Pilot (How I Met Your Mother)

Thomas and Bays based the characters on their friends, with Ted being based on Bays and Marshall and Lily based on Thomas and his wife.[5][6] Thomas' wife Rebecca was initially reluctant to have a character based on her, but agreed if they could get Alyson Hannigan to play her. Hannigan was looking to do more comedy work, and was available.[5] Josh Radnor and Jason Segel, who were cast as Ted and Marshall, respectively, were not well known, though Segel had been a cast member on the short-lived Freaks and Geeks and a recurring guest star on Judd Apatow's follow-up Undeclared. The role of Barney was initially envisioned as a "John Belushi-type character"[7] before Neil Patrick Harris won the role after being invited to an audition by the show's casting director Megan Branman.[8] Pamela Fryman invited Bob Saget to be the voiceover narrator, Future Ted, explaining to him that the show would be like The Wonder Years but "kind of into the future".[9] Saget either went to the television studio and recorded the narration while watching the episode, or did so separately and rerecorded with the episode if necessary.[10] He normally did not attend table readings, but did so for the last episode.[11] In various interviews Bays and Thomas have stated that "a pretty famous actress"[3] turned down the role of Robin, whom they revealed in February 2014 to have been Jennifer Love Hewitt.[12] They then cast Cobie Smulders, also an unknown, for the role. Bays and Thomas later said, "Thank God we did for a million reasons... when Ted's seeing her for the first time, America's seeing her for the first time—the intriguingness of that propelled the show going forward and kept the show alive".[3]

The interior shots for the episode were filmed at the CBS Radford in Los Angeles, making it the only episode of the show to be filmed at the studio. MacLaren's, an Irish bar in the middle of New York, in which some of the show is set, is loosely based on four favorite bars of Bays, Thomas and others from the Late Show staff. They include: McGee's, a Midtown tavern near the Ed Sullivan Theater where the Late Show is taped; McHale's, a legendary Hell's Kitchen bar which closed in 2006; Chumley's, a since-closed historic Greenwich Village pub; and Fez, another closed bar on the Upper West Side.[13] McGee's had a mural that Bays and Thomas both liked and wanted to incorporate into the show.[14] The name for the bar is from Carter Bays' assistant, Carl MacLaren; the bartender in the show is also named Carl.[15]

In its original American broadcast, the pilot of How I Met Your Mother was watched by 10.94 million viewers and averaged a 3.9 rating among adults ages 18-49.[16]

The episode received generally favorable reviews, garnering a score of 69 from Metacritic.[17] Seth Thrasher gave the episode 5/5 saying: "...this is one of the funniest sitcoms I've seen in a LONG, LONG time". He also said that he was impressed by Harris' character: "I never realized Neil Patrick Harris was so damned funny. His character, Barney, is quite possibly the funniest new sitcom character to debut on television in ages". He also praised the rest of the cast.[18] Brian Lowry of Variety said that it was a "bright" and "cleverly constructed" half-hour, putting it in the company of Two and a Half Men. "It's not often that a pilot has the polished feel of a show that's been around for a while, but How I Met Your Mother should be a solid bridge between The King of Queens and the aforementioned Two and a Half Men."[19]