Eric McCandless/FoxGet ready to "woo" like a "woo girl," How I Met Your Mother fans! You have been warned.
Just got back from a reporters' lunch with HIMYM bosses Carter Bays and Craig Thomas, and they ponied up loads of goodies that will make you get your "woo" on, particularly if you dig "so in love" (!!) Barney and Robin, or the idea of HIMYM's unique brand of humor never going away...
Barney and Robin Are Not Doomed: Let the angels sing, and the haters weep! Everything that HIMYM's big bosses said about Barney and Robin during this lunch leads me to believe this couple is the endgame. (There, I said it. And yes, I have completely fangirled out on you.) Now, I should also point out that in the current season finale, we will find out whom Barney marries (and it will be a flash-forward to the future). It's certainly not a slam-dunk that it's Robin, but it sure sounds like Carter and Craig are planning on Barney and Robin in the end.
When I asked Craig and Carter whether Barney and Robin cannot end up together because he wants kids and we know she does not want them, and does not have them, they were quick to defend the show's fan-favorite coupling.
"We don't look at that as a singular deal-breaker for Barney and Robin at all," Craig says, pointing out that "Barney wants to have kids in a very hypothetical sense. He thinks having kids will be cool. He made fun of that baby for pooping in its diaper. He may not be totally ready to be a dad. Barney, deep down, doesn't know what he wants."
Adds Carter: "Barney and Robin are so in love…They are doomed as a relationship in some ways because they are both so messed up. But part of this show is them taking themselves apart and rebuilding themselves. We're seeing them learn how to move past everything that screwed them up in the past and make this work for real."
"Make this work for real?" Ummm...Anyone else hearing the ding-dong of future wedding bells? Do not lead us astray, oh holy [narrator who never lies] Bob Saget!
There Could Be a Spinoff: The writers tells us they have "joked" about a series called "How I Met Your Father," in which, after HIMYM ends, we go back and see what the mother was doing all those years. Another idea, courtesy of my dear frenemy Michael Ausiello: "After I Met Your Mother," which picks up after the mother reveal.
Craig admits that both ideas could be more than "jokes," but right now, they are focusing on the original series, saying, "We are figuring all that out now, whether it will be eight seasons or nine." He adds that it was really exciting to hear this morning that Jason Segel wants to keep going.
Ted and Robin Will Have "Fireworks" This Season: "There's gonna be some fireworks with Ted's undealt-with feelings for Robin," Craig says of the February sweeps episodes. "Some stuff happens that makes Ted and Robin question their living arrangement," Carter adds," and how intimate they are as friends, and is that actually way weirder than we're letting on, which I think it would be."
Still, Ted and Robin fans, don't get too excited. Aside from all that aforementioned Barney-Robin love stuff, Craig says: "We can still definitively say that Robin is not the mother."
So are we back to Jennifer Aniston?
By the way, another name thrown out during the lunch: Anne Hathaway. Yes? No?
Anyone else hoping for nine seasons, and then How I Met Your Father, and/or After I Met Your Mother, too? Note to Craig and Carter: There can never be too much.