On the last episode of How I Met Your Mother, roommates Ted and Robin agreed to be “friends with benefits” in order to deal with the conflicts they're having around the apartment.  Meanwhile, Barney tried to resolve the issues so they'd stop hooking up, and people from the reality realm appeared before Marshall, including Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt of The Hills, Kendra Wilkinson of The Girls Next Door, and Kim Kardashian of Keeping Up With the Kardashians.  Also, Lily helped Barney work out rage issues.

In other news, the actors of How I Met Your Mother are thanking their lucky stars for the increasing fan base and huge syndication sales as Josh Radnor, Jason Segel, Cobie Smulders, Neil Patrick Harris and Alyson Hannigan recently inked a new contract with 20th Century Fox TV to hike up their per episode paycheck and add an extra year to their original seven-year deals.

The new contract brings their salaries to $90, 000 to $120,000 per episode, two to three times what they were making prior, which some observers say is a big raise, considering Radnor, Segel, and Smulders were virtually unknown prior to their How I Met Your Mother Days.  They point out, however, that the pay is still lower than the paychecks of other ensemble cast of similar series, such as the NBC comedy The Office.

The CBS comedy pulled in an average of 9.5 million viewers during its maiden run.  This has slightly dwindled to 8.5 million and 8.2 million on its second and third seasons respectively. It has enjoyed a revival of sorts for its fourth season, averaging 9.74 million viewers.  Its last episode prior to the Christmas hiatus, for instance, reeled in 11.44 million viewers, the highest since season 1.


-Glenn L. Diaz, BuddyTV Staff Columnist
Source: Hollywood Reporter
(Image Courtesy of CBS)