The How I Met Your Mother Blog

I’ve purposefully been quiet about all the non-stop coverage of “Britney might return to How I Met Your Mother”. That’s about all the news there is, that one sentence, and every media organization in the world is talking about it. Buckle up, because now I’ve got something to say. There are quotes everywhere about Neil Patrick Harris wishing Britney was banned from the show. The only actual quotes I’ve seen from him are:

“I’m in the minority that our show does not need stunt casting in order to succeed”

“I worry that if they start `Will and Grace’-ing us too much, that the show will suffer. And we’re all really proud of the content of the show. I mean, viewership is not our game. It’s the network and the studio’s game, you know. It’s the promotion department’s game”

On who might be cast next: “No telling, but based on the stunt casting we’ve done in the past I’m guessing Tara Reid”

source

None of that overtly says he doesn’t want Spears to return. It sounds like he’s just being sarcastic and doesn’t want all of the news coverage to focus on the guest stars. Him, and everyone else from Josh Radnor to Carl MacLaren, go to great lengths to create a show that is more than the traditional sitcom. We all know this—it’s why we love the show. The ironic thing is that all the media outlets have taken NPH’s sentiment and spun it into the exact thing he didn’t want. NPH isn’t the only one: Josh Radnor has also expressed similar concerns about the show being looked at only for its guest stars. He was wary to discuss Spears during appearances yesterday on various TV morning shows and has been quoted recently concerning all the guest casting brouhaha:

“The challenge for the show has always been to get more eyeballs on it…the only thing — and this is not a slam on any of the other shows on CBS on Monday — but the only thing we have in common with those shows is we’re half an hour, multi-camera shows with a laugh track.”

“That’s why the people who love this show looooooove this show because I think it’s like your favorite band that hasn’t gotten popular enough for you to start hating it,” he said. “So you can still kind of love it and wear the T-shirt and speak in code with the other people who are on to it, but it hasn’t tipped into this kind of phenomenon where you start to turn on it

It sounds like he’s saying the exact same thing as Harris. It makes sense. Radnor, Harris, the rest of the cast, and the creators have spent three years creating one of the highest quality sitcoms that’s ever been on American television. For a long time it was a sleeper hit and fans like me and you could appreciate it knowing we knew about something great that everyone wasn’t privy to. Now, as it gains attention from the rest of the world, new viewers are confused that it isn’t just another sitcom, and that its stars don’t want to pander and shill on the talk-show circuit. It’s differences are its strengths, but Big Media doesn’t know how to sell it. Britney has become America’s whipping post so why not make it sound like the actors on the show don’t like her? It seems like spin and it annoys me.

I even read a headline on MTV that said “Neil Patrick Harris confirms Spears won’t have a regular role on the show”. WTF? Of course she won’t, where’d that rumor even come from?

I guess this is what we (fans of the show) have to deal with—late-term adopters jumping on board and trying to bang this perfect circle of a show into their tired, cliche, square hole.

Maybe it’s for the best. None of the guest appearances I’ve seen so far have bothered me. If the show existed in a vacuum, where we got no press coverage and just watched the episodes, I don’t think anyone would complain about Mandy Moore, Enrique Iglesias, Britney Spears, or any of the other guest appearances. Most of the time the guest casting is a joke in and of itself, like all the 80s dad appearances. It gives more depth and breadth to the show and hasn’t yet made the show cease bringing the funny.

Look at Sarah Chalke’s performance; she killed it. Absolutely note-perfect. I’d welcome her back on the show at any time (which seems like it might be the case if Josh Radnor was to be believed yesterday during his TV appearances.) Last night when I watched Scrubs I kept thinking “there’s Stella”, it didn’t ruin Eliot Reed for me at all. Hell, I’d even welcome back Britney. She wasn’t awful, and the show’s writers have earned my trust so that anyone they cast I’ll support. If I heard that they’d cast Hulk Hogan to play Barney’s dad I’d be first in line to say it’d be hilarious. That’d not because I’m an obsessed fan, it’s because Bays and Thomas have earned my trust over the past two and a half seasons.

But we don’t live in a vacuum, a fact the media has lately made abundantly clear. We’re deluged with a torrent of guest-star coverage every day (like this). None of the coverage is negative and even the most inane news article is still a news article mentioning the show. The hard-core fans like me and you can still love the show for all the details that make it great. The show has always been a critical darling, and that isn’t going to change. It’s a testament to Bays and Thomas that they took a show that was a sleeper and have catapulted it into the mainstream without having to compromise their artistic vision. Kudos to them.

Don’t believe the press attention has helped? A French reader told me that How I Met Your Mother was not available for the longest time but now, as a reaction to Brtiney’s appearance, a major channel there is considering picking it up.

So it’s like Harris said, when they write and shoot an episode they aren’t thinking about metrics and numbers and viewership. They’re thinking about how to make the best show possible. In a perfect world that’d be enough, and for us fans it is. So that’s why I don’t mind all the press, even if it drives me crazy, because that’s the promotional departments job and they’re doing it well which will allow the producers to continue creating a great product.

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