Posts with tag Carter Bays
Posted May 15th 2008 10:04AM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Interviews, How I Met Your Mother, Reality-Free
It's been a heck of a season for
How I Met Your Mother, between the writers' strike that everyone had to suffer through, blogs and other websites picking apart episodes in
Lost-esque fashion, and the Britney Phenomenon that got the attention of fans and non-fans alike. But the end result is a good one: the show has been picked up by CBS for a fourth season, giving fans one more year to enjoy the chemistry among the five leads while trying to guess who the heck the "Mother" actually is.
Despite the strike, co-creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas have been able to get out 20 episodes for the third season. The finale will be broadcast on Monday, May 19 at 8:30.
As he did before last year's finale, Bays and I got together by phone to discuss the season and the finale. Bays (who is on the right in the photo; Thomas, who is on the left, was on another call and couldn't make it) spoke about getting picked up, the finale, Sarah Chalke's role as Ted's new girlfriend Stella, how the show managed to pick up a mythology, and, of course, their very famous guest star. The interview is after the jump.
Continue reading Carter Bays of How I Met Your Mother: The TV Squad Interview
Posted May 13th 2008 2:27PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Interviews, How I Met Your Mother, Pickups and Renewals, Reality-Free
Just got off the phone with Carter Bays, co-creator of
How I Met Your Mother (Craig Thomas was doing another interview). He confirms that,
as earlier reports indicated, the show has been renewed for a fourth season.
"I think we can say it. We got our pickup. We're on the schedule, so we hear," he told me. As far as where the show will be on the schedule, he doesn't know, but "we'll be happy to be anywhere." When I asked him if he was confident that the show was going to be picked up, he said "Call me crazy, but I never really doubted it. I just felt like this show has a lot of creative life left in it, and that it's too good of an environment to up and disappear."
I asked him a lot about Britney Spears' appearance and if it was the reason why the show got picked up. "The cynical answer would be Britney, but I do think that even before that ... during the strike especially, when I managed to get out in the world it felt like enough people liked the show and proselytized for it that it's grown in viewership."
The full interview will be up either tomorrow or Thursday, where I ask Bays about Britney, not making the show guest star-heavy, some info on the finale, and why the heck was that framed letter in Stella's apartment. Stay tuned.
Posted May 12th 2008 11:44PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: OpEd, Video, How I Met Your Mother, Celebrities, Episode Reviews
(S03E19) I'm going to be speaking to Carter Bays and Craig Thomas tomorrow afternoon, and I think that one of the first questions I'm going to ask them is if Britney Spears is going to be a recurring guest on the show. It's starting to look that way, based on what we saw tonight; the way things ended, I can just imagine crazy Abby popping up once or twice per season, just to make Ted's life miserable. And since Brit Brit established the role, I'd imagine she'd come back and reprise it.
And that's not altogether a bad thing. Once she becomes part of the fabric of the show, the episodes will be less about her presence and more about the story. Somehow (heh), Brit pulls off the nutty stalker role well enough, and maybe her acting will get a bit more refined the more she appears. At least I hope it does.
Why am I prattling on about Britney? Because there isn't much more about this episode that really stood out.
Continue reading How I Met Your Mother: Everything Must Go - VIDEO
Posted May 5th 2008 11:57PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Video, How I Met Your Mother, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
(S03E18) You know how I keep saying that guest spots ruin the chemistry of
How I Met Your Mother? Well, that's not an absolute; sometimes, guests integrate well into the ensemble, or the story they're given is so good, that it just works. This week was one of those weeks. In fact, it was doubly good, since
both Sarah Chalke and Will Forte did a good job of fitting in, with Forte being his usual creepy-funny self and Chalke being... well, anyone who reads my
Scrubs reviews knows how I feel about Sarah.
What? I have respect for her acting ability! That's all...
Ahem... now, where were we?
Continue reading How I Met Your Mother: Rebound Bro - VIDEO
Posted Apr 28th 2008 11:11PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: OpEd, Video, How I Met Your Mother, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
(S03E17) Interesting ending to this one, huh?
I'll get to that after the jump, for those who are spoiler-phobic. This was an episode full of story and character development, and some glimpses into the personalities of all five members of the
HIMYM gang. And it was pretty damned funny. The show's starting on an end-of-season roll, and with some big emotional and interpersonal issues coming to a head right now, the last few episodes are looking very promising.
Now, about that goat...
Continue reading How I Met Your Mother: The Goat - VIDEO
Posted Apr 22nd 2008 1:02PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: OpEd, Watercooler Talk, How I Met Your Mother, Reality-Free
Say you're a comedy writer. You toil away for years in the comedy writing salt mines. You write monologue jokes and little skits for Dave Letterman for years, while you and your best friend / writing partner pound the pavement in L.A. pitching
a show about five friends in their twenties. You finally land the show, and produce three highly-acclaimed, if only moderately-watched, seasons. You're always on the bubble, stressing over everything from the medicated pop star you've hired to boost ratings to people asking you whether you're ever going to reveal the mystery invoked by the show's title.
You go through all this, and, if you're Craig Thomas, what do you get? Everyone calling you by your partner's name.
Continue reading Poor Craig Thomas... all the power, none of the credit
Posted Apr 21st 2008 10:42PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: OpEd, Video, How I Met Your Mother, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
(S03E16) Bless the peapickin' little hearts of Carter Bays and Craig Thomas. All week, they've been setting us up, telling us about the return of Robin Sparkles, saying that we were going to get an episode full of eighties and nineties goodness, complete with James Van Der Beek, Tiffany, and Alan Thicke. We even
got a video (full video is after the end of the review) as a taste.
But all of it was a ruse. A week-long ruse to distract us from realizing what was
really going to happen in this episode. Since I don't want to spoil it for anyone, come with me to the after-jump portion of our review and then we can talk.
Continue reading How I Met Your Mother: Sandcastles in the Sand - VIDEOS
Posted Apr 14th 2008 10:57PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: OpEd, Video, How I Met Your Mother, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
(S03E15) The original name of this episode was going to be "The Simmons Report," according to IMDb and Epguides. But, as we all know, there was a report in the episode, but it got a much different -- and much cooler -- name. In fact that little joke is one of a number of silly throwaway jokes that made this episode one of the funniest of the season. And what was interesting was, in the middle of all that goofiness, we got serious advancement of story in the deal. And, refreshingly, the story wasn't the relentless pursuit of the mother's identity. No, we find out more about Marshall's career and come a step closer to seeing why he became a bald mess by 2030.
Oh, and we also got to learn about the chain/circle/pyramid of screaming. I wish I knew about that when I used to be a corporate wage slave. It would have made my life a lot easier.
Continue reading How I Met Your Mother: The Chain of Screaming - VIDEO
Posted Apr 10th 2008 8:30PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: OpEd, How I Met Your Mother, Celebrities, Reality-Free
Here is Reason #243 why I like Neil Patrick Harris, or NPH as people have taken to calling him: He thinks that
How I Met Your Mother is perfectly OK without all the guest stars. And, yes, that includes that nutty gal from Louisiana.
"I worry that if they start
Will and Grace-ing us too much, that the show will suffer, " NPH told Erin Carlson of the AP. He's referring to the fact that
W&G spent many of its later years building comedy around a parade of high-profile guest stars. He went on to say that "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."
NPH feels he's in "the minority" with his view, according to the article, and he thinks the fact that the show is opposite
Dancing with the Stars (or, as he calls it, "an awkward reality dancing competition") has caused the network, as well as creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas, to scramble for viewers.
Continue reading HIMYM doesn't need guest stars like Britney, says Neil Patrick Harris
Posted Apr 10th 2008 10:24AM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Video, How I Met Your Mother, Casting, Reality-Free
Have you been missing those references to Scherbatsky's Canadian life? If you know what I'm talking about then you'll be overjoyed to know that
on April 21, How I Met Your Mother will be all about Robin Sparkles, Robin Scherbatsky's alter-ego teen singing star. The entire episode is planned as a flashback to the
1980s 1990's when Robin became a one-hit wonder with the song "Let's Go to the Mall." Well, it turns out that wasn't her only song. Carter Bays and Craig Thomas,
How I Met Your Mother's co-creators, composed a ballad. "Sandcastles in the Sand" was the flip-side of "Let's Go to the Mall." It's supposedly in the style of a power break-up ballad, like "Foolish Beat" and "Toy Soldiers."
Continue reading Coming soon on How I Met Your Mother: More Robin Sparkles! - VIDEO
Posted Mar 31st 2008 10:55PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: OpEd, Video, How I Met Your Mother, Episode Reviews
(S03E14) First of all, let's get this out of the way:
TedMosbyIsAJerk.com works.
Of course it does. We've come to expect nothing less from Bays and Thomas, as they love to use the Web to further the
How I Met Your Mother brand. This site looks like it's fun: cheap 1996-era graphics and text, lots of exclamation points... there's even a song written by poor Anna, who still thinks Barney is Ted. Oh, and that Ted Mosby is a jerk.
It's not a coincidence that
HIMYM's first truly funny episode returning from the strike is Barney-centric. Even though Barney seems to be the most one-dimensional character on the surface, Carter and Craig have used him (and the very game Neil Patrick Harris) as a blank canvas, giving him all sorts of backstory elements that seem crazy... but somehow plausible. He used to be a hippie; he has a black gay brother; he slept with
Madeline Albright... it all seems entirely possible, doesn't it?
Continue reading How I Met Your Mother: The Bracket - VIDEO
Posted Mar 24th 2008 10:23PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: OpEd, Video, How I Met Your Mother, Celebrities, Episode Reviews
(S03E13) You know, I'll probably be the only person in the TV-review world who won't lead off his review of this episode with a picture of Britney Spears. Believe me, I had one up before I saw the episode (it's still there; I put it after the jump). But after watching it, I just couldn't do it; the episode is about the relationship between Ted and his tattoo removal doctor. Britney, as most people expected, was just there as an accessory. More on her in a little bit.
OK, now on to the episode... it stunk.
It didn't just stink; it was among the worst episodes of
HIMYM I've ever seen. It was corny. It was only occasionally funny. And it had sitcommy situations that would have made
Three's Company fans roll their eyes. I was tempted to channel
The Simpsons' Comic Book Guy and utter
his catch phrase, but this episode didn't even deserve that.
Continue reading How I Met Your Mother: Ten Sessions - VIDEO
Posted Mar 17th 2008 10:12PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: OpEd, How I Met Your Mother, Episode Reviews, Casting
(S03E12) How I Met Your Mother has been making a lot of news lately, with
its timeslot change, its constant
bubble status,
the hiring of Alicia Silverstone, the subsequent
hiring of a certain young woman named Britney, and the resulting
departure of Silverstone and arrival of Sarah Chalke.
But what we haven't seen were actual episodes, thanks to the
writers' strike. Thankfully, the strike is over and Bays and Thomas managed to be one of the first to get new episodes on the air, just in time for St. Patrick's Day. And, while
HIMYM's returned with only a slightly-above-average episode, we inched ever so closer to finding out the solution to the show's main mystery. That's the least the guys could do after three months off.
Continue reading How I Met Your Mother: No Tomorrow
Posted Mar 10th 2008 6:21PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: OpEd, How I Met Your Mother, Celebrities, Casting
I'm not really sure how to process this news: according to Kristin Dos Santos of E! Online,
Britney Spears will guest on an episode of How I Met Your Mother. Dos Santos got the word directly from the show's reps at Fox and from a rep for
HIMYM show-runners Carter Bays and Craig Thomas, so the information seems to be solid.
The role Britney will likely play is Abby, a girl who works in a doctor's office Ted will frequent (I'm guessing it's the offices of the doctor
that will be played by Alicia Silverstone). Abby is supposed to be "sweet and friendly and scattered and a little nerdy-a female Michael Cera." I'm sure Michael Cera would be thrilled to hear that. Anyway, Britney is scheduled to appear on the show's 14th episode, which is only three episodes into its post-strike comeback (which starts on Monday March 17 at 8:30 ET).
Continue reading Britney Spears to guest on How I Met Your Mother
Posted Nov 12th 2007 10:23PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: OpEd, How I Met Your Mother, Episode Reviews
(S03E08) HIMYM has always been at its best when it is shifting perspective and twisting time in a knot. This episode does both of those things. While neither plot was very earth-shattering from a creative standpoint, the time-shifting involved in telling the stories (along with some very funny sound effects in one case) made them both very funny.
Oh, and just as an aside, I'd like to finally welcome back Cobie Smulders and her character of Robin Sherbatsky back into the fold. She's been kind of on the outside looking in all season, but the she's been fully integrated back into the gang the last couple of weeks, and the show's much better for it.
Continue reading How I Met Your Mother: Spoiler Alert
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The Upfronts: FOX
Carter Bays of How I Met Your Mother: The TV Squad Interview
The Upfronts: CBS
