How I Made a Musical Episode

100 Episodes of Barney ... and those other people

We had already given you a picture post of the cast of CBS' How I Met Your Mother on the New York City backlot set, dancing around in suits. And Monday brings the actual 100th episode, with the big hints about the mother, for the two people that care. Most of us are watching for Barney, right?

CBS is promoting the devil out of the 100th episode, and there's as much behind-the-scenes footage available as there will be video aired Monday night. But it's really cool stuff, so we thought we'd share.

Obviously, Neil Patrick Harris is carrying the episode, and he's carrying the musical number, vocally. For backing, they have a full orchestra.

We know from her time on Buffy that Alyson Hannigan is really adverse to singing, but they do manage to get a line out of her. And Jason Segal turns into a leprechaun or something.

The choreography is maybe the most fun part of this to watch them put together. We can also throw them some shade for occupying Zachary Woodlee, Glee's choreographer. This better not be why I don't get new episodes until April. Still, they make wonderful use of him, and he makes great use of NPH's talents.

This next video doesn't have a lot of new for the musical number itself, but it does get the cast reacting to the musical number interspersed, which is really kind of funny.

This Behind-The-Scenes piece is the general plot of the episode, or, if we're honest, the 19-minute setup for the musical number, which is the point of the episode.

And no arbitrary anniversary, in this case 100 episodes, would be complete without a clip show, with the cast naming their favorite moments from the show. The star of this is really Cobie Smulders, or should I say, Robin Sparkles.

How I Met Your Mother the 100th Episode airs Monday, January 11 at 8pm on CBS.