Buffy The Vampire Slayer

When speaking to Craig Thomas, co-creator with Carter Bays of "How I Met Your Mother," Thomas stuck by his decision to reveal early on that Robin is not the mother of Ted’s children, talked about Barney’s love of laser tag and "Star Trek," and dropped a few hints about where the show, which has already been renewed for another season, is going next year.

We also talked about the days (mostly long gone) when sitcoms could actually move people to tears (in a good way).

It seems like there’s an element of "Sex and the City,’ but with a guy as the one searching for love.

"It’s funny, a lot of people don’t believe that, but there are actually men who reach a point where they say, falling in love with someone wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. We wanted to show that. We kind of feel like we are the inverse of ‘Sex and the City,’ whereas that was a comedy about a woman being free and liberated, and could go out and hook up with people and stuff, we are kind of doing the other side of that, but with a guy who wants commitment."

But I think in “Sex and the City,” she wanted commitment, but on her terms, with the right person. She wasn’t going to settle. And that’s really the holy grail, right?

"Yeah, exactly."

Robin is kind of the guy on the show, she hangs out with her friends, has fun and doesn’t want to be in a committed relationship. If there’s a TV stereotype, it’s that the woman wants to get a man, and the guy doesn’t want to be tied down.

"Yeah, we really wanted to reverse that, because we’ve seen so much of that. We wanted to show a guy who is in love with this girl and she just doesn’t want that. It’s this really interesting friendship to us, where the guy in the friendship is in love with this girl, and she might well be in love with him too, but she knows that he wants more than she does out of it. There’s something interesting and kind of doomed about that.

"That’s why we established early on that she’s not the mom. She’s not the perfect woman for Ted. But that doesn’t mean that Ted isn’t going to have a lot of sleepless nights hoping that she is in the meantime."

They have such a nice chemistry, and so many people have said to me, and I’ve thought it too - I sometimes wish you hadn’t said in the pilot that Robin is not The One for Ted, that she turns out to be “Aunt Robin.” Do you ever wish you hadn’t said that?

"No, we don’t. We get asked that questions sometimes, and people sometimes get angry at us [laughs]. To me the worst thing would be to do the pilot for our show, and the pilot is about that pivotal moment in Ted’s life where he decides, ‘I’m ready right now to find someone.’ And to send the message that you can make that decision in your apartment, walk downstairs to the bar and the love of your life is right there - so your search for the perfect person takes 23 minutes?

"To me that’s a more criminal thing to do than what we have done, which is to say, look, along the road, along this crazy, winding path that will lead you to the right person, there are plenty of decoys and twists and turns along the way. We’re telling the story of Robin and Ted because it’s an important relationship in Ted’s life and it teaches him a lot and it takes him to a place where he’s ready to meet the mom. But we stick by [the decision]."

Well, I guess wanting them to be a couple just shows that people feel that they have a spark together.

"They do, they have a great chemistry. And believe me, it frustrates us too sometimes, watching how great they are together [laughs]. But that’s the story we’re telling, that’s the story that we told this first season - how frustrating it can be to have a chemistry with someone, but for some reason it’s not in the stars.

"I think we wanted to go a little more realistic with it. We are a romantic comedy, we’ve already said from day one that there is a happy ending to it. But we’re trying to explore the more real side of it, the side where you’re convinced that this person who’s your friend and you’re in love with is the right person for you. But they’re just not. It’s just not that easy sometimes.

"And we thought the ‘Friends’ fans would just hunt us down and lynch us if we did another ‘will they or won’t they’ series. If our stated goal is, like, let’s do another five years of ’will they or won’t they with Robin and Ted,’ that’s sort of a ‘Friends’ rehash and that’s what we didn’t want to do. And that’s why we’re a little happy we’ve gotten away from the ‘Friends’ comparisons."

And next season won’t be as much of a focus on a ‘Will they or won’t they’ between Ted and Robin?

"No, next season it’s going to be a lot different. Because, out of the finale, the group dynamic changes a lot. It’s going to be very different. It’s not going to be ‘will they or won’t they’ between Ted and Robin anymore. It’s going to be a new thing."

With Marshall and Lily, you’re also looking at that whole phenomenon of people who get engaged really young. That can work out great, but it can also be a huge decision, very scary to make so young.

"Yeah, we wanted to explore the real side of that. I don’t want give away too much, but we wanted to explore the real side of what it’s like to be in a couple for a long time. It’s the single guy’s search for love, and the young couple’s struggle to keep love going. Both things are hard. So we thought, let’s explore it from both ends, the guy who’s looking for the perfect couplehood, but then the reality of being in a couple is just as hard, to keep that moving forward.

"It’s not like you reach that couplehood and you never have a problem again. There’s a whole new set of issues to tackle and get through."

You’re so mature. How old are you, like 20?

[Laughs] "I’m 30. But I’m like the Marshall character, I’ve been with my wife since freshman year of college."

Oh, and I just said how hard and scary that was, to be with someone since you’re 18. Uh...

"No, it’s fine. [laughs] I was going to say, at one point we broke up for a little while. And I have some other friends who were engaged for a long time who broke up. All of them have little turbulent patches where they broke up. One of my couple friends broke up for five years.

"I think when you’re young and you’re with somebody, there are a lot of tests of it. And I guess you need that, because if you come back to that person then you know they’re the one."

But as you say, both of those things are hard, to find true love and to keep true love.

"Yeah. That’s the one-sentence statement of what the series is, what you just said.

"There’s this huge dynamic shift in the finale, and next year we’ll be coming at it with a whole different look at couplehood and being single."

Will Ted ever back off the whole “I must find someone” quest?

"At the beginning of season 2, we’re going to back off Ted’s singular pursuit of The Person. We’re going to change it around a little bit. Because it is an ensemble comedy, and it’s not just that. There are plenty of moments in your search for the right person when you’re like, ’I’m not going to look anymore.’ It’s not all in the highest gear all the time."

What struck me about the finale is that there are some really emotional moments, and even sad moments - and a lot of the best sitcoms have that, you know, “Cheers,” “Mash,” “Friends.” And the finale wasn’t all, like, three jokes a page, yuk yuk!

“That’s definitely what we wanted to do. You look at the top 25 shows every week, and other than reality, it’s all hourlong dramas. They’re shows where you really get invested in the emotional journeys of the characters. And many of the shows we actually watch are that kind of show, ‘Six Feet Under,’ ‘Buffy,’ ‘Angel.’ Our goal was to make a sitcom, at least in the first season, that showed the audience that this wasn’t just a collection of insult-comeback jokes, and that we were exploring who these characters are as people and the changes they go through, in the tumultuous age of the late 20s.

"That was our goal, to make it a little deeper than the average sitcom. We don’t watch that many sitcoms, and for that matter, neither does America.”

You mean you’re not glued to “According to Jim” each week?

[Laughs] "Yeah, pretty much every week."

Even on “Arrested Development” there was an emotional element to it, Michael Bluth trying to keep his family together, and George Michael was sort of this innocent, lovable center to the whole show.

"Yeah, and there was that love story or whatever, with him and his cousin. And him longing to have a normal family. There was a lot of emotion and texture to that show. I agree, sitcoms that used to be able to do that - that’s when America loved the sitcom. I think when ‘Friends’ did that really well, and ‘Cheers,’ and going back to ‘All in the Family’ and ‘M*A*S*H,’ shows you could watch and literally be moved to tears.

"It was raining here in New York and we were supposed to go out, but we couldn’t, so my wife turned on the TV, and this is going to sound like such a dopey story, but there was an episode of ‘A Different World’ was on TV Land or something. And it was this really moving episode about racism and stereotypes and slavery and all this stuff.’ And I was watching it going, ‘Man, sitcoms used to be about something.’ And I don’t remember ‘A Different World’ being that good [laughs].

"But hopefully if sitcoms can start doing that a little more, people may be more interested in them."

Yeah, shows that you follow, or that I follow anyway — you care about what happens to the people, a lot of the time that’s what keeps you watching. You want to know how they fare.

"Yeah, even the pilot of ‘Frasier,’ there was a lot of emotional stuff about Frasier trying to connect with his dad. Our goal is to do a sitcom where stuff actually happens, where it’s not the same thing every week and the characters have had amnesia from week to week and nothing has repercussions. When you’re showing that turbulent late 20s time of life, you need to show those big events of life, or you’re not portraying it honestly."

Where are the kids who opened the show? Have you phased that out?

"We sort of felt that as we went through the season, that we didn’t need to establish that every time. You knew that it was a dad telling the story. I actually watched a bit of ‘The Princess Bride’ recently, and as they go through the movie, they don’t cut back to Peter Falk telling the story. We felt like we could start minimizing that and go to it if we needed to for a joke, or maybe to reestablish [the idea of the father talking to his kids]. But we felt like the narration was enough and people now knew the concept of the show."

So we were talking about the emotional content of the show. And then there’s Barney, who’s just goofy. Will Barney evolve? Not that he needs to.

"We like to give the occasional glimpse that there’s something more to Barney than just being the wacky guy. But he’s ultimately that guy in your life who generates stories by virtue of what a complete jack[---] he is. You go out with that guy and for better or for worse, you know you’re going to get a story out of it.

"The side to Barney that I always like getting a glimpse of is the side where he just wants to be loved so badly. He wants to be idolized and paid attention to. And he’s so threatened that Marshall and Ted are kind of closer than him and Ted. He wants Ted’s attention at all time, and to be that mentor character.

"He loves his friends. He sees himself as this older brother to Ted. And I think that’s why you like him, he’s doing it with good intentions. Despite the fact that he’s ... the devil [laughs]."

What’s funny about Barney is that he sees himself as this rock star of a guy, but he’s really just a total nerd. I’m a nerd too, and I just see such dorkiness in him. I mean, he’s the guy that, you know he’s watched a ton of “Star Trek.” As have so many of us.

"It’s funny you say that, because one of the guys Barney’s based on is really into ‘Star Trek.’ I think Barney is the kind of guy who commits to what he loves so hard, like laser tag. He kind of makes it cool by believing in it so hard and being unapologetically into it. If you think laser tag is cool with that much conviction, it is cool."

So the finale’s kind of a feast for ‘Buffy’ fans.

"Yeah, we’re really excited about that. It’s a mini-Buffy Angel reunion. We cast Alyson because we’re such enormous fans of ‘Buffy.’ And we’re also huge fans of ‘Angel,’ I’ve seen every episode of both shows two or three times. So when I showed up to the table read of the finale, with Alexis and Alyson and Amy, the ‘Buffy’/‘Angel’ nerd in me just freaked out. I had to try to contain it so I didn’t seem to dorky in front of the entire room.

Did you go into a closet and just go ‘Yes!!’

[laughs] "I had to excuse myself and do a little dance. We’re the biggest dorks of all time."

So you have to get Anthony Stewart Head on your show.

"We’re slowly working our way through the cast of ‘Buffy’ and ‘Angel.’ If we get six or seven years of the show, we’ll be down to background extras."