TVSquad

During last night's CBS party at the Huntington Library, I spoke to How I Met Your Mother honchos Carter Bays and Craig Thomas about the upcoming season. They wouldn't reveal much -- besides the fact that Carter is the only single person left on the staff ... he's available, ladies! -- but what they did tell me was that we'll see the mythical "mother" on the first episode of the season.

We already knew from the season finale that Ted's designated "one and only" took the Columbia University architecture class that he started teaching. But we didn't know when she'd be in that class. Bays clarified it for me: "Oh, she'll be there, in the first scene of the first episode back is Ted and the mom in the same room together."

Of course, that could mean anything, since Ted teaches in a huge lecture hall. Bays wouldn't clarify more than that; all he would say was that "we've narrowed the field tremendously. Up until this point, this woman was somewhere out there in the greater New York metropolitan area. Now, she's in a fifteen-block radius."

Very cagey of Carter. Craig even said "we're cagey bastards; we can't tell you that stuff," when I pressed them to reveal if it's someone who we've seen before or not.

"Doesn't it feel like a reality show?" said Thomas. "We feel like we're now in the later rounds of elimination. We've eliminated everyone in New York except the people in that classroom. Ted's in a room with 300 people and one of them's the mom."

More caginess from Craig; when I asked if they could even reveal a tidbit of an episode callback that they've written into the first couple of episodes, the two of them thought long and hard before Craig broke the tension by wisecracking that "well, in the first episode, there's two more slaps and Ted meets the mom, but other than that, I don't think there's any other inside references. Wait a second, what did I just say?"

On the Barney/Robin front, Carter said, "Barney and Robin had been so much fun and we got an entire year of Barney pining for Robin in silence and not ever fessing up to it. Now that the cat's out of the bag, there's been an explosion of good stories, and it's been a lot of fun seeing them negotiating the choppy waters of a relationship."

They haven't cast any guest stars yet, and Carter would only say, "there are some great casting opportunities" this year. No talks with Britney Spears, thankfully, but he maintains that they are always open to bringing any previous guest back if they think it works in a story.

Oh, and the grainy pic accompanying this story? That's Craig Thomas, showing the snazzy lining of his smoking jacket. For those who can't see, it's red with a ton of drawings of pipes. Yes, that's right: pipes. You can see a larger version here.