‘How I Met Your Father’ Updated Womanizer Barney Stinson For 2023

How I Met Your Mother was one of the biggest sitcoms of the 2000s, but like another huge comedy from the previous decade, not everything has aged well. Many jokes still land (and “Slap Bet” remains a great episode), but others, mostly involving Barney Stinson and the way he treats women, would not fly today. Except for on Joe Rogan’s podcast, where it’s always 2006.

In the season two mid-season finale of How I Met Your Mother spinoff, How I Met Your Father, Barney, as played by Neil Patrick Harris, makes a guest appearance. He tells Sophie (Hilary Duff) that he’s a changed man since he had a daughter. Now every time he makes a crass comment, he gets electrocuted.

“How I Met Your Mother was a while ago. A lot has changed and people grow and but it’s Barney,” director Pamela Fryman told Variety. “We have to recognize this character that we’ve loved for so long. It seemed perfect to me.”

NPH thought the cameo was “lovely,” adding, “He’s having these conversations about a daughter seeking out a better relationship with her father as a new father of a daughter and sitting talking to female who’s as attractive as Hilary Duff, it’s innate Barney fodder. He wants to say authentic things because he feels authentic things, but he’s saying it to someone that he would normally wants to say something crass to! That’s who he is.”

Cue the How I Met Your Woke Father parody on Gutfeld in 3, 2, 1…