How I Met Your Mother at 20: A Look Back at CBS' Hit Sitcom

From the emmy archives, creators Craig Thomas and Carter Bays reveal the origins of their show and Robin Sparkles.

Diehard fans of the CBS sitcomHow I Met Your Motherdon't just TiVo their favorite show. In repeated viewings, they study its details — a framed letter, a blue French horn, words and gestures — for clues about the characters’ past, present and, particularly, future.

And when a website is mentioned, they know it’s not simply scripted — the site really exists.

"Our fans live for that kind of stuff," saysCarter Bays, creator–executive producer along withCraig Thomas. "As soon as they hear ‘www,’ they rush to their computer because we’ve made a fake website about it."

Sites like www.guyforceshiswifetodressinagarbagebagforthenextthreeyears. com — the result of loopy late night riffing by Bays and Thomas — and www.tedmosbyisajerk.com, an homage to all of the girls Ted (Josh Radnor) has loved and dumped.

Craig Thomas (left) and Carter Bays / Photo credit: Monty Brinton/CBS

The most popular, however, is www.myspace.com/robinsparkles. In it,Cobie Smulders, who plays Robin Scherbatsky in the show, appears as Robin Sparkles, her stage persona from the ‘80s, when she was a Canadian teen pop star. The site, which features a bio, blog and forum, launches with a recording of the syrupy "Sandcastles in the Sand," Robin’s ode to an older guy who, despite being kicked out of school, is so "rad."

Bays and Thomas say the Sparkles site, songs and episodes are great fun to write.

"The video shoot for ‘Let’s Go to the Mall’ [a Sparkles hit song, revealed on the show in flashback] was our introduction to Robin Sparkles," Thomas says. "When we first saw Cobie in the hair, makeup and wardrobe, we didn’t recognize her. It was like, ‘Okay, let’s get started — where’s Cobie?’ She was great at maintaining deadpan comic commitment. She becomes Robin Sparkles. It’s eerie."

As English majors in college, Bays and Thomas envisioned writing forThe New Yorker. When that turned out to be tougher than expected for the unknown, unconnected college grads, they hung out in Thomas’s basement, practicing being rock stars instead. With Thomas on drums and Bays on vocals and guitar, they formed a band, started writing music, and eventually, comedy.

A short stint on MTV led to a writing gig onLate Show with David Letterman, where they wrote fake musicals and created a fake boy band, Fresh Step. They launched a website for the band, which drew hordes of lovesick girls. The partners in parody were on to something. A couple of forgettable sitcoms later, CBS picked up their idea forHow I Met Your Mother, where they gleefully indulge their penchant for silly ditties.

Cobie Smulders as Robin Sparkles / Photo credit: CBS

"We like to fancy ourselves as actual musicians, serious songwriters," says Thomas, "but, sadly, it seems that our true talent lies in writing catchy faux teen pop songs that cause both friends and strangers to loathe us."

Still, they manage to recruit like-minded loonies. Bays voices — in French — the spoken-word performance heard on the Garbage Bag site, while Charlene Amoia, who plays Wendy the waitress on the show, is behind the hilarious diatribe of Ted Mosby Is a Jerk.

Bays says the entire cast is musical (except, notably, Alyson Hannigan) and, with Jason Segel on piano, cast and crew often strike up a tune between takes. "Music is a very important part of the show, from the scoring to the soundtrack songs," says Bays who, with Thomas, cowrote the series’ theme song. "We try to get as much interesting music into the soundtrack as possible, and we like to write our own sometimes."

As for Robin Sparkles, fans can look forward to an encore.

"It’s going to be hard for us to stay away," says Bays. "As far as we’re concerned, Robin’s closet is filled with videos."

Thomas agrees. "It is our goal never to fully say goodbye to the magic that is Robin Sparkles," he says. "WhenHow I Met Your Mother finally concludes, we’ll probably try to convince Cobie to go up to Canada with us and see if we can make a legitimate go of it. So look for us in a few years on some sort of Canadian mall tour."

This article originally appeared inemmyMagazine, issue #30, 2008, under the title "Mother's Music Men."