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'''How I Met Your Mother''' ('''HIMYM''') is a CBS sitcom that premiered on September 19, 2005. Created by Craig Thomas and Carter Bays,
the show received generally positive reviews.^[1] ''TV Guide'' gave it the "Editor's Choice" honor in its Fall Preview Issue. Thomas and Bays drew from their friendship in creating the characters, with Ted based loosely on Bays and Marshall and Lily based loosely on Thomas and his wife.
Dubbed "A love story in reverse," the show is structured as the main character, Ted, in the year 2030 telling his son and daughter about the events that led to his meeting their mother, which begin in 2005. The show frequently explores the concepts of stories and storytelling usually with multiple flashbacks occurring each episode. Seeing the show in non-chronological order often results in the viewer seeing something happen and then finding out later the events that caused it. This effect has been dubbed "deep frying" the story, a reference to the director Pamela Fryman. This structure necessitates many more scenes than the average sitcom; therefore the show is not filmed before a live studio audience despite being shot in the traditional sitcom format. Laughter is not recorded until the episode is shown to an audience after it has been completely edited together.
On May 16, 2007, CBS executives announced at the annual UpFront presentation that ''How I Met Your Mother'' has been renewed for a third season. While airing ''CSI''-style promos for the show, it was announced that the show would be moving to the 9:30 PM Monday timeslot for summer reruns, after reruns of the highly-rated ''Two and a Half Men.'' The show has now moved back to its old time slot, 8ET / 7CT. The third season premieres September 24, 2007, and will be followed by the new sitcom ''The Big Bang Theory''.

Contents

Main cast

Recurring and guest stars

Pilot

Episodes

Nielsen Ratings

Recurring elements

Awards

DVD release

International broadcasters

External links

References

Main cast

★ Josh Radnor as Ted Mosby

★ Jason Segel as Marshall Eriksen

★ Cobie Smulders as Robin Scherbatsky

★ Neil Patrick Harris as Barney Stinson

★ Alyson Hannigan as Lily Aldrin

Recurring and guest stars

★ Charlene Amoia as Wendy/Waitress

★ Alexis Denisof as Sandy Rivers

★ Monique Edwards as Producer

★ Lyndsy Fonseca as Daughter

★ David Henrie as Son

★ Marshall Manesh as Ranjit

★ Joe Manganiello as Brad

★ Joe Nieves as Carl

★ Ashley Williams as Victoria

Pilot

In the year 2030, Ted Mosby (voiced by Bob Saget) gathers his daughter and son to tell them the story of how he met their mother. The story begins in 2005 with Ted (Josh Radnor) as a single, 27-year-old architect living with his two best friends from college, 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. Their engagement causes Ted to think about marriage and finding his soul mate, much to the disgust of his friend Barney Stinson (Neil Patrick Harris), a womanizer with a lucrative, though unnamed, corporate job. Ted begins his search for his perfect mate. He is introduced to the ambitious young reporter Robin Scherbatsky (Cobie Smulders), when Barney plays the game he invented to introduce Ted to women, "Hi, have you met Ted?", Ted quickly falls for Robin and she becomes part of Ted's group of friends.
At the end of the pilot episode, Ted announces that the "mother" of the title is not Robin, which is confirmed in the second season finale. As of September 2007, the identity of the mother has not yet been revealed.

Episodes

There have been 44 episodes in total split between two seasons. Both seasons 1 and 2 had 22 episodes each.

Nielsen Ratings

Based on average total viewers per episode of CBS sitcom, ''How I Met Your Mother'':^[2][3]

Season	Timeslot (EDT)	Season Premiere	Season Finale	TV Season	Rank	Viewers (in millions)	18–49 Rating/Share (rank)
''	Monday 8:30 P.M. (September 19, 2005 – May 15, 2006)	September 19, 2005	May 15, 2006	2005-2006	'#51'	9.5	3.4/8 ('#53')
''	Monday 8:30 P.M. (September 18, 2006 – October 2, 2006) Monday 8:00 P.M. (October 9, 2006 - May 14, 2007)	September 18, 2006	May 14, 2007	2006-2007	'#61'	8.5	3.2/9 ('#51')
''	Monday 8:00 P.M. (September 24, 2007 – )	September 24, 2007	2008	2007-2008

Recurring elements

★ The word "awesome" appears in almost every episode. The word awesome does not appear in the episode entitled "Purple Giraffe."

★ Barney's catchphrases: "Legendary," "True story," "Suit up," "High five," "What up?" various uses of the word "awesome" and "awesomeness."

★ For emphasis, Barney inserts the phrase “wait for it” into the middle of a word, e.g. "Legen-- wait for it-- and I hope you're not lactose intolerant because the second half of that word is-- Dary.”

★ Barney calling himself Ted's best friend or Marshall's best man, only to be corrected.

★ Barney first uses the "Have you met...?" line, introducing Ted to random women in the bar, simply by saying, "Hi, have you met Ted?" then walking away. The phrase has been adapted and used with all of the characters except for Lily.

★ Slap Bet: The season two episode "Slap Bet" featured a wager between Marshall and Barney where the winner would slap the loser. Lily (the Slap Bet Commissioner) gave Barney (who lost the bet) the choice of 10 slaps immediately or five to be dished out at any time. Barney, having chosen the five slaps, has been slapped twice by Marshall since then:

★
★ At the end of "Slap Bet", a few minutes after losing the bet.

★
★ At the end of season two episode "Stuff," while performing his one-man play "Suck It Lily."

★
★ There is a "slap bet countdown" on cbs.com that implies that the third slap will be dealt out on Monday November 19th at around 8:23 pm ET [1].

★ "Famous telepathic conversations:" If the characters want to have a private conversation in the presence of others, they will attempt to communicate with each other telepathically. Marshall has done this successfully with Ted and Lily, but when Robin attempted it with Lily it failed.

★ When asked what his job is, Barney laughs and says "Please" (and never reveals it).

★ Barney loves laser tag and Sharper Image.

★ Barney often makes up statistics (Ted claims that he always uses 83% but he has only done this once, using completely different statistics on previous occasions) in order to make his arguments sound credible. Marshall always catches him out and 'lawyers' him.

★ Marshall often does The Robot when he is excited about something.

★ Robin being teased about being Canadian. She will sometimes respond with a truism about America, such as a flawed medical system or poor knowledge of international geography.

★ "Lawyering": Marshall uses his law skills to interrogate someone else in a courtroom-style fashion.

★ Giving each other a variety of unique high five, such as the "hypothetical high five", the "air five", and "the phone five" (slapping the phone in a way that imitates the high five).

★ Characters (or more specifically Barney) calling Robin by her surname, Scherbatsky.

Awards

★ Emmy Award: Outstanding Art Direction for a Multi-Camera Series (2006).

★ Emmy Award: Outstanding Cinematography for a Multi-Camera Series (2006).

★ Emmy Award: Nominated for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series (Neil Patrick Harris).

DVD release

'Season releases'

DVD name	Release date	Ep #	Additional information
Season One	November 21 2006	22	This three-disc box set includes all 22 episodes of Season 1. Bonus features include commentaries on select episodes, gag reel, and video yearbook.
Season Two	October 2 2007	22	This three-disc box set will include all 22 episodes of Season 2. Bonus features include commentaries on select episodes, gag reel, and several featurettes.

International broadcasters

Country	TV Network(s)	Series Premiere	Weekly Schedule
Hong Kong	Star World		Thursdays 8:00 p.m.
United States	CBS Television	September 19 2005	Mondays 8:00 p.m. ET
Canada	CTV (Premiered on Global Television Network)		Mondays 8:00 p.m. ET
Australia	Channel Seven and FOX8	June 29 2006	Thursdays 7:30 p.m.
Belgium	Kanaal Twee	June 9 2007	Saturdays 7:05 p.m.
Brazil	Fox Life	January 11 2006
Bulgaria	Nova Television	August 13 2007	Monday - Saturday 10:00 p.m.
France	Canal +	February 11, 2007	Sundays 4:30 p.m.
India	STAR World	May 31, 2007	Thursdays 8:00 p.m.
Indonesia	STAR World		Thursdays 7 p.m.
Ireland	Channel 6
Israel	yesSTARS (Season 1) yes stars 1 (Season 2) STAR World	March 9, 2006 May 31, 2007	Thursdays 9:05pm (Season 1) Sundays 9:15pm (Season 2) Thursdays 8:00 p.m.
Mexico	Fox Life Televisa (incomplete)
New Zealand	TV3	24 January 2007	Saturday 8:00 p.m.
Pakistan	STAR World, Showtime, Paramount Comedy Channel
Philippines	ETC	March 5 2007	Monday 8:30 p.m.
Poland	Comedy Central		Sundays 8:50 p.m.
Saudi Arabia and Arab World	Showtime Arabia, Paramount Comedy Channel, Paramount Comedy Channel +2 and MBC 4
South Africa	e.tv		Sundays 7:30 p.m.
Spain	La Sexta	January 8, 2007	Mondays 9:35 p.m.
Sweden	TV3 (Viasat)		Saturdays
Denmark	TV3 (Viasat)		Monday - Friday 7.20 a.m & 12.55 p.m
Thailand	True Series Star World	January 25, 2006 May 31, 2007	Wednesdays 9:00 p.m. THAI Thursdays 7:00 p.m. WIB/THAI
Turkey	CNBC-e		Mondays 8:00 p.m.
United Kingdom	BBC Three ''(First run)'' and BBC Two ''(re-runs)'' ''(Season 1)'' Trouble ''(Season 2-)''	7 May 2006	currently running on BBC2 late night 1-2am times vary as of August 6, 2007]

External links

★ "How I Met Your Mother" at Yahoo! TV

★ Australian Official Website

★ French Official Website

★ official CBS posting of Robin Sparkles video on You Tube

★ Robin Sparkles viral MySpace Page

★ Full episodes of ''How I Met Your Mother''

References

1. How I Met Your Mother Reviews from Metacritic
2. Hollywood Reporter: 2005-06 primetime wrap
3. Hollywood Reporter: 2006-07 primetime wrap