‘How I Met Your Mother’ Co-Creator Wants To “Remove Certain Stuff” From The Series

By Fletcher Peters @fIetcherpeters
Published June 4, 2021, 5:57 p.m. ET

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Nearly seven years after the end of How I Met Your Mother, co-creator Carter Bays is speaking out against his own body of work. The writer, who teamed up with Craig Thomas on the series, has been binge-watching the saga from start to finish, documenting his reactions on Twitter. Today, while announcing he was a third of the way through the series, Bays stated he wished he could make modifications to some of the series.

“I won’t go into specifics,” Bays tweeted, “but I’ll just say I would love to go into an edit room and go George Lucas on this thing and remove certain stuff I really wish wasn’t in there and I bet nobody would miss.”

Notably criticized bits of How I Met Your Mother have included offensive transgender jokes, the Naked Man routine (in which characters strip all of their clothes off, surprising their partners without any consent), and others. Bays was finishing up Season 3 when he sent the tweets, but didn’t state exactly what scenes he wished to cut.

“I’m still doing a HIMYM rewatch and trying to keep my commentary to a minimum but I just have to say I’m at the end of S3 and my gosh, how am I only 1/3 of the way through this thing??” Bays wrote. “There’s so much of it!”
Fans and critics of the series loaded his replies, prodding him to divulge which scenes he wanted to cut. Some defended the series, arguing it was “perfect” as is, while others agreed that some scenes should be cut.

“I love HIMYM. I rewatch every few years,” actress Jen Richards replied. “The way it consistently centers love and friendship, its creativity and humor, make for an all time fave. But as a trans woman? It hurts to watch. Literally no show I’ve ever watched has made so many jokes at the expense of people like me.”

A How I Met Your Mother spinoff series, How I Met Your Father, is in the works at Hulu. Hilary Duff is set to star as the lead, a young woman who recounts the difficulties of online dating to her children, ultimately leading up to the moment she met their father. Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger are set to create the new series, with Bays and Thomas set to executive produce.

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