Have you guys heard of Gavin & Stacey? - it's a show coming to BBCA (and then being reformatted for NBC.)

Late coast: AIIIIYIII!!! Robin and BARNEY?? Loved the Robin Sparkles. I have to go look up who was the slacker ex-boyfriend. I think he might have been one of the guys from Dawson's Creek, but I've never seen an ep of it, so off to check.

Side note en route: the writer was Kourtney Kang, Born in Hawaii. [2000] Carnegie Mellon University's School Of Drama, MFA in Playwrighting.

Robin Sparkles has a MySpace page. Of course! [link]

Another side note: The producers don’t plan on stopping with Robin Sparkles, “We’d like to get to the point,” Bays said, “where people will know that if they hear in the narration, ‘but I can’t tell you that part of the story,’ then they’ll know they should go looking for it online.” - from search engine journal.

Okay, the actor is Michael Kagan and he was also in the episode Return of the Shirt, where Ted breaks up with Natalie by leaving a message on her ans. machine, and Robin says crazy stuff on air that Barney dared her to say.

the slacker ex-boyfriend is James Van Der Beek of Dawson's Creek fame.

the actor is Michael Kagan

Which actor? The one who played slimy ex-boyfriend Simon? That was James Van Der Beek, formerly of Dawson's Creek. edit: x-posty

Heh, I hadn't seen the Robin Sparkles MySpace page yet. It's so... sparkly!

That was James Van Der Beek, formerly of Dawson's Creek.

Oh he was that guy? Sorry, he's not listed on the cast on IMDB for that ep and I couldn't remember the character's name. Kagan is listed as the character Joel Adams in that ep. (Who was he, or is IMDB completely messed up w/r/t this ep?)

Hmm, I don't remember a Joel Adams in this episode.

me neither, but i'm not all that surprised that something on imdb is screwy.

And here I always thought IMDB was more reliable than other sources. Live and learn.

I am sad that I have missed the new Office episodes.

Back to HIMYM:

These amused me at the time but the allusions went by me until now:

Barney: Tell me more. Tell me more. Like did he have a car?

This is a reference to the lines of a song from the musical Grease called "Summer Nights". With the song, Sandy and Danny, the lead characters in the play, describe to their friends how their brief summer love affair went.

Barney: Finish Him!!

This is an allusion to the video game "Mortal Kombat". When you KOed (knocked out) your opponent, he stood once again to receive the coup de grace while those words were showed on the screen.

eta: the pilot script [link]

I thought that JJ's Canadian accent was good (it reminded me a bit of Michael Hogan as Col. Tigh) but people at TWOP (or some people at TWOP) thought he sounded more Irish - what did you guys think? Because I didn't think he sounded at all Irish.

It sounded vaguely Scottish to me, though he did tone it down to a more typically Canadian/Minnesotan dialect by the end.