Carrie Underwood On 'How I Met Your Mother': How I Did Not Meet NPH

During the Television Critics Association press tour in January, we got to see a How I Met Your Mother table read, and tonight's episode is the one we saw. The guest star is American Idol winner and huge country star Carrie Underwood, who was not present, and I will tell you that the story also features a tiny pig, who was also not present.

A table read -- which more and more people are familiar with, since you can sometimes find them among a TV show's DVD extras -- is where the cast reads through the script to give everybody a general feel for what's happening, and to give the writers a sense of what's working and what's not. They wouldn't normally have an audience of TV critics there providing extra feedback (by giggling at some of the jokes), but they can still hear the words out loud.

If you are a regular reader of the blog, I know what you're thinking, so let's just put it out there.

What you're thinking, putting it out there, and the actual episode, after the jump.

This means I was in a room with Monkey See Top Pop-Culture Human Of 2009 Neil Patrick Harris, and you are concerned that my excitement at this might mean I was reduced to a small number of functioning brain cells, none of which probably are in charge of restraint. This is only half-true.

I was indeed in the room, but table-read day is not a work day for the actors, really -- they do this, and then they go home. When you're allowed in to a table read with the explicit admonition that it is not the time to go and harass the actors, it would seem like poor form to leap up from your folding chair in the middle of a scene, clamber over everyone else's folding chair, and say "Hi-I'm-Linda-from-NPR-you-like-our-iPhone-app!"

That's what my heart did, but fortunately for everyone, it is not what my actual self did. My actual self watched with detachment. If this disappoints you and you were hoping for something more dramatic, I am terribly sorry, but protocol is protocol, and it does not allow the gratuitous display of admiration or, as it is called in the alternative, "flopsweat."

Okay, now that we have dealt with that distraction, how was the episode, based on the skeletal version we saw, which may have been changed significantly since we saw it? It was good. It is one of those HIMYM episodes that tries to define A Phenomenon In Relationships, and the one they go after here -- hinted at in the episode's title, "Hooked" -- is quite real indeed. It's a good idea, there are good jokes, there's a tiny pig, and you'll be treated to the return of a character from Lily's past. It should be worth seeing.

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