CBS sitcom enjoying its best year ever

LOS ANGELES — The mysteries that surround the CBS sitcom "How I Met Your Mother" extend to co-creator Craig Thomas' office on the Fox studio lot.

A white board on the wall that outlines the seventh season's episodes ends with Barney's wedding in the May finale. "___ is the bride," the board says.

You never know who's going to walk in, and Thomas and partner Carter Bays hold tight to their secrets. That will be a pivotal episode: Not only will the ultimate bachelor come off the market, but the show has revealed it's also the day that Ted meets his future bride — the mother that provides the theme for the entire show.

That doesn't necessarily mean VIEWERS will meet the mother in that episode, however. Stay tuned.

This has been a big year for the comedy that launches CBS' Monday nights. Ratings are the best they've ever been, up 19 percent over last season, and it has a younger audience that any other show on the network's prime-time schedule.

"There's almost no scientific explanation and we couldn't have counted on that," Thomas said.

Time may make viewers more invested in the lives of Ted (Josh Radnor), horndog buddy Barney (Neil Patrick Harris), Ted and Barney's ex Robin (Cobie Smulders) and the married couple Marshall and Lily (Jason Segel and Alyson Hannigan).

The boomerang effect of syndication is making more people familiar with the series, too. "How I Met Your Mother," which just filmed its 150th episode, has been seen outside of prime time on local broadcast stations the past few years. Last year it was also on Lifetime, the cable network targeted at women, and this fall added FX, which is popular with young men.

The FX showings began with a Labor Day marathon and a clever ad campaign that pictured the cast and suggested: "Isn't it time you made some new friends?" ''How I Met Your Mother" hit the syndication market when there was a relative paucity of new comedies and reruns of "Friends" were getting tired from overuse.

"How I Met Your Mother" is the closest TV has to a modern-day "Friends." When it started in 2005, the namesake gimmick distinguished it from other efforts to replace the beloved NBC show. The new series opened with kids on a couch impatiently listening to narrator Bob Saget, as Ted circa 2030, explains how their parents met.

Ted established a romantic connection with Robin in that pilot, which ended with Saget explaining, "that's how I met your Aunt Robin."