Though the Robin-Ted and Robin-Barney relationships on “How I Met Your Mother” have come and gone, both boys seem to have residual feelings for Ms. Scherbatsky.

The bottom line is friendship and the closeness these five have that often – almost always  – transcends other relationships. That is understandable with Barney, whose relationships last no more than a microsecond. And of course Marshall and Lily are the glue – a relationship that thrives with three footloose friends, except when they are looking for the perfect couple to befriend.

How sad that Robin turns down the job for love – not  necessarily love for Don but perhaps for love of her four best friends. What do you think – was it Don or the gang ? Or both ? I really could nto call this one, could you ?

That said, if it was love for Don, what a blow ! He never said come with me and we will build a life together and a career for you too ! It could be done. I know because my sister and her husband, Pat and Joe Harper, were co-anchors on WPIX in New York City – the first husband and wife co-anchor news team in television history !

Robin chose love over career, Don didn’t – game, set and match. For a moment several episodes ago I thought Don could become part of the gang. Wrong !!  We never got to know Don well, and now I know why – there wasn’t a  lot there. Robin better get a hold of herself and decide what she wants in life. Otherwise she could be susceptible to the next pretty face that comes along and dings her.

The Wedding Bride was hilarious. The screenwriter really cast a shallow “Ted” whom any self-respecting girl would have nothing to do with. Then being left at the altar as his bride-to-be shuffled off with her ex-boy friend – was this a bad dream or what ! I think it said a lot more about Stella than “Ted”, like maybe getting him to propose in order to drive her ex to action ? Could she be so devious – my vote is a strong yes.

Nonetheless, Ted’s explanation of what happened (his baggage) almost lost him a young lady who – for a moment – seemed to be part of a promising relationship. Pancakes appear to have saved the day. The bottom line is that someone or something often gives you a hand with your baggage and things work out.

What is Marshall’s baggage – that he is too nice, loaning money to thieves ? There is no doubt that Lily should be in charge of the cash.

I would have liked to see this sub-theme developed more, or maybe I just missed it. Please blog in and let us know your thoughts on this next-to-last season ending episode.

The How I Met Your Mother Season 5 Finale is fast approaching! Only two weeks left to make it a night to remember. We want to help you celebrate Season 5 of How I Met Your Mother and keep the warm and funny memories of HIMYM alive until Season 6 begins. How, you ask? Let us help you by telling you how to throw an Awesome and Legendary How I Met Your Mother finale party! Follow our suggestions and you will be the talk of the town – you can thank us later!

Don’t forget to check out our Store section to pick up all the supplies you’ll need for your legendary party.

1. Food

No party is complete without great food…at least no GOOD party. Serve up some HIMYM-themed dishes to serve to your starving guests.
Here are a few easy recipes that you can whip up in no time!

- 7-layer dip
When Lily goes over to Marshall’s for Thanksgiving, his mom enlists her to help make their nausea-inducing, sugar-filled 7-layer dip.
Here is a tamer version that is reminiscent of that in-law awkwardness, but won’t make your guests puke all over your floor.

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Seven-Layer-Dip-I/Detail.aspx

- Root Beer and Kahlua
During Season 1′s Halloween episode, Ted is in search of the “Slutty Pumpkin” who had slipped out of his grasp three
Halloweens ago. Once major clue as to her identity was that her favorite drink was Root Beer and Kahlua, an “alcoholic
tootsie roll”, if you will. For those under 21, just give them tootsie rolls and Root Beer and call it a day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsZ-OruQlgM

Before the episode starts, warm up your guests with some party games. We give you two options: the 21 and up version,and the all-ages version. Enjoy!

Remember the Kahlua and Root Beer you prepared earlier? Get it out and ready! Below you will find the rules for our How I Met Your Mother drinking game. If you want to start before the finale begins, fire up your computer and pull up some reruns online, or pop in your HIMYM DVD collection. Of course, don’t let the party stop once the new episode starts.
Drinking Game Rules:

Take one drink when…
- Robin says “but um…”
- There is a flashback/time shift/voiceover
- Barney hits on someone

Take two drinks when…
- Someone gets “lawyered”
- Barney tries to get a high five from someone.
- Anyone is asked “Have you met….?”

Take three drinks when….
- Barney actually GETs a high five
- Someone makes a joke about Canada
- Ranjit appears

Finish your drink when…
- a Robin Sparkles song is heard
- Ted is advised against doing something
- Barney makes up a statistic

Play a good old fashioned game of “Lilial Pursuit by answering the following trivia questions about Lily. Marshal would be proud.

Before your guests arrive, decorate your house/apartment/bedroom with How I Met Your Mother-themed”decorations”. Display your awesomeness with Barney’s motivational posters, put your yellow umbrella in the corner, and prominently display a pineapple in the center of the room. If anyone asks how or why the pineapple is there, say you can’t remember!

Now clearly, everyone should “Suit Up” for your amazing party. However, if your guests are too lazy for this and arrive un-suited, offer them a Legendary T-shirt at the door to keep with your theme.

Look no further! We are here to take the creative burden off your shoulders and help you deliver the most awesome gifts possible. (P.S. All these gifts are conveniently located in the “Shop” section of our website and yes you’re welcome ! )

1. Barney’s Awesomeness Poster

No office or room is complete without this motivational poster featuring Barney Stinson’s famous phrase, “When I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead. True story.”

Remind your friend/lover/spouse to “be awesome instead” all the time.

2. Blue French Horn Ornament

Ted steals the blue french horn for Robin on their first date. And we see it again in last night’s episode; Twin Beds. Ah, the crazy things we do for love.  This blue french horn says we are willing to do anything for love!. We encourage you to “steal” one for someone you love today.

3. Legendary T-shirt

For the legendary man in your life – dress him in this t-shirt, featuring (again) Barney Stinson’s famous phrase, “It’s going to be legen…wait for it…DARY”.  No man is complete without it.

4. Conformity Poster

It is not awesome to be a conformist ! To make sure your loved one knows this on a daily basis, give them this poster to hang wherever it will remind them to be different like Marshall is when he reads this poster at his new corporate job.  Plus, penguins are adorable!

5. The Yellow Umbrella

Remind yourself and your loved one that fate can happen at any time. This yellow umbrella is the show’s biggest clue as to who Ted’s future wife is. Give it to your…future wife? Or just someone who loves the show as much as you to keep them dry during unpredictable weather.

Be sure to visit our store to get more ideas for How I Met Your Mother and Friends gifts. We are always open to new ideas as well, so if you think you have a unique idea for a gift, please comment below and let us know!

Click here to view the embedded video.

In the fourth season ender of How I Met Your Mother, Barney and Robin took center stage as they acknowledged their feelings towards each other and finally hooked up, while Ted landed an architectural teaching job and inched closer to meeting his future wife. This season, the focus of the finale will be completely different as the show puts the spotlight on Lily, Marshall and Robin.

Robin: Though it’s been revealed that Robin and her co-worker Don have been dating for some time now, Don hasn’t exactly been visible since their first date. That will all change pretty soon, specifically in the big season finale where some “bad stuff” goes down with Don and Robin’s portrayer, Cobie Smulders, told us that “he may not be with us for much longer.”

Maybe Baby: Having already reached the 100th landmark episode, it’s only fitting that everyone’s favorite married couple, Marshall and Lily, also take a big step in their relationship. And at this point, “it makes sense for Marshall and Lily, who’ve been together something like 14 years…to be really considering that next rite of passage,” according to co-creator Craig Thomas.

“It’s a great place to end [this fifth year] I think,” says Thomas of Marshall and Lily possibly getting pregnant. “And it feels kind of fun to wrap up the season by putting the focus on Lily and Marshall and what’s coming for them.”

The Love Triangle: As reported previously, two people will be reuniting on How I Met Your Mother this season, sparking discussions on whether Robin will get back with Ted or rekindle her affair with Barney.  Thomas says that this love triangle will unfold in the finale, can only say this: “All I’ll say is, you know, we have a little bit of a triangle on the show. Both Barney and Ted have dated Robin and both were in love with her, so we have a fun moment toward the end of our season where that is acknowledged and explored.”

The Doppelganger: So far How I Met Your Mother fans have already seen Lesbian Robin, Mustache Marshall and Stripper Lily. But before the fifth season concludes, fans will see Ted’s look-alike too.

She may not be a former Canadian pop star in real life, but Cobie Smulders plays one on TV. As Robin Scherbatsky on CBS’s Emmy-winning How I Met Your Mother, the Vancouver-born actress plays a morning-news anchor who dabbled in bubblegum pop music in the early ’80s under the stage name Robin Sparkles. And while Robin’s clique of thirtysomething friends — played by Josh Radnor, Jason Segel, Neil Patrick Harris and Alyson Hannigan — have only uncovered two recordings to date, the music videos have been so popular that they have inspired dozens of fan parodies on YouTube. Aside from being a former pop star though, Smulders’ character is also the show’s consummate bachelorette who just this season won the heart of Neil Patrick Harris’ comically machismo bachelor.

As How I Met Your Mother’s fifth season winds down, Cobie Smulders caught Movieline up on her character’s lost variety show with Alan Thicke, the scenes she hated filming this season and her favorite guest star to date.

[Spoilerphobes beware: Smulders revealed a few mild plot twists ahead in the series’ fifth season.]

So when are we going to see Robin Sparkles again?
I don’t know! Hopefully soon. She took a little bit of a respite, didn’t she?

The writers are really spacing out her appearances.
They dropped the idea of Robin having a variety show too.

I wanted to ask you about that. Earlier this season (in the episode “The Rough Patch”) Alan Thicke revealed that he and Robin co-starred in a Canadian variety show together and then Barney ran off to try to find the footage but —
[The writers] never made anything of it, so I am hoping that when we come back for season six that we will get some crazy variety show with Alan Thicke. That would be amazing. Any excuse to bring Alan Thicke back on the show.

Your show gets so many great guest stars — from Britney Spears to Peter Bogdanovich. Did you hit it off with one in particular?
I love — just as a person — Sarah Chalke. She’s now one of my good friends, so I think I am probably biased towards that, but we also had her for quite some time. She was with
us for what, seven episodes or something like that? So it was nice to have someone actually there for a good chunk of time and allow her character to develop and all that stuff.

Speaking of characters sticking around on the show, what happened to Robin’s new beau Don? Even though he and Robin have been dating, we haven’t seen him since their first date.
Well, there is a pretty big season finale coming up where some stuff goes down with Don.

Bad stuff?
Some bad stuff goes down with Don, so I have a feeling he may not be with us for much longer.

Message received. You guys also shot an episode with Chris Kattan and Jason Lewis.

I think that is the episode before the season finale. But I was bummed! I am a fan of Chris Kattan actually and we weren’t on set that day. They actually shot a movie that will be shown within the show, which actually didn’t involve any characters from the show so none of us worked that day. Our crew basically shot a mini-movie while we were at home. I hear it’s pretty funny and amazing and I am excited to see what Chris Kattan comes up with in terms of what his thoughts on Ted Mosby are. He’s playing sort of a cartoon version of Ted.

That’s such a genius casting choice. Chris Kattan really has the Ted Mosby spiky hair.
We have some really good writers who have some pretty awesome ideas.

Can you talk about how the movie within the show fits into the season?
Was it last season that Sarah Chalke was on the show?

Right, season four.
Yeah, so we ended the season with Sarah’s character Stella moving to Los Angeles with Tony (Jason Jones). Basically, he went to L.A. to become a movie writer and wrote this movie that we end up watching and sort of discover is about his relationship with Stella and the whole leaving-him-at-the-altar sort of thing. But it’s not entirely fact-based. It’s kind of made-up — his version of what happened.

Moving on to Robin’s love life, what did you first think when the writers told you that they were conceiving a Robin-Barney romance? As a viewer, it seemed like it would be a complete disaster but it turned out that Robin and Barney had really sweet chemistry.
I was surprised when they decided to do it and then like you, I got on board with it. I love working with Neil. He is so much fun and we just have a really good time on set together. So it was fun to play more intimate scenes together but I think that relationship definitely had an expiration date so it was just a matter of time before they broke up. But it was sort of bittersweet. I feel like it is something that they could maybe touch upon again, but you never know. I think they like to leave things kind of open-ended on our show in case they want to hop back, because the timeline is just so all over the place .

And Ted is a totally unreliable narrator —
Yes, we can definitely rely on that, “Oops! Ted told the story wrong, so let’s tell it again the right way.”

It’s funny how that makes for entertaining television, but if someone kept pulling that in real life, they would be one of the most annoying storytellers ever.
Totally.

I know that Ted’s character is based on your executive producer Carter Bays, and Marshall and Lily are based on your other executive producer Craig Thomas  and his wife. Are Robin and Barney based on anyone in real life?

No, I think that they just wanted a character that was female and confidant and sort of a guys’ girl and they came up with Robin. Over the years, the idea of Robin sort of morphed — I got hired and they decided to make her Canadian after I came on the show. I think that over the course of a show, the characters shift in different ways but I think that they probably just probably wanted to have a Robin-like energy in the cast, maybe to help counteract Barney’s machismo. I would love to meet Robin in real life if she existed.

Me too. There were a few scenes this season that seemed un-Robin-like to me though. She was constantly having to listen to Barney brag about all of his conquests post break-up without commenting or seeming hurt. I was glad that the writers finally addressed her feelings about the break-up.
I was glad they did that too because every episode we shot, I was sitting there like, “I am not going to be in this scene, right? Can I please be written out of this scene because this is awkward?” I was really happy when they finally shot that episode. I don’t know if they had been planning it all along and just refused to tell me because they wanted it to be a surprise or if I was just complaining about it so much that they just wrote it like that. But it was nice — it was a very validating episode.

There have been some especially crazy stories this season that have gotten mixed reviews from fans, like the episode where a monkey robbed Marshall. After five seasons with the show, did some scripts strike you as especially out-of-left-field this year?
I think [the writers] take ideas that they think are really funny, and they manifest those ideas however they can. But I feel like every episode sort of molds together, and sometimes we are doing things that feels kind of crazy. But it’s a sitcom we are allowed to push the envelope and try episodes where Marshall gets robbed by a monkey. If it works, it works and if it doesn’t, it doesn’t, but I like being on a show where they are trying new things.

What is the atmosphere like in between scenes? When I talked to a few cast members from the Big Bang Theory, they told me that they have these high stakes ping-pong tournaments that last the entire season.
We don’t have any ping-pong. We have scene changes when we move on to the next scene but we are really blessed to have an amazing crew and a great cast that gets along. Basically we hang out and chat and eat food and listen to music being played — there are a lot of live instruments being played but that’s about it.

Who plays instruments?
Carter plays the piano, and Jason plays the piano too. Some other guys play the guitar, and so there are some jam sessions.

Do you ever jam?
I attempt to, but I am never as good as they are. So it’s always slightly embarrassing.

What would you like to see happen to Robin next season? Do you feel protective of her?
Yeah, of course. I am going on six years with this character — which is kind of insane, but I would like to see her get a job that she is proud of. I think that her having this job that she has had for the last five years is a very funny thing, and I love doing the fake news, but it would be cool for her to get a really great job that makes her happy. I don’t think that love is anywhere on the horizon — maybe eventually, but I don’t think in this next season.

Would you like to see her end up with Barney?
I don’t know! I think it could happen. People always ask, “Is it going to be Barney or is it going to be Ted?” And I don’t know. I always thought that if Robin and Barney would get together, it would be at the end of the series, and now we have already had this momentary hook-up and I don’t know. It is always an interesting dynamic having the consummate bachelor mixed with the consummate bachelorette.

Is there one episode or scene that you remember being really fun to shoot?
All the Robin Sparkles stuff for me has been the best stuff to do. It’s the only time I have ever gotten to work in a recording studio, learn choreography and dress in ’80s clothing. It’s so much fun and when we did the “Sandcastles in the Sand” video, we were in Malibu for a whole day with our crew, just hanging out on the beach. There were dolphins swimming and I was thinking, “Wow, this is what I do for a living.” I love doing anything that has to do with Robin Sparkles, I hope the writers come up with more episodes for her.

So just to clarify, we will not see Robin Sparkles in season 5?
Nope. Unfortunately, no.

Hopefully Robin will quit her day job next season and return to Canada for a Robin Sparkles mall tour.
[Laughs] It’s possible. Anything is possible.

1. Scooter (played by David Burtka), AKA the guy on Lily’s hook, is Neil Patrick Harris’ real-life, long-term boyfriend.

2. HIMYM creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas are members of the band The Solids, who perform the show’s theme song “Hey Beautiful”.

3 During one episode, Robin freaks out in a restaurant when she mistakenly thinks Ted is proposing to her after she receives a champagne glass with an engagement ring at the bottom. When Ted tells her “That’s not mine”, another gentlemen at the table behind them says “It’s mine”, then proceeds to propose to the woman at his table. The proposal between the man and woman was real. The man set up the whole scheme with the show’s producers, and told his girlfriend that they won a contest and got to be extras in a HIMYM episode. Instead, he proposed on camera, and the proposal will live on forever as part of the episode.

4. Before “How I Met Your Mother” began, Neil Patrick Harris and Josh Radnor had already acted together, as lovers in a Los Angeles production of the Jon Robin Baitz play “The Paris Letter”.

5. Alyson Hannigan’s character on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, Willow Rosenberg, once mentioned that she wrote “Doogie Howser, M.D.” fanfiction as a girl. She now stars with Doogie himself in HIMYM!

Any other fun facts you want to share? Leave us a comment!