's Blog" (linked from within the CBS site), and official MySpace pages created for the show and its characters, here are sites that the show's staff have created, most of which are tied into episodes of the series:

www.marshallandlilywedding.com (not mentioned on the show, but contains photos and webisode-type footage from within the show's continuity)

www.slapcountdown.com ("Slapsgiving"; now links to a fan forum)

www.tedmosbyisajerk.com ("The Bracket"; note that tedmosbyisnotajerk.com is fan-created and unofficial)

www.lilyandmarshallselltheirstuff.com ("Everything Must Go"; linked to a real charity auction of HIMYM props and wardrobe; no longer effective)

www.guyforceshiswifetodressinagarbagebagforthenextthreeyears.com ("Everything Must Go")

www.notafathersday.com ("Not a Father's Day"; no longer effective)

www.barneysvideoresume.com ("The Possimpible")

www.mysteriousdrx.com ("The Possimpible", not mentioned on the show)

www.canadiansexacts.org ("Old King Clancy")

www.weddingbridemovie.com/ ("As Fast As She Can")

In the first season, the font used was Century; from the second season onward (and on the DVD packaging of the first season), the typeface is Dax.

CBS announced HIMYM's renewal at the "upfronts" on May 20, as part of their announcement of the fall lineup. HIMYM will be moving (back) to Mondays at 8 p.m., and the fifth season will premiere on September 21st.

A few months ago the show was the object of a bidding war for syndicated rerun rights. The show will be a more attractive syndication package once it has 100 episodes under its belt (Season 4 will put us at 88), so it is in 20th Century Fox's best interest (as the production company, it stands to profit the most from the syndicated reruns) to take the series to at least 100 episodes, and CBS appears to have come to recognize the show's reliability as a ratings performer and its status as a somewhat culty hit for its demographic.

Alyson Hannigan (as well as Cobie Smulders) was pregnant during Season 4, and early in March 2009 left the show to have her baby. Her absence is partially explained at the beginning of #4.20 ("Mosbius Designs") when she is so offended by a joke Barney tells that she refuses to hang out with the guys for four weeks (presumably she still spends time with her husband and with Robin offscreen).

Hannigan gave birth to daughter Satyana on March 24, the week that #4.23 ("As Fast As She Can") was produced. The season finale (#4.24, "The Leap") was filmed in January to accommodate the actresses' pregnancies and to ensure Lily would play a role in the season finale.

In "Mosbius Designs" (#4.20) Barney tells Lily a joke that offends her so much that she refuses to hang out with the gang for four weeks (this was done to accommodate actress Alyson Hannigan's maternity leave). The audience hears the setup ("What's the difference between peanut butter and jam?"), but not the punchline--Future Ted's narration obscures Barney's words.

There are minor variations to the punchline as found by searching for the joke on Google, but in essence, the punchline is: "I can't peanut butter my [slang for male organ] up your [slang for posterior]." In the footage we see Barney mouth the words "peanut butter," but his other words don't quite jive with the known punchline, which may mean he told a variation of the joke that was even more offensive than the commonly accepted punchline.

During Robin's relationship with Ted in Season 2 (in the episode "Stuff"), Robin sent her dogs away to live on her aunt's farm in Upstate New York (really, it's not a euphemism). Even though her initial reason to send them away (Ted was uncomfortable with them reminding him of Robin's ex-boyfriends) is no longer a factor, presumably she has found it more convenient to live without them...or they're really happy out there and don't want to move back.

Co-creator Craig Thomas' wife was a big Buffy fan, and when Thomas asked for her "blessing" to have a character based on her in the new sitcom he was creating, she agreed on the condition that they get Alyson Hannigan to play the part. And the rest is history...

Aside from Hannigan (and, retroactively, Neil Patrick Harris), the list of HIMYM actors known for their appearances in Joss Whedon's productions include:

Alexis Denisof (Alyson Hannigan's husband): Wesley in "Buffy" and "Angel"; Sandy Rivers, Robin's co-anchor in Season 1.

Amy Acker: Fred in "Angel" and "Dr. Saunders" in "Dollhouse"; Barney's rain-dancing ex Penelope in "Milk," Season 1.

Morena Baccarin: Inara in "Firefly"; "Crazy Eyes" Chloe in "Swarley," Season 2.

Tom Lenk: Andrew in "Buffy" and "Angel"; Scott the barista in "Swarley," Season 2.

Harry Groener: Mayor Wilkins in "Buffy"; Ted's mom's boyfriend Clint in "How Lily Stole Christmas," Season 2.

Lesser-known actor crossovers include:

JP Manoux: Bellman in "Are You Now or Have You Ever Been," ("Angel," #202); Not Moby/Eric in "The Limo" (Season 1).

Caroline Lagerfelt: Spike's mother Anne in "Lies My Parents Told Me" (BTVS, #717); Bridal shop lady in "Cupcake" (Season 1)

Pat Crawford Brown: a creepy old lady in "Doublemeat Palace" (BTVS, #612); Thelma, the old lady on the plane with Lily in "Three Days of Snow" (Season 4)

thanks to HIMYM fan Riina_K for information on the lesser-known crossovers