'How I Met Your Mother' Spinoff Is Dead

Kids. let me tell you about the time CBS didn't pick up the How I Met Your Mother spinoff.

It was the spring of 2014, and CBS was hoping to capitalize on a highly success and beloved show with a lazy and inspired sequel series. Sure, HIMYM's creators were on board, but the new show, which they were calling How I Met Your Dad, would have never had the heart HIMYM did.

When CBS announced its new lineup on Wednesday, HIMYD wasn't on it.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, CBS's "decision to pass comes as [the network] faced a Wednesday deadline on the project from 20th Century Fox Television. Rights to the comedy will now revert back to the studio, which is expected to shop it elsewhere."

"There were elements on the pilot that didn't work out," President of CBS Entertainment Nina Tassler said. "We tried to work out about redoing the pilot. That's not happening right now. Sometimes you run into these kind of issues and you hope they can resolve themselves in that time frame."

THR also reports that despite CBS's wishes that the pilot get a redo, Tassler says "that's not happening right now." Since CBS doesn't own HIMYD, that decision would be up to 20th Century Fox.

"I'm hearing the issue between CBS and 20th on #himyd has been that 20th didn't want to shoot another pilot without guarantee of series order," Vulture editor Joe Adalian tweeted. Basically, 20th Century Fox wasn't going to go through the pilot process again unless it knew HIMYD was getting picked up ... which kind of goes against the purpose of a pilot.

Look, if HIMYD dad was a close spinoff how HIMYM, maybe following Cristin Milioti's character through her journey to find Ted (and then eventually die during a montage), I would have totally different feelings about the proposed show. That was never the case though. HIMYD was going to be a sad clone of HIMYM, twisting the characters we fell in love with into one-dimensional character descriptions.

There's still the chance another network picks up HIMYD, most especially 20th Century Fox's sibling Fox. Even if that happened, HIMYD wouldn't air in the fall, as the networks have already revealed their upcoming schedules.

Like the story of the pineapple, How I Met Your Dad is one that just didn't need to be told.