How I Met Your Mother co-creator Craig Thomas and star Josh Radnor are rewatching the hit sitcom and sharing their thoughts on Barney Stinson’s early days.
The duo looked back at the way Neil Patrick Harris’ Barney dragged Radnor’s Ted to the airport to try to pick up women and reflected on how “needy” the character was.
Thomas recalled that writers Phil Lord and Chris Miller wrote the episode as “a Barney cartoon.”
“They really they ran with that,” Thomas, 49, said on the latest episode of his and Josh’s How We Made Your Mother podcast. “They just ran with ‘make it a cartoon.’ ”
However, Thomas noted that the episode had a more “poignant” impact on him this time around.
“The emotion I liked behind it is just how pathetic it kind of is,” he said of Barney’s airport plan. “My favorite thing about Barney and rewatching it is just, he’s such a broken man.”
“I find it, like, so, like, poignant and moving in a way to watch how needy Barney is in these early episodes. Like, more so than I remember,” Thomas explained.
“He just wants Ted to think his idea is cool and go along with it. That’s it. He just wants Ted’s approval,” he added.
Radnor, 50, echoed the statement, saying, “I had the experience watching it where I felt like, ‘I wish Ted was a little more game, and I wish Barney would be a little less excited.’ ”
Thomas explained that Lord and Miller’s idea was to make Ted “the voice of reason.”
