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Image credit: How I Met Your Mother: Ron P. Jaffe/ CBS

BREW HA-HA (From left) Harris, Smulders, Radnor, Segel, and Hannigan

How I Met Your Mother

THE PLOT In the year 2030, two slightly mortified teenagers sit in front of their father, Ted, as he regales them with the titular story. Back in the present day: Ted's two roommates have just gotten engaged, and he realizes he needs to get out there too. The wacky high jinks of twentysomething life, love, and bar culture ensue.

WHY WE LOVE IT Thanks to the flashback setup, co-creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas have twiddled merrily — but not overbearingly — with traditional sitcom structure. It's not breaking the ground of an Arrested Development...but who said it was trying to? ''Playing with time enables us to change the rhythm of the sitcom without shoving it down peoples' throats how different we are,'' says Thomas, adding, ''It's still on CBS on Monday night.'' Plus, we're fond of the warm, familiar cast: mad super bonus points to Neil Patrick Harris, who continues to torch Doogie by playing drink-swilling, bad-advice-dispensing Barney. ''I'm having a great time going to work,'' says Harris. ''I couldn't ask for more. Well, I could ask for one of those hybrid SUVs from the network, but that's probably pushing it.'' Bottom line? Let's turn to Josh Radnor, who plays the charmingly befuddled Ted: ''I don't feel guilty telling people to watch it.'' Hey! Neither do we!

WHAT IT'S UP AGAINST Wife Swap (ABC), Kitchen Confidential (Fox), Surface (NBC), All of Us (UPN), 7th Heaven (The WB)

WHAT'S NEXT ''There's a grand tradition of romantic comedy,'' says Bays, ''and I'd love it if we were a part of that.'' He and Thomas promise an actual sword fight, as well as an episode at a club where the music is so loud, we need subtitles. And then, of course, there's the small matter of how Mom herself gets met...

—Whitney Pastorek