Who wants a ‘How I Met Your Mother’ spin-off?

How do the “How I Met Your Mother” creators plan to follow up a season misguidedly set entirely at Robin and Barney’s wedding weekend? Reportedly, with a “HIMYM” spin-off.

According to Deadline, “HIMYM” creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas are collaborating with Emily Spivey (“Up All Night” creator and “Parks and Rec” alum) for a spin-off that, if picked up, would be titled… wait for it… “How I Met Your Father.”

But it’s not what you might think it is.

The new show would not be the story of what Ted Mosby’s future wife – played much too infrequently so far this season by Cristin Milioti – was doing in the years before they met, but rather about a new female character and her friends as she tries to find the man she’ll marry. The group may even hang out at MacLaren’s, and if that’s the only connection between new show and old, it wouldn’t be a first for a CBS spin-off: in 1994, the network debuted “704 Hauser,” an otherwise-unrelated “All in the Family” spin-off about a black family moving into Archie Bunker’s former address.

Look, y’all know how I’m feeling about “HIMYM” so far this year: that setting the whole season in Farhampton was a terrible idea, that I’ve come to hate pretty much every returning character, that they’re not using the Mother enough, etc. The question is whether Bays and Thomas have just lost their fastball, or if it’s just that this specific show and set of characters ran many years longer than it should have. Would starting fresh with new characters – and a talented new collaborator in Spivey – recharge their batteries, or would the new show (“HIMYF”?) just lead to the same plays from the same tired, gross playbook?

What does everybody else think? You ready to give Bays and Thomas a clean slate, or are you done with them the moment Milioti and Josh Radnor lock eyes at the end of this season?

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